Crosspost: The Unwritten Laws of Physics for Black Women

Written by Katrina Miller for Wired

Pictured (left to right): Andrea Bryant, LaNijah Flagg, Katrina Miller, and Ayanna Matthews are doctoral students studying physics at the University of Chicago. 

At the entrance to my lab’s clean room, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror: I look like a clown. I’m drowning in a disposable coverall that hangs off of me in droopy folds, and my size 7½ feet are swallowed up by the smallest rubber boots the lab had on hand—a men’s size 12. The thick mass of curls framing my face only accentuates the caricature.

Reaching for the box of hairnets perched on a nearby counter, I fish out a thin, papery cap with a sigh. How the hell is this going to fit over my fro? I flatten my roots and tie my hair into the tightest bun I can muscle. Stretched as far as it’ll go, the hairnet only covers the back of my head. I position another over my forehead and a third to straddle the middle. Has no physicist here ever been a woman or had to contend with hair like mine? With effort, I tug the hood of my coverall over the hairnets. The taut fabric rustles loudly in my ears as I open the door to join my peers.

I am here, in a basement lab at the University of Chicago, to work on a small-scale particle detector that might help in the search for dark matter, the invisible glue that physicists believe holds the universe together. Dark matter emits no light and, as far as anyone can tell, doesn’t interact with ordinary matter in any familiar ways. But we know it exists from the way it influences the motions of the stars. The allure of dark matter is what inspired me to pursue a PhD in physics. But in more ways than one, I keep feeling like I just don’t fit.

Shout out to AAAS Mass Media Fellow and AASWomen blog contributor, Katrina Miller, for her powerful article on Black women's experiences in physics in Wired. 

Read the rest of the article at: https://www.wired.com/story/the-unwritten-laws-of-physics/

AASWomen Newsletter for June 24, 2022

Studies suggest there are few Black astronomers and physicists in Canada and the United States due to discrimination and micro-aggressions (from Item 5, credit: Arya Djenar/CBC)

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of June 24, 2022
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Alessandra Aloisi, and Sethanne Howard

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. Be well! --eds.]

This week's issues:

1. Crosspost: Science as a way to heal and connect

2. Biden picks first woman, person of color as science adviser

3. Scientists Don’t Belong on Pedestals: Interview with Science Historian Patricia Fara

4. Celebrating 50th Anniversary of First African-American Woman to Earn Physics PhD

5. Where are all the Black astronomers and physicists? Racism, isolation keeping many away

6. ‘Ignored and not appreciated’: Women’s research contributions often go unrecognized

7. Gender Disparity in Publishing Six Months after the KITP Workshop "Probes of Transport in Stars”

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

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

Crosspost: Science as a way to heal and connect

Dr. Elkins-Tanton is the PI of Psyche. 

Lindy Elkins-Tanton has two launches on her calendar this year.

Most prominent is the launch of the Psyche spacecraft. Elkins-Tanton, a Regents Professor in Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and vice president of ASU’s Interplanetary Initiative, is the principal investigator of the Psyche mission.

But before that is the book launch. On June 7, Elkins-Tanton’s memoir, “A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman,” will be released. It is the story of science as a place of healing, as a way of building a life philosophy — finding meaning through the wonders of the world and the universe around us.

ASU News:

Why did you decide to write the book? It’s not as if you had a lot of extra time on your hands while you’re leading a NASA mission.

Elkins-Tanton:
What I’m really hoping is that people who read the book feel a connection. I think that so many people are contemplating or have been along career paths like mine and encountered challenges like what I have, whether that’s gender, age, nationality or whatever. So, for me, it’s this motivation to try to connect with people, and I just hope that people say, “You know, I feel that, too.”

