Crosspost: Women Are Creating a New Culture for Astronomy

Written by Ann Finkbeiner for Scientific American

Ekta Patel, a Miller postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, wants other women in the field to know that they can be themselves and be great scientists. 

Some years ago I made up a list of things I was tired of reading in profiles of women scientists: how she was the first woman to be hired, say, or to lead a group, or to win some important prize. I had just been assigned a profile of a splendid woman astronomer, and her “firsts” said nothing about the woman and everything about the culture of astronomy: a hierarchy in which the highest ranks have historically included only scientists who are male, white and protective of their prerogatives. My list evolved into the “Finkbeiner test,” and to abide by it, I pretended we had suddenly leaped into a new world in which gender was irrelevant and could be ignored. I would treat the person I was interviewing like she was just an astronomer.

Later, working on another story, I started hearing about a cohort of young women astronomers who were the ones to call if I wanted to talk to the field’s best. If the top of the scientific hierarchy now included large numbers of women, I wondered whether they might live in a post–Finkbeiner test world—that is, whether they were just astronomers, not “women astronomers.” I turned out to be 180 degrees wrong. True, they are at the top, but they are outspokenly women astronomers, and they are remaking astronomy.

Check out the rest of the article at the link below and learn more about the next generation of women astronomers creating a culture of inclusivity and belonging. And look out for a quote from CSWA chair, Nicolle Zellner!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/women-are-creating-a-new-culture-for-astronomy/

"First" Impressions

For people who are not minoritized, sometimes it can be difficult to imagine what inclusion and exclusion feel like. Here I share two recent experiences of mine that led to very strong feelings of inclusion and exclusion. They are everyday moments. But because of my past experience, both of them were hard to miss. And both of them changed how I experienced the rest of my day, and the space that I inhabit at work. 

I recently attended a training program at my new institution. It was three days focused especially on teaching and mentoring. One of my workshops asked us to pick an adjective for how we’d like our class to perceive us. We were discussing the importance of first impressions (Apparently the first few minutes of class often set up how your students perceive you all the way up to evaluation time, so it is worth considering how you want to be seen.) We went around the room and I kept a running list/tally of adjectives. 

I went early. I picked “Challenging”. We’ll save that psychoanalysis for another day.

Sexual Harassment – Changing the System II

[This post is Part II of an expanded version of my World View column in NATURE, Change the System to Halt Harassment from 08 February 2016. Universities and their senior staff must do more to deter, detect and punish all forms of inappropriate behavior – JTS]

This series discusses what can be done by people with power to change the system and begin to eliminate sexual harassment from our community. Part I discussed the role of senior academics and department chairs. Here, I focus on university administrators and leaders of our professional organizations, but I also want to make sure that anyone facing sexual harassment knows that help is out there. Please talk to someone you trust and rest assured that you are not alone. 

University Administrators

Every university needs an office where students/postodcs/faculy/staff can talk anonymously about harassment. For lack of a better name, I am going to refer to it as the Office of Good Advice. This office must be fundamentally separate from the Affirmative Action office, University Counsel, or University Police, all of which are responsible for reporting under Title IX. Office of Good Advice should be well known to everyone on campus, it should be staffed with trained professionals, and it should be the first thing that comes up on a web search for “sexual harassment.” Anyone on campus who needs to talk about harassment issues should know which university employees are obligated to report incidents and which can keep reports confidential. 

Every university needs an Office of Good Advice not only because students fear that they might be pressed to make a formal, legally viable report, but also because the staff in the legally responsible offices are often, with no malicious intent, unable to listen objectively and sensitively. Students might later report that they were asked intimidating and inappropriate questions that appeared to undermine the validity of their complaint like, “Were you drinking?” or “Are you unhappy with your grade in his course?” No matter how well-meaning, staff members in offices responsible for upholding the law cannot help but be influenced by that responsibility and by knowing the requirements of an investigation.  

Setting a higher standard

There has been a lot written lately, on this blog and elsewhere, about bad behavior in astronomy and other professions. The human cost is terrible, and responsible scientists should not ignore them, even if they are not directly affected. The blog entries below about sexual harassment, and many of the responses are heart-breaking. And these are just the tip of an iceberg -- much more abuse and suffering is unreported than reported.

