WIA 2009 - results?

Regarding amydove's comment to WIA 2009: Criticisms that the meeting didn't really have an outcome: it will. The CSWA has been tasked to develop a Strategic Plan, which includes identification of issues to be addressed, goals to achieve, strategies by which to achieve them, and next actions.

During the meeting, we mined the crowd for ideas for our future vision and work. Issues that came up (which include some of the ones you have seen here) are:

• the importance of mentoring, but lack of a reward system to do it;
  
• the effect of unconscious bias (but not much on how to address it; hmmm);
  
• the over-emphasis on the "traditional" academic career path and corresponding lack of recognition and inclusion of people pursuing "non-traditional" paths*;
• that as women pursue a work-life balance, they tend to be more negatively impacted than men**
  

This is not an all-inclusive list; just a sample. When our stragetic plan is finalized, we'll post it here and in AASWomen. Let us know your ideas for what needs to be done next. What will the summary of WIA 2009 outcomes be at the next WIA meeting?

* since the traditional path is taken by a minority of people, then shouldn't we redefine "traditional" -- it certainly doesn't mean "usual" or "normal!"

** one thing from the meeting that struck me was that men with children are viewed more positively than men without (it's a marker of stability and maturity), while women with children are viewed more negatively (she'll have extra demands on her time).

WiA 2009: criticisms

By and large, the Women in Astronomy and Space Sciences last week was a success. This is not to say that it was perfect. Among the criticisms I've heard:

1. The continuing emphasis on faculty jobs as the ideal career trajectory. From Alyssa (aka Mrs. Comet Hunter):

   
   The thing that bothered me was the implication that people who took these careers only did so because they couldn’t get a tenure-track position for whatever reason (children, geographical location, health, having to work part-time, etc.). Why is it so hard to understand that some of us actually want these jobs? That we strive for them from very early on? It’s not a consolation prize for us. Please stop treating us like second-class citizens just because we don’t want an academic job.

   
   (Read more about her views here and here.)
   


2. The lack of a discussion about how the current economy will affect women and minorities in astronomy. I've discussed this some myself. The best way to promote diversity in science is to encourage more people to study science. However, if there aren't enough jobs for everyone, are we misleading all these people we are training to become scientists?
   


3. The exclusivity of the White House tour. I feel like I fielded more complaints about this subject than any other. A few weeks before the conference, we finally got word from the White House about our tour request. We were given a grand total of 40 slots for the tour, but the conference attendance was more like 250. An executive decision was made to invite about 20 senior women. We felt it was important to also include the views of junior astronomers, so the remaining invitations were extended to recipients of the early career travel grants, because they had already gone through a review process. Because of security issues we had to finalize the list one week ahead of time. Perhaps this could have been handled better to make fewer people left out, but decisions had to be made quickly during crunch time.
   

Any other criticisms about the meeting out there? Now's your chance to get that bee out of your bonnet!

WiA 2009: not quite done yet

The meeting is over now, but I still have so much to say and no time right now write it all up. But I will say:

• I saw Michelle Obama!! (through a window with many Secret Service agents in between, but still! She was maybe 20 feet away!)
  
• Tina Tchen (Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and Executive Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls) is really awesome. She's my newest feminist hero.
  
• Ms. Tchen assured us that the White House is very interested in promoting science, diversity, and women's issues. Which we knew already, but it's always nice to hear again.
  
• We were able to show Ms. Tchen how these issues relate to each other when talking about women in science, and she said herself that she hadn't seen some of those connections until we pointed them out to her.
  
• The OSTP fellow who met with us, Sarah Stewart Johnson, is a woman astronomer herself! Glad to see that one of us has infiltrated is working with the White House staff!
  

We should also remember that the Executive Branch is only one of three in the federal government. While it's good to know that one is already on our side, we still need to make our voices heard to our legislators also.

WiA 2009: Friday

Today is a short day. And I'm getting ready to go on the White House tour, and suddenly I don't have time to keep blogging. But @ashpags and @whymommy are doing a very capable job of live-tweeting.

I hope to post a recap of the White House visit at a later date.

WiA 2009: Thursday

Very nice dedication of the meeting to Beth Brown this morning. I wish I had gotten to know her.

