On Leadership

When I try to imagine a LEADER in the field of astronomy, it is not usually the likeness of a woman that comes to mind. I said in a blog comment recently that the front in the battle for gender equality has shifted to the senior ranks. I also know that we all need role models to help us navigate in unknown territory. As a senior woman in astronomy, it is my peers who are the emerging leaders. So where do we look for role models? Where do we go to get good advice from the women who have forged the path that we are trekking?

One place to look is the word of business. Although few and sometimes far between, women have been presidents and CEOs of major companies. Here are some quotes from these successful businesswomen that resonated with me:

“Don’t Be Your ‘First, Worst’ Critic” - Virginia Rometty, CEO, IBM

“I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.” - Virginia Rometty, CEO, IBM

NASA Astrophysics Senior Review

 

 

The main panel of the 2014 NASA Astrophysics Senior Review had 10 members; none were women. I asked Paul Hertz what had happened to diversity. This is his formal response.

 

Response to Joan Schmelz, Chair, Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy 

Paul Hertz Director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters May 28, 2014 

 

 

 

The Senior Review of NASA Operating Missions is the formal review of operating missions and projects carried out every two years as required by law. The purpose of the Senior Review is to: 

• Prioritize continued funding of the operating missions and projects; 
• Define an implementation approach to achieve astrophysics strategic objectives;
• Provide programmatic and budgetary direction to missions and projects for the upcoming two fiscal years; and, 
• Issue initial funding guidelines for the following two fiscal years. 

  

Fed Up With Sexual Harassment: Survival of the Clueless

Picture from noworkplaceviolence.com

This is the second in a series of posts on the topic of sexual harassment in astronomy. The first can be found here (Defining the problem), with more to come later this week.

Long-term readers of the Women in Astronomy Blogspot will know that I “Came Out” as a victim of sexual harassment in 2011; you can read my story here. Helping victims navigate the confusing rules, hazardous landscapes, and blame-the-victim strategies has been part of my raison d’etre since joining CSWA. I am amazed at how much sexual harassment still goes on in the astronomy community. Unfortunately, it is not just a thing of the past. Here are a few examples of how sexual harassment manifests itself in the 21st century.

 Some sexual harassers have learned exactly how far they can push a situation before they have to pull back. They walk right up to the line and take a small step over it. The harasser can, for example, touch the victim on the shoulder when saying, “Good Morning,” or say something a bit unprofessional like, “You just look too nice today.” Depending on the reaction of the victim, the harasser can quickly retreat behind the line with profuse apologies for going too far. If, on the other hand, the victim reacts in a friendly manner, the harasser can redraw the line and repeat the tactic (more on this in tomorrow's post).

Everything is Useful

This week’s guest blogger is Sethanne Howard, an astronomer who has held positions with U.S. national observatories, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Navy. She was also Chief of the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office, 2000-2003. Her research specialty is galactic dynamics. She has also been active in science education, especially concentrating on the history of women in science.

There are many paths to becoming an astronomer, almost as many as there are astronomers.  My path was a squiggle of overlapping tracks.

Like many astronomers I knew what I wanted to be from age 5.  I read the Little Golden Book on Stars. There were a series of little golden books on the natural world, one on rocks and minerals, one on flowers, one on insects, birds, etc. The one on stars was divided into two parts. Part two was easy to understand. It consisted of a page per constellation with a drawing of the constellation at the top and a description at the bottom. My 5 year old mind could understand pictures in the sky. Part one was more difficult. It was text describing the science of astronomy. I read it carefully not quite understanding everything until I got to a page on how stars evolve. There was this graph on the page. [Graphs are not part of a 5 year old’s concepts.] There were big white-blue stars at the top left, smaller yellow stars in the middle and even smaller red stars at the bottom right.  Obviously (to my 5 year old mind) stars rolled down the line as they aged, changing color as they rolled.  Well, the words at the bottom of the page did not agree with this. So I was puzzled, and this puzzlement stayed with me until I figured out the H-R diagram many years later.  The puzzlement kept me interested in astronomy.  I kept returning to that page year after year until I could understand it.

Chairing Review Panels

Enough time has gone by that I can now tell this story without fear of breaching confidentiality. I “recently” chaired a NASA proposal review panel. The identity of the panel members is generally confidential; you don’t know the participants ahead of time, and you don’t discuss the results after the panel business is complete. I have participated in these reviews since I started in solar physics – almost 25 years ago. My name comes up every two or three years, and I head to DC. The panel spends several days reviewing proposals, and comes up with a ranking for NASA. The process usually works pretty well.

In all the years I have been doing this, I have never been part of a panel that was chaired by a woman. (Since the panel membership is not public domain, I only have information on the panels I have served on.) I have noticed a trend – the panel chairs used to be more senior than me, then about my level, and recently, younger than me. These chairs can be reasonably effective or not particularly effective; in some cases, the NASA discipline scientist takes over most of the chairing duties, so the panel still gets the job done.

A few months after participating in the panel review process, I happened to run into the NASA discipline scientist at a conference. The situation was right to have a quiet word about this business of chairing panels. It did not take me long to realize that I had walked right into a trap! Always on the lookout for panel members, he immediately asked if I would chair a panel in the next round of reviews. I was expecting to do this in two to three years, not two to three months. But I had asked for it, and here was an opportunity. I simply had to agree to chair the panel.