Having been head of a large physics department, and now as a university-wide equity officer, I have a lot of data indicating that in its prevalence of people problems Astronomy is not unusual among academic disciplines, nor among professions in general. I've concluded that theoretical astrophysics is much easier than optimizing the success of a talented group of people in an organization. Physicists solve easy problems using idealized models. A different set of skills is needed to solve real-world problems involving real people.

I have a lot of thoughts, a few recommended actions, but no master equation solve the problems preventing people from achieving their potential. Here are a few suggestions.

1. Care. One of my favorite quotes comes from President Theodore Roosevelt: "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." The fact that you are reading this suggests that you do care; if so, please share it with someone else.

2. Assess. Astronomers live on data. Do a climate assessment in your organization to measure the experience and satisfaction of all people, and be sure to do it in a way that gives safety to everyone. There are probably people in your organization who are afraid to speak up. Maybe you're one of them. Find a way to express yourself anonymously in a way that the leadership will hear. Requesting a CSWA Site Visit is one possible way.

3. Lead. Leadership is first about being accountable to yourself, and then being accountable to others. Every faculty member is a leader, whether they acknowledge it or not. (I've often heard faculty say they don't want to become a leader, when what they really mean is they don't want to be a manager. There is a difference.) Indeed, leadership is not a function of rank or role; I've known many students and support staff who are outstanding leaders.

Department leadership (in a university, or in any segmented organization) is especially important, because culture and climate are local. It is therefore discouraging how little preparation is given to department heads and others who fill roles that call for genuine leadership.

Academia is unusual among the professions in having a set of highly privileged actors -- tenured faculty members -- who have great freedom in their actions. If that privilege is not balanced by responsibility and accountability, harm can result. Academic freedom does not convey the right to harm others.

In academia these privileged actors often feel a stronger affiliation with their colleagues elsewhere than at their home institution. After all, tenure, grants, awards, and status are conveyed in large measure by one's professional colleagues in an academic discipline. Weak tenure letters will not lead to a successful case no matter how much one's department colleagues love a faculty member. In effect, academic disciplines set the standards for admission to their practice.

This fact means it is not easy for an astronomer, say, to influence faculty behavior in a department of engineering, law, or medicine, just as it is not easy for a member of one of those fields -- even a Dean or Provost -- to influence faculty behavior in an astronomy department.

How, then, are we to improve the experience of astronomers? The answer seems clear. The astronomy community needs to enter the accountability chain of leadership. That is why it is so important that the AAS has an Anti-Harassment Policy. But it is not enough for the policy to be enforced at AAS meetings; AAS members should not adopt one set of standards for AAS meetings and different ones in other professional settings.

Recently I attended a workshop on abrasive conduct in higher education that was attended by ombudspeople, HR officers, legal counsels and a few university administrators. One of the themes that we discussed was the need to redefine academic success to include conduct, not just individual achievement. This is definitely counter-cultural in academia, where the tenure system focuses almost exclusively on individual achievement. I believe this is a place where professional societies can, and do, play a helpful role.

Although Astronomy is not unusual among professions in terms of its frequency of behavioral challenges, I am proud that it is among the more active disciplines in terms of setting higher standards. The work of the AAS Council and Committees, including CSWA, is helpful in this regard. More can be done, and I hope that the community will continue on calling for higher standards of accountability and professionalism in all settings.

[The image above is taken from the CSWA banner, where it is described as one showing  men and women astronomers interacting collegially. It is from the AAS Congressional Visits Day 2010.]

Statement affirming respectful debate during current TMT protests

This was submitted to the WiA blog by leaders on diversity issues from within the AAS community. There has also been a statement from AAS President Meg Urry.

The last few weeks have brought to a head a confrontation between Native Hawaiian protesters and the Thirty Meter Telescope project. There are varied perspectives on all sides of this issue, amongst supporters and opponents, Hawaiians and mainlanders, astronomers and the general public, and all intersections of these groups. Events associated with the protests, including some cases of violence or threats of violence, have created significant divisions within our community, divisions which have manifested themselves in heated debates and discussions both in person and over social media.