Read the rest of Dr. Elkins-Tanton's interview and check out an excerpt from her new memoir at: https://news.asu.edu/20220603-creativity-asu-scientist-lindy-elkins-tanton-new-book

AASWomen Newsletter for June 17, 2022

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of June 17, 2022
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Alessandra Aloisi, and Sethanne Howard

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]

This week's issues:

1. Crosspost: Groping, Derision, Bias, Threats: Women in Science Face It All

2. Committee for the Status of Women in Astronomy Activities in the Context of the Astro2020 Decadal Survey

3. Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal Lecturer: Jocelyn Bell Burnell; and the Northern Ireland £50 note featuring her discovery of pulsars goes into circulation

4. Anne Green receives Companion of the Order of Australia

5. Fred Kavli Plenary Lecture: Phosphine in the Atmosphere of Venus, Jane Greaves

6. 2022-2024 cohort of CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars includes astrophysicist Katie Mack

7. Interview with Black In Astro Founder and Organizers

8. She's Back! Meet Bethany Johns: New AAS Deputy Director of Public Policy and Interim Acting Director

9. First public statue of female scientist in Italy celebrates astronomer Margherita Hack

10. Diversity in science prizes: why is progress so slow?

11. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

12. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

13. Access to Past Issues

An online version of this newsletter will be available at

https://http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

Crosspost: Groping, Derision, Bias, Threats: Women in Science Face It All

Written by Arianne Cohen for Bloomberg

Credit: Daphné Geisler for Bloomberg Businessweek

Two decades ago, Rachel Ivie attended a conference for women in astronomy in Pasadena, Calif. During a panel on gender demographics, she presented a series of charts depicting the dismal truth: Only 14% of astronomy faculty were female—a little more than half the rate for science and engineering overall. After the panel, several participants approached her to discuss why those numbers were so low when 60% of young astronomers at the time were women. “The question was, what’s going to happen to this big group?” says Ivie, a senior research fellow at the American Institute of Physics (AIP). “Why do women drop out?”

That question continued to nag Ivie, and a few years later she started a long-term study of gender roles in the field, sponsored by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and the AIP. She and her team have followed 1,300 graduate students since 2007, checking in again in 2013 and 2016, with further rounds possible. Some respondents now work outside academia, so the study sheds light on women’s experience beyond the confines of university astronomy or physics departments.

The initial idea was to investigate the myriad reasons women might ditch science careers. But when the data came back, Ivie and her collaborators were riveted by the responses to a question about sexual harassment and discrimination. “We felt that it was important to report on the nuance about where harassment happens, who’s doing it, and what power structure is being reinforced,” she says.

Learn more about Ivie's detailed breakdown of the types of harassment and inappropriate behavior women in physics and astronomy experience at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-19/why-aren-t-there-more-women-in-science-harassment-looms-large 

And read the full AIP Harassment report here: https://aas.org/press/aip-harassment-report 

AASWomen Newsletter for June 10, 2022

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of June 10, 2022
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Alessandra Aloisi, and Sethanne Howard

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]

This week's issues:

From Item 5.

1. DEIA and Education Activities at the 240th AAS Meeting

2. Keeping Women in Physics is More Than a Numbers Game

3. 2022-2024 cohort of CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars includes astrophysicist Katie Mack

4. The Unwritten Laws of Physics for Black Women

5. Maria Mitchell Women of Science Symposium Registration Open

6. Association for Women in Science Announces 2022 Scholarship Recipients

7. JPL Engineer and Science Communicator Becomes First Mexican-Born Women in Space

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

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

DEIA and Education Activities at the 240th AAS Meeting

By Nicolle Zellner, Karly Pitman, Rolf Danner, Karen Knierman, Sarah Tuttle, Laura Lopez, and Nicole Cabrera Salazar

See you in Pasadena!

Below is the list of sessions sponsored by the AAS’s Inclusion Committees, and we encourage you to attend and participate when you can. These committees were established to work with the AAS Board of Trustees to promote equity of opportunity for and enhance participation of underrepresented groups in our field, including women, minorities, sexual orientation and gender minorities, and disabled astronomers. Each of our committees and events are open to all who are interested in learning more or helping with these goals.

