Women In Astronomy: AASWomen Newsletter for May 17, 2019

AAS Committee on the Status of Women AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of May 17, 2019
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Cristina Thomas, Maria Patterson, and JoEllen McBride

[AAS has migrated their email system to Microsoft Exchange, so please check your spam folder if you did not receive the newsletter this week. It is no longer possible to subscribe or unsubscribe to the AASWomen newsletter by means of Google Groups, and we continue to work on developing new instructions. Please follow us on social media for updates and bear with us as we work out all the kinks. Twitter: @AAS_Women, Facebook: https://bit.ly/2PkU9of

Director Lori Glaze; Image Credit: NASA, from item 4

This week's issues:

1. Cross-post: Summary from the WiPS Networking event at LPSC 2019

2. Reflections on Ethics at the AAS

3. Modern Women in STEM Book Project

4. Women are now in charge of NASA's science missions

5. NASA’s initiative to put a woman on the Moon is named Artemis, after Apollo’s twin sister

6. Women in Kyrgyzstan are fighting sexism by joining the space race

7. How the creators of a database are stamping out all-male panels

8. Calling attention to gender bias dramatically changes course evaluations

9. Commentary: The problematic media portrayals of women in science

10. Women gifted in math are still less likely than men to pursue it

11. Lawsuit Alleges Age, Race, Sex Discrimination At Mount Sinai Med School

12. 'I Don’t Want to Stay in a Country That Doesn’t Want Me As Badly as I Want It'

13. Job Opportunities

14. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

15. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

16. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

1. Cross-post: Summary from the WiPS Networking event at LPSC 2019
From: Cristina Thomas via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

The Women in Planetary Science (WiPS) event at LPSC (Lunary and Planetary Science Conference) in March commemorated the 50th LPSC by celebrating women scientists who have been in planetary science since the Apollo Era.

2. Reflections on Ethics at the AAS
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

AAS president, Dr. Megan Donahue, describes the formation, mission, and on-going work of the AAS Ethics Task Force.

3. Modern Women in STEM Book Project
From: Schuyler Borges [srb558_at_nau.edu]

My name is Schuyler Borges, and I am a current graduate student at Northern Arizona University. I am emailing to inform you of a book project called "Modern Women in STEM," which is looking for stories about women in STEM and their "perseverance, spirit, brilliance, success, commitment, personal transformation or growth." The stories will be compiled into a memoir and included in a book for young girls interested in science. The deadline to submit your story is June 28th.

https://www.modernwomeninstem.com/women-in-stem

4. Women are now in charge of NASA's science missions
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

By Mark Kaufman

"When the next car-sized rover lands on Mars in 2020, the ultimate head of this extraterrestrial endeavor will be physicist Lori Glaze. She's leads NASA's Planetary Science Division.

And she's not alone. For the first time in history, three of NASA's four science divisions are now run by women, a milestone announced by NASA on Friday."

5. NASA’s initiative to put a woman on the Moon is named Artemis, after Apollo’s twin sister
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

By Loren Grush

"NASA’s ambitious plan to put the first woman on the surface of the Moon by 2024 is now named Artemis, after the Greek goddess of the Moon and twin sister of the god Apollo. NASA’s Apollo program famously put the first men on the surface of the Moon in the 1960 and 70s, but now that NASA is focusing on putting a woman on the Moon, the goddess gets the top billing."

6. Women in Kyrgyzstan are fighting sexism by joining the space race
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

By Hannah McNeish

"In a small back office in a quiet suburb in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek, a group of girls and young women nicknamed The Satellite Girls gather after school or work to huddle around computers to learn how to build the country’s first spacecraft.

The Kyrgyz Space Programme was started in March 2018 and has around ten full-time members who meet several times a week to study programming and physics, contact space experts and launch providers and practice soldering. Their aim is to construct and launch a small CubeSat satellite into space by 2021."

7. How the creators of a database are stamping out all-male panels
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

Some recent statistics on the impact and reach of the 500 Women Scientists Request a Woman Scientist database.

"A survey of database members in the PLoS Biology study illustrated the initial impact of Request a Woman Scientist: 11% of 1,278 respondents had been contacted within 11 months after the site’s launch. Most of those reported contacts were from journalists, at roughly 48%. 21, or 14%, were seeking a female researcher to participate in a meeting or on a panel.

Of the participants in the database, 22.7% identify as members of an under-represented group."

8. Calling attention to gender bias dramatically changes course evaluations
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

Iowa State University

"With growing evidence of gender bias on student course evaluations, a new intervention may help reduce bias against women instructors. Researchers added language aimed at making students aware of potential biases, which yielded significantly higher scores for women instructors."

Read the original study "Mitigating gender bias in student evaluations of teaching" at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216241

9. Commentary: The problematic media portrayals of women in science
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu ]

"Last month the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration announced that it had imaged something unseeable. By combining data from eight telescopes around the world, a team of more than 200 researchers reconstructed an image of a black hole. But the stunning image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87 wasn’t the only picture to take the internet by storm that day."

10. Women gifted in math are still less likely than men to pursue it
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

" ... a new, large study of students from Poland suggests that even when women have abilities as high or higher than their male counterparts, they still shy away from studying math at higher levels. In fact, the researchers found, young women who are gifted in math are both less likely to choose it than young men of the same skill level, and actually less likely to choose it than women with lower math scores."

Read the journal article at

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-018-0968-7?

11. Lawsuit Alleges Age, Race, Sex Discrimination At Mount Sinai Med School
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]

By Bruce Y. Lee

"Time will tell what will happen to the lawsuit filed on April 26 on behalf of seven current and former female employees and one former male employee of the Mount Sinai Health System’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York City. Time will determine what will become of their allegations of discrimination based on age, sex, race, religion, and national origin, with the named defendants being the school's dean, Dennis S. Charney, MD, and three others at the school's Arnhold Institute for Global Health (AIGH). But regardless of what happens through the legal process, the allegations and lawsuit are already having an impact."

12. 'I Don’t Want to Stay in a Country That Doesn’t Want Me As Badly as I Want It'
From: Parvathy Prem [parvathy.prem_at_gmail.com]

'The Nation' is running a series "exploring, and listening to, a variety of immigrant voices: from recent arrivals to asylum seekers making their case in the courts, from the undocumented keeping under the radar to the DACAmented on the front lines—people from all over the world who have fled or left their homes and are looking to find, or keep, their place in America".

I just read this installment in the series, and thought it was a very thoughtful testimony, addressing issues that affect several members of our community:

https://www.thenation.com/article/ananya-visa-immigration-migrant-voices

13. Job Opportunities

For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here:

https://cswa.aas.org/diversity.html#howtoincrease

- Program Scientist, NASA HQ Astrophysics Division, Washington DC https://www.usajobs.gov Ad number HQ19H0004, to appear June 10-14

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15. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

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16. Access to Past Issues

https://cswa.aas.org/AASWOMEN.html

Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.

	Katie Eckert
	Regina Jorgenson
	JoEllen McBride
	Christina Richey
	Joan Schmelz

Friday, May 17, 2019

AASWomen Newsletter for May 17, 2019