Unfortunately, recent rhetoric in our community has crossed the line into racism and hostility, with language (e.g., describing Native Hawaiian protestors as a “horde” or other people of color as “snakes”) that dehumanizes individuals who oppose the placement of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna a Wakea. This language is a painful reminder of past acts of violence perpetrated against native people and others, and only serves to inflame rather than bring about understanding and resolution. In many cases, apologies have been issued, and these have been appreciated. Still, that this language was used in the first place by highly esteemed members of our community is troubling, because the effects linger, are particularly harmful to junior researchers and students, and create an environment of hostility and exclusion.

A recipe for culture change

If you could design your ideal workplace, what would it look like?  If you are reading this blog, chances are that your description includes more than a high salary and state of the art facilities and includes being valued for your ability and treated fairly and respectfully by others.

Recently I served on a visiting committee that privately interviewed every staff and faculty member of an academic department.  If I had to design my ideal workplace, I could not have come up with a more satisfied group.  Everyone loves their job and feels welcomed and respected.  Inclusion, diversity, and excellence are seamlessly interwoven.  My ideal workplace would look a lot like that.

During the past two years I was given the gift of time (about 18 months) to study my university in depth to make recommendations for advancing a respectful and caring community.  The result is a report currently under discussion by faculty, staff, postdocs, students and alumni.  Some of the recommendations, such as universal unconscious bias training, would, I believe, be quite impactful if they spread widely.  That particular recommendation is based on groundbreaking work done at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Google.

Business guru Peter Drucker is said to have remarked, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast."  What he meant is that the unwritten rules of how people interact and what they feel is normal for their organization will make it difficult to implement organizational change unless the tacit assumptions are spoken aloud.

Shifting a culture requires that it first be understood.  Efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion often are hindered by culture.  What if we made culture part of the solution instead of part of the problem?

That is the approach I followed in writing this report.  It's not the usual one.  But isn't that what researchers do?  We experiment and innovate.  When empathy is added to this equation, we have the ingredients for culture change.  Submit your recipes!  And let's use culture to our advantage.

It's that time of year!

January means many things to many people.  For some readers it's application season (grad school, jobs) or the end of the letter-writing blitz.  It's also a time to reflect on the year ahead.  For me and my local university colleagues, it is a time to celebrate diversity through our annual campus Summit, an exciting time of hope and shared commitment to advancing our vision of a community where everyone learns, grows, and is respected.

Our annual Institute Diversity Summit draws 400-700 people to a series of workshops and panels, a keynote address and other events that inspire and inform.  It takes place usually a few days after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.  The program is broad; we strive to be inclusive of the many communities that make up a diverse campus.  The participants come away energized and eager to improve their local circumstances and are better prepared to do so through having the attention of the university administration, the support of a broad campus network, and learning tools to address micro-inequities and other injustices in the workplace.

The origin of this event was grass-roots, not top-down.  Five years ago a few faculty and staff got together and asked what we could we to promote a vision of positive change for equity and inclusion on campus.  Several people had already been running small workshops and events during our January intersession, so by joining forces we could bring greater visibility to our efforts and attract more people.  Knowing who the interested parties are is the first step to building a successful collaboration.

When I was in graduate school there came a time that I nearly dropped out because I wanted to do good in the world and wasn't sure that a PhD in astrophysics would allow me to do so.  I was mistaken!  Academia seems to give conflicting messages about our ideals: you should put your nose to the grindstone (or whatever the modern equivalent is for that dated phrase) to get ahead in your profession, yet we expect you to balance your career, personal life and passions outside work.  There's no easy resolution.  But the same can be said of most New Year's resolutions.

Still, making resolutions to improve oneself and one's community, and reflecting on them annually, is a great practice.  Every January I feel blessed to share this process with many others in our growing campus community devoted to equity and inclusion.

