Issue of July 27, 2018
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Cristina Thomas, Maria Patterson, and JoEllen McBride
This week's issues:
1. Cross-post: We need to start being honest with girls about science
2. TAURUS Scholar Spotlight: Gabriella Sanchez
3. Student Highlight: Betsy Hernandez
4. Closing the gender gap in some science fields may take over 100 years
5. Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship winner
6. Publishing While Female: Are women held to higher standards? Evidence from peer review
7. Crossing the divide: Do men really have it easier?
8. The Play "The Women Who Mapped the Stars"
9. Science Career Ads Are Disproportionately Seen by Men
10. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
12. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter
1. Cross-post: We need to start being honest with girls about science
From: Cristina Thomas via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
As an avid science communicator and astronomy subject matter expert for hire, Dr. JoEllen McBride, CSWA member, strives to make science inclusive for anyone who wants to participate. In this blog post, Dr. McBride discusses how we have to be honest with young women; not just about the set backs they may face when doing science but the systemic hurdles they'll face within their scientific institutions.
Read more at
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2018/07/cross-post-we-need-to-start-being.html
Back to top.2. TAURUS Scholar Spotlight: Gabriella Sanchez
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]
“This week's TAURUS Scholar Spotlight focuses in Gabriella Sanchez, a rising senior at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Gabriella's research focuses on gas outflows in nearby galaxies. She recently sat down with her research mentor at UT, Dr. Justin Spilker, to discuss her path to TAURUS and what's in store for her future.”
Read more at
http://astronomyincolor.blogspot.com/2018/07/taurus-scholar-spotlight-gabriella.html
Back to top.3. Student Highlight: Betsy Hernandez
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]
“Betsy is a first generation Dominican-American who has had a non-traditional career trajectory. Betsy has loved science and math since childhood, but she and her parents were unaware of the vast careers in STEM, and so she initially pursued a path in medicine at the City College of New York of the City University of New York (CUNY). Once there, she learned about research and other nonmedical careers in science. She later transferred to Hunter College CUNY and obtained a bachelor's in Physics and Mathematics. While at Hunter College, Betsy began her astronomy research through the AstroCom NYC Fellowship, which is affiliated with CUNY schools and the American Museum of Natural History. Her other astronomy research experiences were through GRAD MAP at the University of Maryland in College Park and through the National Astronomy Consortium (NAC) at Space Telescope Science Institute where her research focused on galaxies. During her year as a Helen Fellow she has mentored youth, and performed a theoretical research project analyzing galaxies and black holes. Afterwards, she will continue with her education through the two-year Princeton Post Baccalaureate program. Betsy then hopes go on to graduate school and ultimately become a professor. Additional interests include assisting in astronomy outreach events like stargazing, and non-STEM work like cake decorating and Latin dancing, specifically, dancing to merengue, bachata, salsa, and cha-cha. “
Read more at
http://astronomyincolor.blogspot.com/2018/07/student-highlight-betsy-hernandez.html
Back to top.4. Closing the gender gap in some science fields may take over 100 years
From: Gerrit Verschuur [verschuur_at_aol.com]
By Kyle Plantz
“If you’re a female computer scientist, you may not see an equal number of men and women working in your field in this century — or even the next one. It might take a whopping 280 years for that scientific discipline to bridge the gender gap, researchers report online April 19 in PLOS Biology.”
Read more at:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/closing-gender-gap-some-science-fields-may-take-over-100-years
Back to top.5. Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship winner
From: Joseph Heaven [heaven_at_cantab.net]
The inaugural Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship winner is Dr Sarah RUGHEIMER, Simons Research Fellow at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of St Andrews.
Congratulations!
The selection committee's citation reads:
Dr Rugheimer is an outstanding early career researcher studying the atmospheric composition of exoplanets, and the potential of these atmospheres to provide fingerprints of conditions that can sustain life. Her key results include showing how clouds can complicate the detection of oxygen in an exoplanet’s atmosphere, and how a star’s ultraviolet radiation affects the ability to detect signatures of life on its orbiting planets.
Her energy and vision were central to the creation of the Centre for Exoplanet Science at St Andrews, where she has integrated and utilised insights ranging from the geochemical and isotopic character of the Earth’s rock archive to the fundamental physics of how a planet’s atmosphere forms. Her lectures demonstrate a rare clarity of understanding, and she has proved effective at presenting scientific concepts to the public.
She will give her Caroline Herschel Prize Lecture on “Hues of Habitability – Characterising Pale Blue Dots around Other Stars” in or around November.
