AAS 213th Meeting: CSWA Town Hall recap

Today's panel discussion featured six women in various stages of their careers: Virginia Trimble, Meg Urry, Jennifer Hoffman, Jane Rigby, Ginny McSwain, and Caty Pilachowski. Geoff Clayton, chair of the CSWA, started off the discussion with an interesting question: is there still a role for the CSWA these days?

On the face of it, barriers have largely been swept aside. Women can attend graduate school. Women are allowed into observatories. Women can receive tenure at Ivy League universities. There was a time when this wasn't the case. Still more promising, the percentage of women in astronomy at the undergraduate level and entering graduate school is approaching parity. However, there was a general consensus that the fight is not yet over. Women still get discriminated against in more subtle ways. Also, there are still few women at the top level, and until equity is reached at all levels, there is still room for change.

During the discussion, a number of concrete suggestions were made and I'll simply list them here:

• There is a Women in Astronomy Database, which is a useful resource for finding women to invite as speakers, ask to apply for jobs, serve on committees, etc. This database is user-maintained however, so you need to add yourself to the database and keep your entry up-to-date. I think this resource is under-utilized, so I'm posting it here in hopes that advertising it will remind people to update their listings. I just updated mine!
  
• Mentoring is extremely important. MentorNet is a great place to find a mentor, but you can only use it if your institution subscribes to it. But, if you join AWIS (Association for Women in Science), you can join MentorNet through them, even if your institution does not subscribe.
  
• The APS (American Physical Society) has a program where if your institution invites two women to give talks, APS will pay for a third one to come.
  

Also, Geoff put in a plug for this blog at the beginning of the session, so now there's a whole new pile of readers, yes? What are your thoughts from the session?

AAS 213th Meeting: Day 1

Today's my busy day: I'm both presenting a poster and chairing an oral session. But now that the oral session is done, I finally have a chance to go online for a bit.

Today's big news was announced both by John Huchra, AAS President, this morning, and by Meg Urry during the CSWA Town Hall. The AAS will be providing childcare at the next three winter meetings! I think this is totally awesome, even I personally won't benefit. My kids are old enough that they are in school now, so it's simpler for me to just leave them at home with my husband. Still, I think it's a great step forward. I've seen several women pushing strollers or toting infants, and it seems like every year there are more of them. So I'm sure that this will come as a great relief to many.

It sounds like the childcare will be pretty affordable: $8/hr, is what Meg said this afternoon, because it will be heavily subsidized by an industry sponsor. This program will not replace the current childcare grants program, where you can apply for $100 toward childcare at the AAS Meeting, so you can apply for the grant *and* use the on-site childcare.

The important thing is that this is a use-it-or-lose-it proposition: if they don't get enough people using the service, "it will go away for good" as Meg said. So if you're in a position to use this service, do it!

Okay, that's about all the time I have for now: I'll post a recap of the CSWA session later.

AAS 213th Meeting: Day 0

Well, here I am in Long Beach!

I plan to live-blog from the AAS Meeting here this week. Tomorrow should be off to a great start: the CSWA Session meets tomorrow at lunchtime. 12:45pm in Room 104B.

Also of note:

• Monday at 3:40pm: Lisa Kewley -- Pierce Prize talk
  
• Tuesday at 11:40am: Penny Sackett -- invited talk
  
• Tuesday at 4:30pm: Andrea Ghez -- invited talk
  
• Wednesday at 3:40pm: Jenny Greene -- Cannon Prize talk
  

My count is 2 of 7 Prize or Named Lecture talks are by women, with the caveat that the Cannon Prize is specifically for women.
Also, 2 of the 7 invited talks are by women. Not too bad a representation. Someone has been paying attention.

Passion and Success

There are few women in the top ranks of scientists. Often, when these highly successful women are interviewed, they talk about their passion for their work, and how that passion enabled them to overcome the sexism, both blatant and subtle, that they had to fight on their way to the top. They and their interviewers probably think it's inspiring to hear about this passion, because it shows that if you truly love what you do, you can succeed at it, despite the odds set against you.

Well.

Passion is a good starting point. I don't believe anyone pursues a career in science without being passionate about the subject, whether you're male or female. Also, I don't want to diminish the achievements of those who have reached the pinnacles of success, whether it be election to the National Academies or a Nobel Prize or just achieving tenure. But I think talking about passion is misleading.