#MITdiversity

Sexism the Other Way Round

Today’s guest blogger is Gerrit Verschuur. Gerrit is a semi-retired radio astronomer who continues to study interstellar neutral hydrogen structure. He is the author of eight popular astronomy books and co-author or editor of three text books. He has also found the time to get his name on over a dozen patents. He claims that his primary accomplishment is that he is married to Joan Schmelz (me!).

Organizations, People and Strategies in Astronomy (OPSA, Vols. 1 & 2) presents a compilations of 49 chapters designed to reveal the way astronomy is practiced all over the globe. Or, to frame this in words used by its editor, it is a continuation of a former series in which scientists and non-scientists describe their experience on ’non-purely scientific matters, many of them of fundamental importance for the efficient conduct of our activities.’ While fascinating material, it is not a target for a book review for CSWA. What is interesting is what it does not do.  

First, it is striking that 41 chapters have lead authors that are men, or 84%, not surprising perhaps given the international nature of these two volumes. More interesting, from the point of the Women in Astronomy readership, is the lack of any chapters dealing with the issues central to the work of CSWA; harassment, prejudice, glass ceilings, leaky pipelines, and the subtleties of unconscious bias. In fairness, one chapter summarizing data from the UK shows that while 34% of post-graduate astronomy students are female, only 7% share the highest academic level of professor. Another chapter discusses the plight of African-American minorities in the field. But there is nothing that could remotely be described as chapters on the barriers faced by women in astronomy, worldwide. This caused me to send an email enquiring about this oversight to the editor in France.

Reverse discrimination?

This week I gave a talk about physics education that included a substantial discussion of the benefits of diversity in creating a successful university program.  I was presenting in a different country, where the culture is patriarchal although respectful of minorities.  Very few of the faculty or students in this physics audience were women.

At the end of the talk, a young man asked, "Why are you trying to recruit women?  Isn't that reverse discrimination?"  I smiled, glad to have an elephant in the room revealed.  Fortunately, I had been thinking about his question for a while, as it has come up in other settings.

I answered no, I didn't consider it reverse discrimination, it was merely rectifying an imbalance caused by discouragement and implicit bias.  He then asserted that perhaps women didn't want to pursue science careers and were making other choices.

I replied that the women I had spoken with definitely wanted to pursue science careers, and I concluded that no, I was definitely not practicing reverse discrimination.

It was a short exchange, I resisted the temptation to launch into a wider discussion about cultural stereotypes, bias, etc.  (Know one's audience -- that approach would likely have been ineffective in this country.)  This kind of question can be frustrating, but it also represents an excellent opportunity to present facts and to show the many benefits of improving the climate in our departments and workplaces.  We will never change the hearts and minds of everyone, but there are young men in such audiences who may become allies, and young women who will appreciate the encouragement.  At the very least, speaking out sets a good example for department leadership to do likewise.  It's also a good thing for men to be speaking on this issue, as it makes the charge of reverse discrimination less plausible to other men.

CSWA Special Session at the AAS: Family Leave Policies

At the 221st AAS meeting at Long Beach, CA, the CSWA sponsored a special session entitled, "Family Leave Policies and Childcare for Graduate Students and Postdocs." The principal organizers were CSWA members Dave Charbonneau and Laura Trouille.

Slides from the presentations by Dave Charbonneau, Natalie Gosnell, Bob Mathieu, Edward Ajhar, and Charles Beichman are now posted as PDFs at http://www.aas.org/cswa/jan13.html.

Charbonneau's presentation included a report of preliminary results from the CSWA's national survey of department chairs on this topic. Gosnell and Mathieu reported on implementation of a forward-looking policy at UW-Madison. Ajhar reported on the NSF's work-life balance initiative, and Beichman described NASA's fellowship programs and their parental leave policies. Laura Trouille briefly presented preliminary results from the postdoc family leave survey. These results are also posted at the website listed above.

If you couldn't attend the session, take a look at the slides for a snapshot of the current state of this issue, which is critical for 21st century careers in astronomy.

If you'd like to voice your support for improving family leave policies for our community, please consider signing http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/aaron-geller/petition. As of this post, the petition has over 1100 signatures. 

