Today's crosspost is by Anna Doel from the American Institute of Physics, posted on aip.org on May 1, 2026.
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| Vera Kistiakowsky, at right, at a public hearing on nuclear weapons and disarmament organized by the World Council of Churches in 1981. Rob Bogaerts / Anefo, National Archives of the Netherlands. CC-BY-SA. |
In August 1971, the American Physical Society issued a call for “names, addresses, comments, and recommendations” that was published in Physics Today, Spectrum, and Science. The goal was to begin to collect data for the newly formed Committee on Women in Physics. Responses to this questionnaire became the basis for the committee’s work to address challenges women physicists experienced at all stages of career, from first-year college students to well-established researchers.
The latter group knew a lot about the then-status of women in American science. They were of the generation whose career options, if any, were largely limited to three main categories: choose the profession, choose a scientist partner, or luck into being born to the right family.
Read Doel's full article "Assessing the status of women in physics in the 1970s" at
The AAS convened a Special Committee in 1972 to review the status of women in astronomy. This committee published a report in 1973 recommending the formation of the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy, which was formalized in 1979. Read about the history of the CSWA at
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