Issue of July 05, 2019
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, JoEllen McBride, and Alessandra Aloisi
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This week's issues:
2. NASA changes how it divvies up telescope time to reduce gender bias
4. Making invisible work in STEM more visible
5. Women feel inferior and less suited to Stem jobs than men
7. Unstoppable women: These 3 astronomy lovers will inspire you to reach for the stars
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. The Advocacy Axis
From: JoEllen McBride via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
By Joan Schmelz, PhD
New high-profile sexual harassment cases continue to appear in the press almost daily. A few years ago, a cluster of these cases involved Astronomers. At the time, I decided to talk to the press, in part to help take the heat off of the Title IX complainants, several of whom wished to remain anonymous. Here’s one of my quotes from back then:
“We have to find a way to change the system - to take the pressure off the young women in the most vulnerable stages of their careers and shift it to the senior men, many of whom have admitted to knowing this ‘open secret’ for years if not decades.”
Read more at
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-advocacy-axis.html
Back to top.2. NASA changes how it divvies up telescope time to reduce gender bias
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]
By Alexandra Witze
"NASA has changed the way that reviewers evaluate requests for viewing time on the agency’s space telescopes in an effort to reduce gender and other biases. It now uses a ‘double-blind’ system, in which neither the proposer nor the reviewer knows who the other is."
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02064-y
Back to top.3. At 21, Ann Montgomery Became a Lead Engineer at NASA, Managing the Cameras and Other Crucial Gear Used on the Moon
From: Jessica Mink [jmink_at_cfa.harvard.edu]
By Kathryn Tully
"The army of workers who made NASA’s Apollo program possible, sending a human being to the moon for the first time, included hundreds of thousands of people—from the doctors who screened the astronauts to the crawler-transporter drivers who towed the Saturn V rocket to the launch pad. And among the nearly endless tasks that had to be completed for the Apollo lunar landing, one woman spearheaded a critical engineering project: testing all the small gear the astronauts would take with them to the moon"
Read more at
Back to top.4. Making invisible work in STEM more visible
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]
By Linda Wang
"Awareness is growing about “invisible work,” such as mentoring students and serving on committees. Many STEM faculty from underrepresented groups, such as people of color, shoulder a heavier burden of this service load, which may put their career advancement at risk. Individuals are starting to speak out on the issue, and some chemistry departments are taking action to incorporate service into tenure and promotion guidelines."
Read more at
https://cen.acs.org/careers/diversity/Making-invisible-work-STEM-visible/97/i26
Back to top.5. Women feel inferior and less suited to Stem jobs than men
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu]
By Katherine Donnelly
"Women limit their ambitions around careers in science, technology, engineering and maths partly because of a mistaken belief that they lack the necessary intelligence, according to new research on Stem and gender at university.
Even when they study a Stem course at third-level, they subscribe to the stereotypical image of the scientist being male and more intelligent than them."
Read more at
Back to top.6. Katharine Gebbie
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]
By Physics Today Editorial Staff
"Born on 4 July 1932 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Katharine Blodgett Gebbie was an astrophysicist who spearheaded one of NIST’s most scientifically fruitful laboratories."
Read more at
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.6.20190704a/full
Back to top.7. Unstoppable women: These 3 astronomy lovers will inspire you to reach for the stars
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]
By Johanna Willett
"If you love astronomy, count your lucky stars that you live in Tucson.
Dark sky ordinances make stargazing particularly good here, attracting both amateur and professional astronomers from around the world. Not to mention the presence of a university that, you know, takes pictures of MARS.
Among those astronomers are some women who want to encourage future generations to aim for the stars. "
Read more at
Back to top.8. Teaching ingenuity
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]
By Sally G. Hoskins
"After a fulfilling career as a college biology professor, I'm retiring. “What will you miss most?” a colleague asked. My answer was something that, 30 years ago, I would never have expected myself to say: “I will miss the creativity of teaching.” When I was a new faculty member, I considered teaching a necessary evil that took me away from the lab bench. I wanted to focus on research, guiding graduate students in what I hoped would be groundbreaking studies on nerve growth. I believed imagination lived not in the classroom, but in the laboratory—to be used for inventing techniques, designing experiments, and interpreting data. But when my life took an unexpected turn, I realized how wrong I had been."
Read more at
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6445/1102
Back to top.9. 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
-Service Observer (SO) Position at the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory (LBTO) http://www.lbto.org/service-observer---june-2019.html
-Tenure-track faculty position in any area of astronomy, astrophysics, or planetary science at Florida International University https://physics.fiu.edu/_assets/pdfs/astronomyhire2020ad_nologofinalversion.pdf
Back to top.10. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
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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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