Passion as a requisite for success reinforces the idea that being a scientist is an all or nothing deal. It implies that your rewards are directly proportional to the work you put in. It's the kind of thinking that leads to boasting about how many hours a week you spend at work. It's the same attitude that hurts women who decide to take time off from their careers to have a family.

At the 3rd IUPAP Conference on Women in Physics (ICWIP), there were several plenary sessions to devoted to science talks by prominent women physcists from around the world. And on one level, they were inspiring. But on the other hand, it was discouraging to realize how hard they had to work to get where they were.

I would like to hear more from other voices: women who have successfully juggled the demands of a family and a career without giving up themselves to do it. I am also coming to realize that many of these voices are women who have redefined success for themselves. They aren't going for the National Academies or a Nobel Prize, or even a tenured professorship. In astronomy, we might say that they have "leaked from the pipeline," because unlike many other branches of physics, there is no industry counterpart to academia.

It's for this reason that Motherhood: the Elephant in the Laboratory is on my reading list. (I have a copy somewhere, but I seem to have misplaced it at the moment.) It's a collection of essays by women scientists who have had children, and how it affected their careers. I went to a panel discussion about the book last fall. The room was packed and the discussion was thoughtful and interesting and inspiring in a different way than those talks at the ICWIP meeting.

Redefining success for yourself is not easy. I seem to have it well-drilled into my head that success is defined as tenure at one of 5 or so universities in this country. It's easy for me to say, "well, she can define success however she wants, and I'm glad to see that she's so happy doing what she's doing, but it's not good enough for me." I am slowly learning to stop viewing life as a zero-sum game, that it's not about sacrificing being a good scientist to be a good mother or vice versa, but trying to be the best human being I can be.

AAS Meeting: CSWA Town Hall

Here's a plug for the CSWA Town Hall, on Monday, January 5, at 12:45-1:45 in Rm 104B. This year's session will feature a panel of women astronomers at various stages in their careers. The idea is to reflect on how far we've come and where we're going in terms of gender equity in astronomy. The panelists will be

• Virginia Trimble
  
• Meg Urry
  
• Jennifer Hoffman
  
• Jane Rigby
  
• Ginny McSwain
  
• Caty Pilachowski
  

I'm sure it will be a great discussion, so come on by!

AAS Meeting

It's late December. Christmas is past, universities are on winter break, and New Year's is just around the corner. It's a special time of year for astronomers in particular, because...

... next week is the AAS Meeting!!!

It's sometimes said that a year's worth of astronomy gets done in the last week of the year, and that probably isn't too far off. However, my poster is already ready to go, since I'm recycling one from a previous conference. But the conference I presented it at last wasn't a pure astronomy conference, so I'm not cheating, right?

I always find the January AAS Meeting to be overwhelming in size. It's hard to take in everything. Then again, if you compare the 3000 or so who descend on the AAS Meeting to the tens of thousands who go to the AGU Meeting every year, maybe I shouldn't complain.

I'm not alone in my feelings about big meetings. Science Woman feels the same way about the AGU.

It's not the science, it's the meeting (people). As DrugMonkey says over and over again, it's all about the networking.

So this AGU, my poster was the excuse to spend the money on the plane ticket, hotel, registration and food. (San Francisco is not cheap!) And this AGU, I did listen to some really amazing scientific talks and read some excellent posters. But mostly, I wanted to talk to the movers and shakers and rising stars in my subdisciplines.

Yeah, that sounds about right. So, on Sunday I'll be off to Long Beach, pre-displayed poster on hand, off to meet and greet. You know, it's funny, we women are supposed to be such social animals, always chatting with our friends and using our great communication skills. Yet, when it comes to the networking that leads to opportunities and success, we somehow get left our of the loop. What's with that anyway?

Grand Re-opening

Welcome to the Women in Astronomy blog!

Yes, this blog has been around for several months already, but now we're going to dust it off, clear out the cobwebs, and use it as part of our effort to bring the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA) into the 21st century, at long last.

One idea is to move the AASWOMEN newsletter away from an email distribution list to an RSS feed.  Our first step toward doing that will be to post that newsletter here on this blog.  We will also be posting other items of interest from time to time.

Please bear with us as we figure out this new-fangled technology.  I already have at least one blog post formulating, along the lines of passion for science, and whether that's necessary or even helpful for promoting women and minorities in science.