Spotlight on Careers - Request for Feedback on Interview Questions

Dear Readers,

In 2013-14, we plan to provide a series of ~50 blog posts highlighting the full range of career routes that astronomers pursue after their degree. Thank you to all our readers who provided great recommendations for people we should contact!

If you have additional recommendations, please email me at l-trouille [at] northwestern.edu with the person's name and email address. We are especially interested in highlighting women, but are open to all suggestions.

We are now in the process of compiling questions to ask our interviewees. We would greatly appreciate your feedback on these questions and additional questions you recommend we include. 

Anonymous Guest-Post: One Small Step

Anonymous guest-post by a mid-career scientist at a large public university. 

As a mid-career scientist at a large public university, I find myself increasingly frustrated with policies and procedures with which I disagree but feel powerless to do anything about. However, recently, I found myself in a position to strike a (teeny, tiny) blow for change -- and I took it.

My academic department has had a very traditional approach to hiring in my 17 years here. We hire in very specific sub-fields, the argument being that we need to reach 'critical mass' in each research group. (I should add I'm in a physics department of about 25, with a few astronomers, of which I am one). The hiring committee is thus invariably chaired by someone in the sub-field in which we are hiring, with two or three others on the committee who are preferably in the same subfield or hopefully a related one. The committee looks over applicant files and presents a ranked list to the department, which rubber-stamps it.  We have had no formal evaluation criteria, but the most important factor is the candidate's research record. Almost nothing else matters. As far as I can tell, the chair's opinion is therefore the one that matters to the committee, and to the department, as the chair is thought to be most knowledgeable about the research area. This means that essentially one person (the committee chair) is choosing the candidate -- again, as far as I can tell.

If one looks at any of the recent research on how to increase faculty excellence and diversity in academia (for example, see http://www.aas.org/cswa/jan12.html), this is described as the worst possible way to hire. I know this, but have had no say in the process in the past.  Because I was the last astronomer hired (17 years ago), I have never been on a hiring committee. Until now. We have a job opening for a physicist in a specific subfield. Because the university wants at least one minority on hiring committees, and since the other female faculty member in our department (who generally has filled that role on other hiring committees because she works in physics rather than astronomy) was unable to be on the committee, I was appointed.

In the past few weeks, as the job ad went out, I have been wondering how to spark a change in our usual deparmental hiring practices. I have the advantage of knowing that our Dean's office has become aware of best practices and is slowly trying to implement them across the College: we have an NSF ADVANCE grant to improve the recruitment and retention of women faculty in STEM. So I feel that I have administrative back-up if necessary, which is comforting.

This week, we were notified that the applicant files were ready. The chair of the hiring committee, Dr. X, sent an email to the committee saying that the applicants' files were in the main office and we should read them, then meet to form our short list. I took a deep breath, and sent a reply saying that I was uncomfortable with this process, and that we should meet BEFORE looking over the files to come up with evaluation criteria that we would all use. Then all files that meet the criteria are put on a 'long short list' -- these people get a short phone interview, from which we then compile a final short list. I stated I would not participate unless we followed this procedure. I attached a copy of the UMich candidate evaluation form (that I have sent to the department in previous years but to no avail), with the note that this was what the Dean's office is suggesting that departments use (which is true).

This felt like a very brave move to me. I was sure Dr. X wouldn't understand why I wanted to do this, and would think I was creating extra work and slowing down the process (moving too slowly has cost us positions in the past). I did figure they couldn't throw me off the committee because I was the only minority though! ;) I fully expected some kind of confrontation (Dr. X can be impatient...) and push-back.

Instead, Dr. X replied to the committee that I had a good point and we should meet as soon as possible to set criteria before looking at the files! My jaw dropped. And I was immensely heartened. Maybe change IS possible! Maybe things CAN get better! Maybe I CAN make a difference!

In some ways this seems like a small thing -- one hiring committee for one position in one department -- but it feels like a turning point. It's been one for me, anyway.

I feel empowered.

Why Men Fail

Posted by Joan Schmelz in this week's AASWomen Newsletter.