CSWA, CSMA, and SGMA events at AAS

Monday, 5:30 - 7 p.m. PT: Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA) 

CSWA Activities in the Context of the Astro2020 Decadal

Monday, 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. PT: Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy (CSMA) Town Hall: After the 2020 World-Wide Protests: Progress and Failures of Implementing Substantial Change in Astronomy

Monday, 7:30 - 8:30 p.m. PT: Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy (CSMA)  

CSMA Meet and Greet

Wednesday, 7 - 8:30 p.m. PT: Committee for Sexual-Orientation & Gender Minorities in Astronomy (SGMA) Meet and Greet, 

SGMA Meet and Greet for LGBTIA Members and Students

Additionally, a few of us will be holding “office hours” at the AAS Booth in the Exhibit Hall, so please stop by for a chat! CSWA, Monday 9-10 a.m. PT WGAD, Monday 9-10 a.m. PT SGMA, Tuesday 9-10 a.m. PT

Education, outreach, and diversity opportunities

Monday, 10 - 11:30 am PT:  Diversification in Astronomy & Astrophysics at NASA GSFC

Monday, 2 - 3:30 pm PT: Systemic Change for Equity in Astronomy Graduate Education: A Primer
Tuesday, 10 - 11:30 am PT: Public Engagement and Education Research
Tuesday, 1-1:30 pm PT: Q&A with the AAS Education Committee
Tuesday, 5:30 - 6:30 pm PT: Education Programs, Resources, and Research iPoster
Wednesday, 10 - 11:30 am PT: College Education and Outreach Programs

An exhibitor theater presentation, “Life in Hawai’i: Outreach, Education, and the Community Engagement Efforts of the Maunakea Observatories” will be presented on Tuesday, from 3 - 3:30 pm and on Wednesday from 12:30 - 1 pm PT. The full block schedule can be found here. And if you attend one of our events, feel free to say hi in-person or tag and tweet us! 

Reach out if you have any questions

Nicolle Zellner and Karly Pitman (CSWA, @AAS_Women, CSWA on Facebook)
Rolf Danner (SGMA)

Karen Knierman and Sarah Tuttle (WGAD, @AAS_WGAD)
Laura Lopez and Nicole Cabrera Salazar (CSMA, @AAS_CSMA, CSMA on Facebook, AstronomyinColor Blog) 

AASWomen Newsletter for June 3, 2022

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of June 3, 2022
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Alessandra Aloisi, and Sethanne Howard

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]

This week's issues:

1. Crosspost: The other physics problem
2. Crosspost: First-ever study of LGBT+ experiences in physics reveals red flags
3. New Book: The Sky is for Everyone: Women Astronomers in Their Own Words
4. The Australian Academy of Science champions diversity in STEM
5. Women more likely to win awards that are not named after men

6. Small step for Nature, giant leap across the gender gap: leading journal will make sex and gender reporting mandatory in research
7. Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?
8. Not feeling recognized as a physics person by instructors and teaching assistants is correlated with female students’ lower grades
9. Breaking The Mold Of What A Scientist Looks Like
10. A Mathematician’s Unanticipated Journey Through the Physical World
11. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
12. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
13. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

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1. Crosspost: The other physics problem
From: Bryne Hadnott via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

By R.M. Davis for symmetry magazine

Alexander Gardner mailed his application to North Carolina A&T from what was likely a military prison cell somewhere in the US South. … [He] had been incarcerated for punching a commanding officer who called him a racial slur. He had only an 8th grade education, but North Carolina A&T—a university located in Greensboro, NC—saw his potential. They accepted him, and he graduated in 1958 with a degree in engineering physics. Five years later, Gardner became the first Black person to earn a physics PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He returned to North Carolina A&T the year after that, this time as a member of the physics faculty.

Read more at

https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2022/06/crosspost-other-physics-problem.html

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2. Crosspost: First-ever study of LGBT+ experiences in physics reveals red flags
From: Bryne Hadnott via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

Written by Kim Lamke Calderón for Phys.org

LGBT+ physicists often face harassment and other behaviors that make them leave the profession, according to a new study, which comes as physics as a discipline has attempted to grapple with equity and inclusion issues.

The authors found that the two biggest factors that influence a person's decision to leave physics are the overall climate of the organization they belong to and more specifically observing exclusionary behavior.

