How this is Related to Astronomy?

As part of my role as Blogger-in-Chief for Women in Astronomy, I cross-post blog articles to groups on various social networks. Cross-posting has been great at getting wider exposure for this blog, and our readership has increased dramatically since I've started doing this.

However, with increased readership and exposure, we also get increased feedback, criticism, and frustrating responses to our posts. As the person who posts these blog articles to these communities, I get notified when people comment, and its been very interesting to see how many people don't believe that discrimination, harassment, or biases exist in scientific communities, or don't think information about these issues is relevant to them.

Below are some examples of these discussions, with links to the threads on Google+ and Facebook. I encourage those of you who read this blog to participate in these discussions (mostly in the Facebook Astronomers Group and the Google+ Science Community although there is also discussions in the LinkedIn Groups Association for Women in Science, APS Physics, Women in Physics, and American Astronomical Society.  In my opinion, the fact that people vocalize these views means that we have much more work to do.

Microloans to Benefit Women in India

The holiday season is a great time to spend time with family and friends.  The conversations range far and wide from new boy and girlfriends for the kids to world wars and peace.  I have a "sister", Shermali, from Sri Lanka who's astronomer father was  a colleague of my dad and she lived with our family through undergrad and grad school years.  She now comes to my parent's house in Tucson with the rest of us for Christmas.  This year the topic of microloans in India came up in our discussions.

Organizations make small loans to rural families in India to allow them to get started in business.  There are hundreds of millions of people who can not get credit because they have few assets for collateral   Many of them are women who often have less education and not as many business connections as the men in the village.  The loans are typically $100 to $200.  A common use of the money is to buy a cow or a sewing machine.

The program is an excellent idea, but it sadly had difficulties.  In some cases, the loans were not well researched.  A spending plan was not developed or tracked.  People used the loans to pay for urgent family needs or, in the worst cases, gifts and un-needed items.  Also, for-profit companies got into the loan business with the main objective to make money.  Even with repay rates of >90%, the bad cases grabbed the headlines and the national government shut down the program in 2010.

Things are now looking up.  India's central bank released national guidelines for microlenders in 2011 and set up a licensing system.  Interest rates are now capped and people with defaults are barred for further loans.  Through the program, women are becoming empowered and having a larger say in their villages.

What Can I Do? Share Advice & Resources

Today’s suggestion comes from CSWA alum, Caroline Simpson. Caroline is an associate professor at Florida International University. She works on star formation and evolution in dwarf galaxies. She also edited CSWA's weekly e-newsletter, AASWomen, from 2006-2013.

Spread the word in casual conversation, in class, wherever it seems appropriate, about resources online for women in science. Have links on your own webpage to them. Good examples would be the CSWA Advice page and the CSWA Resources page . Post your favorites in the comments section so the rest of us can share them.

Make sure your department webpage and/or Facebook page occasionally donates some time and space to women-related issues, items, resources, and news announcements. This doesn’t need to be limited to items directly related to your department; include national and international items that indicate that your department is conscious of the challenges facing underrepresented minorities. If you have policies or benefits that are of particular interest to women or dual-career couples, highlight that.

Maternity news

This map is from @Amazing_Maps, and it surprised me.  I knew that our maternity (and paternity) policies in the US are far behind those of Europe, especially the Nordic countries.  But we're no more advanced than Suriname, Papa New Guinea and Liberia? That's news.

Yes, there is a value judgment here, namely that in order to achieve and sustain excellence, organizations and societies that help women and men balance family and work are preferable to those that do not.

Mary Ann Mason, Nicholas Wolfinger and Marc Goulden have written a book Do Babies Matter: Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower, which presents a comprehensive picture of how career and family intersect over the course of an academic career.  Maternity leave is a small part of the story, and it is well worth the time of any academic or university administrator to read this book.  It's my top recommendation for holiday reading!

If you don't have time to read the book, I encourage you to see the movie: Professor Mason has given a lecture about it here.

AASWomen Newsletter for December 20, 2013

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of December 20, 2013
eds: Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, Nick Murphy, & Nicolle Zellner

This week's issues:

1. Survey on Two-Body Careers in Astronomy
2. One Person’s Advice on the Two-Body Problem
3. Values Affirmation and You: What You Deeply Care About Affects Your Ability to Do Science (Now Featuring Peer Review!)
4. Faculty Search Committee
5. Society of Women Engineers: 2014 Call for Award Nominations
6. Eight Campuses to Host Conference for Undergrad Women
7. UK Study Finds Women Scientists Get Fewer Grants, Less Funding Than Male Counterparts
8. Job Opportunities
9. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
10. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
11. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Values Affirmation and You: What You Deeply Care About Affects Your Ability to Do Science (Now Featuring Peer Review!)

Today I am sharing a guest post from Dr. Sarah Ballard. Dr. Ballard completed her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Harvard University in 2012 and is now a NASA Sagan fellow at the University of Washington.

It was only several years into graduate school that I learned that language already existed to describe my academic experience in science. I’m an unusual astronomer in some ways, having arrived in the field only after devoting my early undergraduate studies to Peace and Conflict Studies and Gender Studies. I was inculcated in the early years of college with language that describes the human experience. I was literally tested on phrases such as “intersectionality of oppression” and “safe space.” Value is assigned in these disciplines, in the form of grades, to a student’s ability to articulate ideas of bias and privilege. I wrote essays in exam rooms, after poring over assigned articles, on how wrongs get righted within human group dynamics. I thought and wrote about the activities people undertake to restore feelings of dignity and agency to underserved groups: this was once my major. 

Let me describe to you here why this is relevant to you, an astrophysicist. Let me describe a way that you can leverage the knowledge other fields accrue about imperfect human functioning under high pressure. Let me make the argument to you that reflection on self-worth can alleviate distress and underperformance in yourself, your colleagues, your mentees.

Faculty Search Committee

What can we do about unconscious bias? First, we have to be aware that it exists. Then we need to establish policies and put them into practice. Finally, there needs to be accountability. We can illustrate this process with an example: A Faculty Search Committee. How do we typically start a job search for a new faculty member? There are several standard steps: (1) the department chair forms a search committee; (2) the committee writes an ad targeting a specific sub-discipline; (3) the position is advertised; and (4) the committee members go about their business until the applications begin to pour in.