Women and ethnic minority groups are still significantly underrepresented in astronomy and geophysics despite attempts to bring about change over the past decade, research has shown.
The survey on underrepresented groups, conducted by the Royal Astronomical Society and presented at the National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2025) in Durham, found that "decades of initiatives to improve representation" have been unsuccessful.
The survey found:
"Practitioners of astronomy and geophysics are still overwhelmingly white men," the survey carried out in 2023 revealed, "and the proportion of women in our sciences remains stubbornly low." This is in spite of initiatives to draw more women and minorities into astronomy and physics.
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| Credit: Royal Astronomical Society, Licence type Attribution (CC BY 4.0) |
This graph reveals the percentage of astronomers who identify as white in 2023 is nearly the same as in 2010, and slightly higher than survey results in 2016.
While disappointing, the results are unsurprising. In 2021, the Royal Astronomical Society conducted a survey on bullying and harassment and found a systemic bullying problem that is "disproportionately worse for women and those from minority groups."
This survey found
- Women and non-binary people in the field are 50% more likely than men to be bullied and harassed.
- 50% of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer astronomers and geophysicists were bullied in the last 12 months [2021], and 12% of bisexual astronomers reported being bullied at least once a week.
The surveys simply confirm the reality for many women and minority groups working within the two spheres, and that even with current initiatives, more needs to be done to both recruit women and minorities into astronomy, and to retain them over their careers.
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