Read more at

https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2022/06/crosspost-first-ever-study-of-lgbt.html

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3. New Book: The Sky is for Everyone: Women Astronomers in Their Own Words  
From: From: David Weintraub [weintrda_at_gmail.com] and Virginia Trimble [vtrimble_at_uci.edu]
 
We are writing to let you know of our forthcoming book, “The Sky Is for Everyone: Women Astronomers in Their Own Words”, to be released by Princeton University Press on 21 June, 2022 in the US and 16 August 2022 in the UK.

As described by the publisher, “The Sky Is for Everyone” is an internationally diverse collection of autobiographical essays by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy. … before 1900, a woman who wanted to study the stars had to have a father, brother, or husband to provide entry, and how the considerable intellectual skills of women astronomers were still not enough to enable them to pry open doors of opportunity for much of the twentieth century. After decades of difficult struggles, women are closer to equality in astronomy than ever before. Trimble and Weintraub bring together the stories of the tough and determined women who flung the doors wide open.  

Read more and see the list of contributors at

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691207100/the-sky-is-for-everyone

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4. The Australian Academy of Science champions diversity in STEM
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

The Australian Academy of Sciences has announced its 2022 Fellows for outstanding contributions to science. Among the newly elected fellows is Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths, who was recognised for proving the existence of a new spiral arm of the Milky Way and otherwise advancing our understanding of our own and neighbouring galaxies. McClure-Griffiths has also helped design multiple radio telescope facilities, including the planned globe-spanning Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project.

Included among the Fellows are two "firsts": the first elected Fellow who identifies as an Aboriginal person, Tom Calma AO, and the first Australian of Indian heritage to be elected president of the Academy, Chennupati Jagadish AC.
 
Read more at

https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/the-australian-academy-of-science-champions-diversity-in-stem/

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5. Women more likely to win awards that are not named after men
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

By Elizabeth Gibney

Women are more likely to win awards that aren’t named after a person than prizes named after a man, research has found. ... The results suggest that there might be a link between the name of an award and who receives it, he says. “If the awards are not named after a person, the gender balance in prizes is more balanced,” says Stefan Krause, an Earth and environmental scientist at the University of Birmingham, UK

Read more at

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021EA002188

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6. Small step for Nature, giant leap across the gender gap: leading journal will make sex and gender reporting mandatory in research
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

By Kelly Burrowes

Come June, researchers who submit papers to a subset of the Nature Portfolio journals ... will need to describe whether, and how, sex and gender are considered in study design. If no sex and gender analyses were carried out, authors will need to clarify why. This will apply to work with human participants, as well as other vertebrate animals and cell experimental studies. So in the same way that ethics approval, clinical trials registration, or informed consent must be demonstrated where relevant, so too will consideration of sex and gender.

Read more at

https://theconversation.com/small-step-for-nature-giant-leap-across-the-gender-gap-leading-journal-will-make-sex-and-gender-reporting-mandatory-in-research-183631

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7. Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?
From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]

By Virginia Gewin

A wave of departures, many of them by mid-career scientists, calls attention to widespread discontent in universities.

Read more at

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01512-6

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8. Not feeling recognized as a physics person by instructors and teaching assistants is correlated with female students’ lower grades
From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]

In a recent study, Sonja Cwik and Chandralekha Singh (University of Pittsburgh) reported that women had lower perceived recognition than men as a physics person and their perceived recognition played an important role in predicting course grades controlling for high school GPA and math SAT scores.

Read the peer-reviewed article at

https://journals.aps.org/prper/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.18.010138

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9. Breaking The Mold Of What A Scientist Looks Like
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

The title of the book, "No Boundaries: 25 Women Explorers and Scientists Share Adventures, Inspiration, and Advice" by Gabby Salazar and Clare Fieseler, says it all. In this excerpt, Dr. Danielle Lee, describes an experience that's likely common to a lot of us: "Even when someone knows that a scientist will be coming by, I’ll show up and they’ll say, ‘We’re waiting on a scientist,’ I say, ‘That’s me. I’m the scientist.’ Even today, we still have to educate people that scientists come in different packages.”

Read more at

https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/women-girls-science-animals/

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10. A Mathematician’s Unanticipated Journey Through the Physical World
From: John Wenzel [jwenzel_at_albion.edu]

By Kevin Hartnett

The outline of Lauren Williams’ mathematical career was present very early on in her life. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always loved patterns,” said Williams. “I enjoyed being given a sequence of numbers and having to find the pattern and predict the next number.”