Thank you to all the astroscientists who lobbied and shared news of this prize; or nominated themselves, their colleagues, mentees or supervisees.
Read more about the lectureship here:
http://www.williamherschel.org.uk/caroline-herschel-prize-lectureship
Back to top.6. Publishing While Female: Are women held to higher standards? Evidence from peer review
From: Jessica Fielder [jfielder_at_sfsu.edu]
By: Erin Hengel
"I use readability scores to test if women are held to higher standards in academic peer review. I find: (i) female-authored papers are 1–6 percent better written than equivalent papers by men; (ii) the gap is almost two times higher in published articles than in earlier, draft versions of the same papers; (iii) women’s writing gradually improves but men’s does not—meaning the readability gap grows over authors’ careers. ... I then document evidence that higher standards affect behaviour and lower productivity. First, female-authored papers take half a year longer in peer review. Second, as women update beliefs about referees’ standards, they increasingly meet those standards before peer review."
Full article is here:
http://www.erinhengel.com/research/publishing_female.pdf
Back to top.7. Crossing the divide: Do men really have it easier?
From: Nancy Morrison [nancyastro126_at_gmail.com]
By Tara Bahrampour
"These transgender guys found the truth was more complex.
"In the 1990s, the late Stanford neuroscientist Ben Barres transitioned from female to male. He was in his 40s, mid-career, and afterward he marveled at the stark changes in his professional life. Now that society saw him as male, his ideas were taken more seriously. He was able to complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man. A colleague who didn’t know he was transgender even praised his work as 'much better than his sister’s.'
...
"We spoke with four men who transitioned as adults to the bodies in which they feel more comfortable. Their experiences reveal that the gulf between how society treats women and men is in many ways as wide now as it was when Barres transitioned. But their diverse backgrounds provide further insight into how race and ethnicity inform the gender divide in subtle and sometimes surprising ways."
Read more at
Back to top.8. The Play "The Women Who Mapped the Stars"
From: Michele Kaufman [kaufmanrallis_at_icloud.com]
This past spring the play "The Women Who Mapped the Stars" by Joyce Van Dyke was performed at the Central Square Playhouse in Cambridge. The only characters appearing on stage are Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury, Annie J. Cannon, Henriett Leavitt, and Cecilia Payne. After seeing it performed, I wrote the following to the author:
" I attended yesterday's performance of "The Women Who Mapped the Stars" and was very impressed. This play is excellent in conveying the thrill a scientist feels at the instant of making a discovery, of seeing the workings of nature revealed, and of knowing that at that instant you are the only person who has obtained this particular relation or thought of this theoretical interpretation. This is much more exciting than any awards you may receive subsequently for your discovery. This play also is important for showing the camaraderie between these women who did fundamental research in astronomy and their support of each other. Thus to do major work in science, it is not necessary to be egotistical, arrogant, or unethical. This play should be viewed, via some media, by girls around the country to encourage them in science. I knew Cecilia. I took her Introductory Astronomy course in 1958, she was my undergrad. advisor for the first two years, and, as a graduate student, I attended her graduate course. In the Introductory Astronomy course, she described the work done by the women Cannon, Maury, and Leavitt, as well as that of the men Hertzsprung, Russell, and Hubble. We also learned that despite the variety of stellar spectra, all stellar atmospheres have nearly the same chemical composition and are composed principally of hydrogen, but she never mentioned that she was the person who discovered this! In other words, she was somewhat self-effacing. This does not come across in "The Women Who Mapped the Stars", except perhaps in the last scene. "
Joyce Van Dyke told me it was important to her to get the science correct. She was advised by several astronomers, including Owen Gingerich. She had read Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin's auto-biography and used quotes from it in her play. I asked her where she is thinking of taking this play now. She replied that if she can get backing, possibly off-Broadway, or having the play performed at women's colleges.
If any of you would like to get in touch with her, I can provide her e-mail address.
Michele Kaufman
Back to top.9. Science Career Ads Are Disproportionately Seen by Men
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]
A real-world experiment conducted by investigators at MIT and the London Business School found that ads for science careers were seen more often by men than by women. The investigators designed "a gender-neutral STEM career ad that [was run] on the social media Web sites Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as well as through Google’s network for distributing ads across different sites. In each case the platform’s ad algorithm optimized the advertisement so the most people would see it. As a result of that optimization, however, men saw the ad 20 percent more often than women did."
Read more at
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-career-ads-are-disproportionately-seen-by-men
Back to top.10. 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.
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Back to top.11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
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Back to top.12. Access to Past Issues
https://cswa.aas.org/AASWOMEN.html
Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.
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