Elizabeth Freeland on career breaks: left physics after having a child and various attending complications. Noted that working outside science was refreshing because having children and a life outside of work was valued.
Warning: part-time teaching is not a re-entry route, finding funding can be difficult without a "full-time institutional affiliation"
Blewett Scholarship is perhaps the only one available to women re-entering physics. (Freeland was the first recipient)
AAUW grants also available now
Career and family should not be taboo subjects!
Sloan Foundation permits extension on time past PhD for various things including child rearing - other fellowships can do this too!
Questioner, from Goddard: talks about how mentoring does not have to be onerous, not the same thing as advising, may be as simple a matter of listening and answering a question.

WiA 2009: Thursday

The problem with trying to live-blog this meeting is that it becomes immediately apparent when I missed talks. I was busy networking: that's my excuse and I'm standing by it.

I've discovered that there are at least a couple of people live-tweeting this meeting:

@seyer
@whymommy

I suppose I could start, too...

ETA: @ashpags too!

WiA 2009: Wednesday Part 3

The best part of any conference are the interactions you have outside the talks, and this one is no exceptions. So you'll have to forgive me if I don't hear all of every single talk.

Nick White's opening remarks after the lunch breaks talked about hiring in the Science Exploration Directorate at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He noted that the Astrophysics division probably won't be hiring until after the Decadal Review.

Panel Discussion: How the Professional Community can Impact Percentages and Retention
The panel discussion featured Meg Urry, Jim Ulvestad, Debra Elmegreen, Matt Mountain and Lee Anne Willson.
Jim Ulvestad noted that more PhDs are produced than faculty jobs, so we all have to think broadly about career choices.
Debra Elmegreen put in a plug for AASWOMEN (go sign up!) and talked about hiring at Vassar.
Matt Mountain talked about why all the women left STScI in the 1990s (where he is now director), citing a hostile environment as the primary cause.
Lee Anne Willson talked about hiring practices at a big state university
Meg Urry noted that in putting together the 1st WiA in 1992, she had to prove that there was a problem with women in astronomy!
During the question session, it was noted that one good department chair can make all the difference, and their departure can make a big change as well.

Lily McNair: STEM at Spelman
Spelman is a women's HBCU (Historically Black College/University). It is the #2 undergrad institution of black PhDs in STEM, with #1 being Howard U.
"I want my daughter to be able to deal with the real world." Response: the faculty is very diverse.
Intentional development and growth of sciences: originally there was only math and chemistry. External funding made a difference: NASA, NIH. Scholarhips, mentoring, peer-tutoring.
Proved that you can do good science at a small liberal arts college - they bring as much research $$ as a research university.
All-women schools do provide a good environment for women to learn -- "this place was built for me"


One message that I'm getting from this meeting is that women have come pretty far in astronomy, but minorities are where women were in the 1970s. Also, mentoring, mentoring, mentoring.

WiA 2009, Wednesday part 2

Catherine Cesarsky: IAU Women in Astronomy Statistics
IAU General Assembly in Rio this year: 31.6% participants were women; IAU membership as a whole: 14.8% after Rio
Presented statistics on various countries around the globe.
Highest % of women in IAU: Argentina 36%; Japan has lowest - 6%, keeping in mind that the IAU membership does not reflect astronomers in total. Still, looking at national society membership data, Asia seems to do worst in terms of women's representation, Latin America does best.
In all countries, the number of women decreases dramatically at the most senior levels, few or no awards given to women
Most interesting datum: in Europe, seems to be inverse correlation between % of women in national parliaments vs. % of women in astronomy

Abigail Stewart: Addressing Unconscious Bias

• Talked about a number of studies on how just the gender of the name on a CV or job application affects evaluation.
  In one study, two CVs were presented, the only difference being whether being on the PTA was mentioned or not. Mothers (listed PTA on CV) were less likely to be called, promoted, hired. Fathers, however, were not disadvantaged, seen as more committed and offered higher salaries! (This result drew a big gasp from the audience.) I believe the citation is Correl, Bernard & Paik 2007, American Journal of Sociology.
  