But while many kids are enchanted by patterns, few end up following them as far, or to such unexpected places, as Williams has. As a professor at Harvard University — where she became only the second tenured woman mathematician in the university’s history — she has uncovered correspondences far more bewildering than anything she learned in grade school.

Read more at

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-mathematicians-adventure-through-the-physical-world-20201216/?

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11. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

To submit an item to the AASWOMEN newsletter, including replies to topics, send email to aaswomen_at_lists.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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12. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

Join AAS Women List through the online portal:

To Subscribe, go to https://aas.simplelists.com, and in the "Subscribe" area, add in your name, email address, select "The AASWomen Weekly Newsletter", and click subscribe.  You will be sent an email with a link to click to confirm subscription.

To unsubscribe from AAS Women by email:

Go to https://aas.simplelists.com, in the "My account and unsubscriptions", type your email address. You will receive an email with a link to access your account, from there you can click the unsubscribe link for this mailing list.

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13. Access to Past Issues

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

Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.

Crosspost: The other physics problem

 Written by R.M. Davis for symmetry magazine

Black physicists say efforts to recruit and retain more Black students must concentrate on challenges they face at both Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Primarily White Institutions. Credit: Sandbox Studio, Chicago and Lauren Jackson.

Alexander Gardner mailed his application to North Carolina A&T from what was likely a military prison cell somewhere in the US South. It was the mid-1950s; Gardner would have been in his late 20s. He had run away from home at the age of 14 to join the US Merchant Marines.

Gardner had been incarcerated for punching a commanding officer who called him a racial slur. He had only an 8th grade education, but North Carolina A&T—a university located in Greensboro, NC—saw his potential. They accepted him, and he graduated in 1958 with a degree in engineering physics. Five years later, Gardner became the first Black person to earn a physics PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He returned to North Carolina A&T the year after that, this time as a member of the physics faculty.

“That’s an unbelievable story,” says Arlene Maclin, a former physics professor who credits Gardner as one of her earliest and most important mentors.

However, it’s far from the only extraordinary tale of triumph over adversity to come out of the Black physics community. And it was possible, in part, due to the unique support Gardner found at North Carolina A&T, which is classified as an HBCU, a Historically Black College or University.

HBCUs have played an important role in bringing Black students into physics. Prior to 2003, HBCUs consistently graduated the majority of Black physics-degree holders. In the year 2000, HBCUs enrolled just 13% of all Black postsecondary students but awarded a staggering 60% of physics degrees earned by Black students that year. Those numbers have been on a steady decline in the years since, but HBCUs still produce a disproportionate share of Black physics graduates today.

Read the rest of the article at: https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-other-physics-problem 

Crosspost: First-ever study of LGBT+ experiences in physics reveals red flags

Written by Kim Lamke Calderón for Phys.org

University of California-San Diego Executive Vice Chancellor, Elizabeth Simmons, co-authored a comprehensive study on the experiences of LGBTQ+ identifying members of the physics community. Credit: University of California-San Diego

LGBT+ physicists often face harassment and other behaviors that make them leave the profession, according to a new study, which comes as physics as a discipline has attempted to grapple with equity and inclusion issues.

The authors found that the two biggest factors that influence a person's decision to leave physics are the overall climate of the organization they belong to and more specifically observing exclusionary behavior.

"People feel shunned, excluded, and they were continually having to readjust and twist themselves to fit into the physics community," said Ramón Barthelemy, assistant professor of physics at the University of Utah and co-lead author of the study. "LGBT+ people are inherently a part of this field. If you want physics to be a place that anyone can participate, we have to talk about these issues."

"Nearly everybody I know who is LGBT+ in physics has left, to be honest," said Tim Atherton, associate professor of physics at Tufts University and co-lead author of the study. "We're talking dozens and dozens of students and faculty. I can empathize with the experiences of the study's participants from some of my own experiences."

Read the rest of the article at: https://phys.org/news/2022-05-first-ever-lgbt-physics-reveals-red.html