Below is an excerpt of interest from David Brooks' opinion piece in the NYTimes about the traits needed for professional success and how they may be changing from "favoring" men to "favoring" women.

<<Men still dominate the tippy-top of the corporate ladder because many women take time off to raise children, but women lead or are gaining nearly everywhere else. Women in their 20s outearn men in their 20s. Twelve out of the 15 fastest-growing professions are dominated by women.

Over the years, many of us have embraced a certain theory to explain men’s economic decline. It is that the information-age economy rewards traits that, for neurological and cultural reasons, women are more likely to possess. 

But, in her fascinating new book, “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin posits a different theory. It has to do with adaptability. Women, Rosin argues, are like immigrants who have moved to a new country. They see a new social context, and they flexibly adapt to new circumstances. Men are like immigrants who have physically moved to a new country but who have kept their minds in the old one. They speak the old language. They follow the old mores. Men are more likely to be rigid; women are more fluid. 

This theory has less to do with innate traits and more to do with social position. When there’s big social change, the people who were on the top of the old order are bound to cling to the old ways. The people who were on the bottom are bound to experience a burst of energy. They’re going to explore their new surroundings more enthusiastically.>>

To read more, please see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/brooks-why-men-fail.html?emc=eta1

Walking on Eggshells

Today's guest post is by Bekki Dawson, a graduate student in the Astronomy Department at
Harvard University. Her research focuses on the dynamics of planetary systems.

The battle for gender equity is sometimes waged at picnic tables, during the sliver of Boston summer weather pleasant enough for someone to bother rounding up a few of us to eat outside. The table gradually fills as people emerge from the building with their microwaved Tupperware. One colleague pauses as he approaches the table. "I hope I'm not interrupting a Women in Science Meeting."

I hadn't noticed until now that all four of us seated at the picnic table are women. For a moment, no one says anything and I should definitely say something, but not just anything, and I don't know how to respond, only how not to. My list of How Not to Respond goes like:

1. For goodness sake, don't “overreact”.
2. But whatever you do, don't just pretend like nothing happened! This is exactly that sort of remark that can subtly cause women to feel like they don't belong in our field. Go on, champion some gender equity!
3. Also, don't spend the rest of the lunch distractedly dissecting your sandwich as you try to put yourself in his shoes. You'll find it hard to empathize, because your own experiences with skewed gender ratios are off by a couple orders of magnitude: like at the packed physics seminar, when you look around and see only one other woman in the audience and realize, with a mixture of unease and glee, that you're Not Supposed to Be Here. "I hope I'm not interrupting a Men in Science Meeting."

Maybe, despite my attempts at adherence to How Not to Respond #1, I am overreacting. Maybe this is just like if all four folks at the picnic table were wearing khakis. Someone wearing corduroys might feel awkward.

If one little innocent joke can unnerve me for hours, it's no wonder that some astronomers feel like they're walking on eggshells. They're kind and well-meaning people full of hearty good humor unbounded by political correctness; they find themselves unable, despite their excellent intentions, to comply with whims and dictates of the sensitive and easily-offended.

I have a message for anyone who thinks that women in astronomy advocates are often overreacting: I hear you. The feeling that you're walking on eggshells, that people are taking offense at what you say and do with your best intentions, is legitimate. But any advocate for overturning the status quo is by definition “overreacting”.

When I first came to the Center for Astrophysics, I got lost a lot; a century of remodeling has produced a network of buildings with unexpected dead ends and floor numberings that don't line up. Even as an Nth year graduate student, I still get lost on occasion, and it rattles me to be somewhere so comfortable and familiar and then suddenly, disorientatingly have no idea where I am. When you've endeavored to be a good person all your life and then find yourself inadvertently offending people, I imagine it's sort of like getting lost in your own astronomy department.