• Critical mass can turn things around: increasing the proportion of women raises the ratings of all women
  
• Implicit Association Test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit
  
• Talked quite a bit about the STRIDE program at U of Michigan which has been quite successful at increasing proportion of women and maintaining that recruitment. Emphasized that policies and outcomes must be monitored and that leaders need to be evaluated and rewarded to be held accountable
  

Joyce Winterton: Building the Next Generation of Astronomers
Her talk was mostly about NASA activities for outreach, K-12 education, higher education. Told us we should all go out and volunteer and do outreach and what not. Several questioners (including me) asked her how we're supposed to volunteer all this time when we need to be writing papers or grant proposals or teaching or whatever our professional duties are? We don't get rewarded for these efforts other than a warm fuzzy feeling. Listing all your E/PO efforts on your CV doesn't make an impression on hiring committees and doesn't count toward your research/teaching/service requirements as a faculty member. Women and minorities get told we need to get out and do the E/PO work, but if we don't get tangible rewards or are even penalized for it, isn't that a double whammy?

WiA2009: thoughts during the mid-day break

1) This is one of the few conferences I've been to where there's actually a line for the ladies' room.

2) This conference could use longer breaks. I suppose this is partially my own fault as one of the organizers...

Women in Astronomy & Space Sciences: Live-blogging Wednesday morning Part I

I got up feeling much better this morning, but wasn't quite able to make it in time, so I missed Anne Kinney's remarks and most of Ed Weiler's keynote address.

The one comment about Weiler's address I did catch: E/PO is crucial, children listen better to those who look like them,
so women should do more outreach. He also noted that 2/3 of population are NOT white men, so by not recruiting women and minorities, you're losing out on a lot of the available workforce.

Rachel Ivie: Longitudinal Study of Astronomy Graduate Students
A description of the Longitudinal Survey and some initial results. Some of the things the initial study focused on were symptoms of Impostor Syndrome and the kind of training grad students receive. Unsurprisingly, women suffer more from imposter syndrome than men, and mentoring is important.

Claude Canizares: Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty
An NRC study, to be published imminently. Snapshot surveys carried out in 2004 & 2005. In general, women represent an increasing share of representation in STEM, but it's still small. They find that while the proportion of women given interviews was greater than the applicantion rate and the proportion of offers given to women was still higher, the proportion of women among applications was itself much less than the available candidates. The biggest discrepancies were in biology and chemistry which have the greatest proportion of women overall. Best quote: the STEM field is a "profession designed by monks in the Middle Ages." During the question session, Meg Urry noted that women tend to carefully select and narrow down the number of jobs they apply for, while men tend to apply for many more jobs, and that might inflate the proportion of men in the application rate.

Also: they've passed out these Networking Booklets, where you need to gather 20 signatures from people you had not met before. At the networking event tonight, you get to be enrolled in a raffle! All us grumpy introverts are grumpy. (Ann H, if you're reading this, I'm not holding it against you.)

Women in Astronomy & Space Science: Pre-Conference Workshop

The conference on Women in Astronomy and Space Sciences officially begins tomorrow, but today is the career development workshop run by COACh (Committee on the Advancement of women in Chemistry) and organized by yours truly.

As much as I had been looking forward to this workshop, I'm having to sit it out because I've caught the flu. And it's likely to be The Dreaded Flu that everyone's been hearing about, since 99% of flu cases in Marlyand are H1N1!!one!1!! In fact, I went in briefly to check on things, and was sent back home to lie in bed. So here I am, blogging from my sickbed, drinking lots of tea and vitamin C. I hope to be able to make it in tomorrow, though, and maybe I'll have more of real substance to post about then.

If any of you readers out there attended the workshop and have comments about it, please post them here!

Thoughts on the Job Market and a Book Recommendation

I have been incredibly busy these last few days, especially with the Women in Astronomy and Space Sciences coming up real soon. As the youngest member of the organizing committee, I find myself being turned to quite frequently regarding issues for early career scientists. So here's one issue that I've been mulling over a lot lately.

My own personal issue of the moment is job hunting. This year is particularly rough, especially if you're looking for faculty positions. (To all my fellow job hunters out there: let's all give a big cathartic scream right now: AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!! There, doesn't that feel better?) What with the economic downturn, there are fewer jobs available than in years past, but just as many people on the market. And yes, this strikes real close to home for me. But what also bugs me is that if you look at the demographics, the diversity is all at the bottom. As you look higher and higher in seniority, astronomers get whiter and maler. Now, who stands to lose their jobs right now? Who are the ones who will leave astronomy because no one has a job for them? Not those senior white males with tenure. It's us folks at the bottom of the career ladder, where a lot of effort has gone into making a diverse population. While the numbers are still quite small for minorities, there are quite a few women in astronomy now. If us young 'uns get squeezed out of the job market now, it means that the percentage of women in astronomy as a whole will go down. Now, add to that the fact that women tend to leave at a higher rate than men overall, well, it's bad news for the status of women in astronomy.

