Sunday, February 9, 2014

AASWomen February 7, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of February 7, 2014
eds: Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, Nick Murphy, & Nicolle Zellner

This week's issues:

8. Job Opportunities
9. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

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1. Changing the Debate about Women in STEM: Celebrating our Equal Abilities!
From: Greet Brosens via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

After guest tweeting for The Women’s Room last week, I had enough inspiration for another blog about stereotypes. The stereotypical treatment of girls and women is a subject I have written about a lot in the last year and done a lot of research on. Unfortunately the more I read the more I despair…. Even amongst female engineers, who presumably know a thing or two about the effects of stereotypical thinking, it still seems to be an accepted view that men and women are different.


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2.  Why So Few? Stereotype Threat
From: Joan Schmelz via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), profiles the research of Dr. Joshua Aronson, a psychologist at New York University, who shows that negative stereotypes about girls’ and women’s abilities in math and science persist and can adversely affect their performance in these fields through a phenomenon known as stereotype threat. Stereotype threat arises in situations where a person fears that her or his performance will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype.

Read more at


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3.  The AstroBetter Parental Leave Wiki
From: Nicholas Murphy via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

The Parental Leave Wiki hosted by AstroBetter is over two years old and now contains almost thirty entries from four different countries. This wiki was created so that prospective graduate students and job seekers could easily compare parental leave policies at different institutions, and to show institutions how their policies stack up against peer institutions. Since graduate admissions and many hiring decisions will be taking place over the next few months, now is a good time to add your institution’s parental leave policies or make sure that its entry is up to date.

To read more from this entry, please see


To add your institution to the Wiki page, please go to


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4. Call for US Delegate Applications for the 5th International Conference on Women in Physics
From: Nick Murphy via friends_at_aps.org

The American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Physical Society, and the American Institute of Physics are looking for volunteers to join the delegation representing the United States at the 5th International Conference on Women in Physics in Waterloo, Canada, from August 6-9, 2014. The 5th International Conference on Women in Physics provides a platform for around 300 physicists from approximately 70 countries to form international research collaborations and partnerships, share best practices, and discuss specific actions that participants can take in their home countries to increase and advance the participation of women in physics.

More information on the conference can be found at http://icwip2014.wlu.ca

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5. Bibliometrics: Global gender disparities in science
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

Cassidy Sugimoto and her colleagues analyzed over 5 million research papers with over 27 million authorships in order to understand the relationship between gender and research output, the extent of collaboration, and the scientific impact of all articles. They found that “in the most productive countries, all articles with women in dominant author positions receive fewer citations than those with men in the same positions.”

To see the summary, by country, and to read more about the results of this study, please see


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6. No, Women Don’t Make Less Money Than Men
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama stated that women “make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.” Is it really true that women still make less money than men? In this article, Christina Hoff Sommers asserts that college major, career choice, the number of hours worked per week, and employment position, among other factors, all need to be taken into account.  When they are, “the wage gap narrows to about five cents.”

To read more and to see a list of college majors most often chosen by women and men, please see


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7. National Symposium for the Advancement of Women in STEM (NSAWS)
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

Harvard University will be hosting the National Symposium for the Advancement of Women in STEM, an event “to discuss and honor the role of women in science”, on February 21-22, 2014. Speakers are from industry and academia and the event will include discussions on journal submission and career paths, among other topics.

For a detailed schedule and to learn how to register, please visit


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8. Job Opportunities

For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here: http://www.aas.org/cswa/diversity.html#howtoincrease

Director’s Research Fellow, Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

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9. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

To submit an item to the AASWOMEN newsletter, including replies to topics, send email to aaswomen_at_aas.org

All material will be posted unless you tell us otherwise, including your email address.

When submitting a job posting for inclusion in the newsletter, please include a one-line description and a link to the full job posting.

Please remember to replace "_at_" in the e-mail address above.

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10. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

Join AAS Women List by email:

Send email to aaswlist+subscribe_at_aas.org from the address you want to have subscribed. You can leave the subject and message blank if you like.

Be sure to follow the instructions in the confirmation email. (Just reply back to the email list)

To unsubscribe by email:

Send email to aawlist+unsubscribe_at_aas.org from the address you want to have UNsubscribed. You can leave the subject and message blank if you like.

To join or leave AASWomen via web, or change your membership settings:


You will have to create a Google Account if you do not already have one, using https://accounts.google.com/newaccount?hl=en  

Google Groups Subscribe Help:


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11. Access to Past Issues


Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.

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