Issue of March 24, 2023
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Sethanne Howard, and Hannah Jang-Condell
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. Career Profile: Dr. Naomi Rowe-Gurney
2. New children's book celebrates pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell
3. Caroline Herschel, Giant of Science
4. Demystifying Academic Job Negotiations Webinar
5. The importance of citing Black women in physics
6. Women in STEM Experience Higher Rates of Sexual Violence
7. How The Matilda Effect Removes Women in STEM From History
8. White men still hold majority of US science and engineering jobs
9. Job Opportunities
10. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
12. 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.
The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy is compiling interviews highlighting the diversity of career trajectories available to astronomers. The interviews share advice and lessons learned from individuals on those paths.
Below is our interview with Dr. Naomi Rowe-Gurney, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center employed by University of Maryland College Park under the CRESST II Cooperative Agreement. She earned her PhD in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Leicester in 2021.
Read more at
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2023/03/career-profile-dr-naomi-rowe-gurney.html
By Elizabeth Howell
"Pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell is the star of a kid's book using an ancient language she happened to know: Latin.
Massachusetts-born Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) is best known for discovering a comet in 1847 and working to inspire women astronomers as a professor of astronomy at Vassar College, which she joined in 1865. Some 205 years after her birth, Mitchell continues to inspire as the first U.S. woman astronomer.
Her legacy inspired Rachel Beth Cunning, a Latin and English as a second language teacher, to take on the challenge of making a children's science book — a journey that brought Cunning back to her childhood, when she subscribed to astronomy magazines and read about the stars. Her Latin-language book is called Astronomia: Fabula Planetarium (Astronomy: Stories of the Planets; Bombax Press, 2022)."
Read more at
https://www.space.com/astronomer-maria-mitchell-womens-history-month-book
By Andrea Hargraves
"Until the end of the nineteenth century, the few women who distinguished themselves in astronomy were always in the shadows of their husbands, fathers, or brothers. They could even make important contributions to science, but they were seen as mere helpers and hardly received recognition for their merits. An example of this phenomenon is the German-British Caroline Herschel, one of the greatest astronomers of her time, who took a long time to get acquainted with.
Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born in the German city of Hanover on March 16, 1750, into a family of musicians. At the age of 10, she contracted typhus, which also endangered her development and future.
Knowing that Caroline would not grow to great stature as an adult, her parents believed she would never marry. In fact, she never exceeded 1.30 meters and was never married, but not because of her height, but because she fell in love with a science: astronomy."
Read more at
https://www.brytfmonline.com/women-in-astronomy-caroline-herschel-giant-of-science/
By AAUW
"Join CEO Gloria L. Blackwell in conversation with AAUW American Fellowship alumna Dr. Ashley Farmer as they discuss her recent collaborative project, Where the Money Resides: Demystifying Academic Job Negotiations.
The project is the result of a conversation between Dr. Ashanté Reese and Dr. Farmer as they considered new academic job offers: What do people ask for when negotiating jobs? Though they had each negotiated job offers in the past, they realized that, other than asking for more, they did not know how to negotiate or what the landscape of possibilities looked like."
Register at
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OX1Tz0FbSAipIxJ4s-Jdxg
By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
"The 2016 film Hidden Figures follows a group of women who worked at NASA in the 1950s and 1960s during the space race between the US and the Soviet Union. The movie is based on research conducted by Margo Shetterly and Duchess Harris, inspired in part by Harris’s grandmother who was one of the hidden figures. When it comes to awareness of Black women in science, I believe there are two eras: one before the film’s release and the other after.
I came of age in the era before Hidden Figures when public acknowledgements of Black women scientists were largely limited to the extraordinary Mae Jemison – the first Black woman to go to space. These days, students use social media and search engines to find each other. Even so, the reality of ensuring that Black women in science get their due is only just beginning."
Read more at
https://physicsworld.com/a/the-importance-of-citing-black-women-in-physics/
By Johanna Alonso
"Women majoring in science, technology, engineering and math fields are subjected to sexual violence at higher rates than their non-STEM counterparts, a new Georgia State University study suggests. Additionally, it showed that women in STEM fields that have equal numbers of men and women—such as chemistry, biology and math—faced more sexual violence than those in disciplines that are not gender balanced. Women in gender-balanced STEM disciplines reported 3.4 times as many attempted rapes—not necessarily by the men in their department—as the average female undergraduate.
The study surveyed 318 undergraduate STEM majors at five U.S. institutions.
One of the study’s researchers said the results reflect the “backlash effect,” in which gender equality is associated with increased violence against women. Nevertheless, further research is needed to understand why this pattern exists, the researchers said."
Read more at
Read the full study at
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36803036/
By The Daily Show
"The Matilda Effect was coined in 1993 and explains the phenomenon of women’s historical contributions to science getting forgotten over time. These women are not only left out of history books, but also subjected to men taking credit for their work. Daily Show writer Nicole Conlan and host of the podcast Lost Women of Science, Katie Hafner, join Roy Wood Jr. to uncover why women and girls get overlooked in the sciences and how this can be improved through representation and exposure."
Watch the video podcast at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E31k5PuPhe8
By Hannah Docter-Loeb
"Women, members of minority ethnic groups and those with disabilities continue to be under-represented in positions across the US science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce, according to a report by the US National Science Foundation (NSF).
The report finds that although the proportions of jobs held by these groups rose overall between 2011 and 2021, they remained lower than the groups’ representation in the nation’s population. Women, for example, comprise 51% of the US population but represent just 35% of employees in the US STEM workforce. The findings relate to the academic, industry, non-profit and government sectors, including roles such as managers and technicians, and those in related areas such as health care.
White men dominate science and engineering positions in the nation, the report finds; nearly three-quarters of people in these roles identify as male. Almost two-thirds identify as white."
Read more at
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00865-w
For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here:
https://aas.org/comms/cswa/resources/Diversity#howtoincrease
- Cal-Bridge Events Coordinator, Cal-Bridge, Berkeley, CA
https://tinyurl.com/CBEventManager
- Part-time CEO, Astronomers Without Borders, Remote
https://my.astronomerswithoutborders.org/blogs/zoe-chee1/2023/03/20/awb-chief-executive-officer-position-to-fill
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