Now, I'd like to end on a positive note since this big Women in Astronomy conference is coming up, and there is much to celebrate in spite of hard times, so I'd like to recommend a book I read recently. It's She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff. It's a collection of essays by women who are self-identified geeks of various stripes. You'll find computer science geeks, video game geeks, and yes, science geeks. The stories are about what it's like being a minority within a minority group (i.e. women in science). You'll find that we women geeks are a heterogeneous group, and some stories will resonate more with you than others. But the stories all celebrate being a geek and being a woman and demonstrating that those two identities are not incompatible. So I guess the moral of the story is that no matter how this job season goes for me, I will always be a woman geek, and that's something to take pride in.

Career Development Workshop

In case you haven't heard, there's going to be a terrific Conference on Women in Astronomy and Space Sciences this fall. It's being held October 21-23 in College Park, MD.

Those of you who are postdocs or early (i.e. untenured) faculty should sign up for this workshop being held the afternoon before the meeting starts (October 20). Here's a quick blurb:

In conjuction with the Women in Astronomy and Space Science 2009 Conference, a professional skills development workshop is planned for the afternoon of Tuesday, October 20. Participants will develop negotiation skills through interactive means including case studies, personal assessments, and role playing. The workshop is open to postdocs and early faculty. Although the workshop is designed with the needs of women scientists in mind, persons of all backgrounds are welcome to apply. Workshop attendance is limited to 40.

I should note that this workshop is my own brainchild, so I'm personally invested in seeing that the enrollment for it is maxed out. I attended a very similar workshop put together by the APS at the last March meeting and let me tell you, it was EXTREMELY useful. Quite an eye-opening experience. I'm quite pleased that I can bring this workshop to the Women in Astronomy 2009 conference, because one of the the things about the March workshop I went to was that it brought together women from all sorts of physics backgrounds. However, the field of astronomy has its own unique set of issues, so having a more tailored workshop should be extremely helpful, especially for those of us on the job market.

To sign up go to this webpage and click on the link "Sign up for Career Workshop." I hope to see lots of you there!

Professional Skills Development Workshop

Mark your calendars: here's a heads up for those of you planning to attend the Women in Astronomy Meeting in College Park, MD on October 21-23. There will be a professional skills development workshop held the day before the meeting, on October 20, on the topic of Negotiation. The workshop is intended primarily at postdocs, but graduate students and young faculty may be accommodated depending on space.

For updates and information, email Hannah Jang-Condell at hannah at astro dot umd dot edu.

Upcoming Women in Astronomy Meeting

Mark your calendars for the next Women in Astronomy Meeting! From the website:

Women in Astronomy and Space Science: Challenges of gender, generation,
and minority status in an increasingly diverse scientific work place
Oct 21-23, 2009, College Park, MD

Goddard Space Flight Center, along with co-hosts National Science Foundation, University of Maryland, AAS, STScI, NGST, and others, will be hosting a meeting October 21 - 23, 2009 at the University of Maryland Conference Center on the topic of women in astronomy and space science with a focus on not only gender, but also on generation and minorities. This meeting follows up on the "Women in Astronomy" meeting hosted by Space Telescope Science Institute in 1992 and the Pasadena meeting hosted by CalTech in 2003. The topics include: 1) statistics on the state of the field, establishing trends over the last 15 years including the "longitudinal studies" of age vs. makeup of the field and identifying areas for celebration or for concern; 2) research on the impact of gender/ generational/ cultural differences in the science workforce with a focus on practical solutions, 3) issues concerning the work environment and best practices for success of scientists in a diverse work force, and 4) special sessions on the issues of minorities in science, and women in Earth Science.

There is evidence for considerable success in increasing the percentage of women in the field of science and so we aim here to focus more on issues concerning the success of those in the field and solutions for managing a diverse workforce. This meeting will highlight best practices to help the diverse scientific work force to succeed, and will address both the junior members of the field, as well as those who mentor and manage today's diverse scientific workforce. We hope you will join us. More information will be posted on our website as it becomes available.

1992 Baltimore Meeting resulted in the Baltimore Charter and the 2003 Pasadena Meeting resulted in the Pasadena Recommendations. The timing for this year's meeting is to coincide with the International Year of Astronomy.