Issue of July 25, 2025
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Sethanne Howard, Ferah Munshi, Stella Kafka, and Ben Keller
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. 8 Summer Reads about Women in Astronomy
2. Policy Updates from the AAS
3. Inside the Web of Policy: A High Schooler’s Experience in Advocacy
4. One year ago, Australia scrapped a key equity in STEM program. Where are we now?
5. There has been progress in gender equality, but female university professors still face obstacles
6. Katy Perry and her fellow space tourists weren’t exceptions – humanity has long cared about interplanetary style
7. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
8. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
9. 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.
For those hot summer days, when all we really need is a good book and a cool drink, I wanted to compile a list of recent books written by women about women in astronomy and physics. That was a tougher task than I imagined. I came away convinced we need more books about women in astronomy and physics written by women.
Read more at: https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2025/07/8-summer-reads-about-women-in-astronomy.html
On 9 July, Sean Duffy, the current Senate-appointed US Secretary of Transportation, was named as the new Acting Administrator for NASA. There are also reports that Dr. Makenzie Lystrup, the Director of NASA Goddard, is leaving NASA along with the thousands of other NASA employees who are departing the agency. On 17 July, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) titled "Creating Schedule G in the Excepted Service," which creates a new hiring category, Schedule G, for political appointees. The EO also strips removal protections from select federal employees. We have also learned that the nominee for Director of US Citizenship & Immigration Services is looking to limit Optional Practical Training for students, stating in a confirmation hearing that he would like to see programs "that would allow us to remove the ability for employment authorizations for F-1 students beyond the time that they are in school."
Read more at: https://aas.org/posts/news/2025/07/policy-update-22-july-2025
Thamarie Pinnaduwage never expected to find herself in the world of science policy, especially not as a high school senior. She always gravitated towards the precision of chemistry or the logic of mathematics, while government and politics felt abstract and inaccessible. That sense of separation was shattered when she received startling news: the National Institutes of Health summer research internship she applied for was cancelled due to federal funding cuts.
Read more at: https://aas.org/posts/news/2025/07/inside-web-policy-high-schoolers-experience-advocacy
In June 2024, the Australian government ended the Women in STEM Ambassador program. For six years, under the leadership of astrophysicist Lisa Harvey-Smith, the program contributed to research, tools and resources aimed at breaking down structural barriers that limit women’s and girls’ participation in STEM education and careers.
Read more at: https://theconversation.com/one-year-ago-australia-scrapped-a-key-equity-in-stem-program-where-are-we-now-257977
In recent decades, Canadian universities have made definite progress ensuring gender equality in access to faculty positions. But despite this, persistent inequalities remain, and they are much more entrenched than one might think.
When pop star Katy Perry and five other women made a much-publicised trip to the edge of space earlier this year, they faced sharp criticism across both social and traditional media, with sceptics questioning multiple aspects of the mission. Much of the backlash centred on the emphasis the crew – which included broadcaster Gayle King and Jeff Bezos’s now-wife, journalist Lauren Sánchez – placed on glamour. Detractors saw their uniforms as at odds with the traditional image of astronauts as explorers, scientific pioneers and envoys of humankind venturing into space.
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