But sometimes you have to embrace getting lost. Getting lost makes me realize that though I think I know the Center for Astrophysics well, all I actually know is just my own flawed, inaccurate perception of it, that doesn't include a second entrance to the library or a neglected corridor on the first floor. If you -- reader who struggles to walk on eggshells -- can embrace the idea that sexism and unconscious bias sometimes make the astronomical community a disheartening place for women and others from underrepresented groups, perhaps you'll recognize that those eggshells you find yourself walking on don't represent fragile, shoulder-chipped egos primed for a fight but a delicate, budding sense of belonging, a feeling of Not Being Not Supposed to Be Here, something that is worth taking care not to crush.

Let's turn now to the related situation in which you wish -- with the best of intentions -- to discuss something related to underrepresentation in astronomy, but you're worried about offending someone. What to do? Here are some of my suggestions, and I hope that others will share their own suggestions in the comments:

1. Listen as much as possible. In the case of women of astronomy, many have experienced not being able to get a word in edgewise -- or of speaking but not being heard -- so it would be particularly frustrating to have that happen in a conversation about women in astronomy.
2. Instead of soliciting an opinion on a sensitive topic in front of a group, forcing someone to serve as a spokesperson for an underrepresented group, consider having a conversation one-on-one.
3. Demonstrate your trustworthiness by keeping personal stories confidential unless the person you're speaking with gives you explicit permission to share. But see what they would prefer -- maybe they would like to spread the story to raise awareness.
4. Even if your first reaction is skepticism (for example, to someone's claims of discrimination) try to be open-minded. All you have to judge by are your own perceptions and experiences, and there may be parts of the building that you've never discovered.

Feminine Role Models

This week's guest blogger is Kate Follette. Kate is a graduate student at Steward Observatory and an adjunct instructor at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona. Her scientific research focuses on planet formation in circumstellar disks, and she is also engaged in educational research on mitigating quantitative illiteracy through introductory science courses for non-majors. 

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was dismayed when I read the headline “My Fair Physicist? Feminine Math and Science Role Models Demotivate Young Girls”.

The article, which was posted to the WIA blog on April 16th and is linked here, was published in Social, Psychological and Personality Science. Its abstract reads:

Women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are labeled unfeminine, a costly social label that may discourage female students from pursuing these fields. Challenges to this stereotype include feminine STEM role models, but their counterstereotypic-yet-feminine success may actually be demotivating, particularly to young girls.

• Study 1 showed that feminine STEM role models reduced middle school girls’ current math interest, self-rated ability, and success expectations relative to gender-neutral STEM role models and depressed future plans to study math among STEM-disidentified girls. These results did not extend to feminine role models displaying general (not STEM-specific) school success, indicating that feminine cues were not driving negative outcomes. 

• Study 2 suggested that feminine STEM role models’ combination of femininity and success seemed particularly unattainable to STEM-disidentified girls.
The results call for a better understanding of feminine STEM figures aimed at motivating young girls.

After reading the study myself, the bitter aftertaste of its primary conclusion - that “feminine” STEM role models demotivate girls who are STEM-disinclined - stuck with me for several months. I kept coming back to it and thinking “this CAN’T be true, can it??”

I do a fair amount of outreach with middle-school aged girls, and I’d like to consider myself a “feminine” STEM role model.  I don’t want to believe that my femininity is “demotivating”. Of course, just because I don’t want to believe it doesn’t mean that it’s not true.

The root of my personal discontent is that as a STEM role model, the message I received was that I should choose to be either discipline-independently feminine OR gender-neutral if I want to motivate young girls (or avoid demotivating them). I loathe this idea, because to consciously cultivate a “gender-neutral” appearance/demeanor or avoid specific mention of STEM success means not practicing what I preach. I want to be myself when I work with girls, and encourage them to do the same.

So before accepting their conclusion at face value, I suggest that we approach this paper with the same rigor afforded any other published scientific paper. Let’s  examine the data and experimental method and decide for ourselves whether the conclusion is warranted.  Here’s what I found when I did so:

1) Just 144 and 42 girls’ data were analyzed to draw conclusions for Studies 1 and 2 respectively.

2) Although statistics on the race distribution and grade level of participants are provided, no other demographic information is given. A few simple and potentially revealing questions might include how many/what type of schools were included, geographic (urban vs. rural) information, socioeconomic status, etc.

3) The crux of Study 1 was three interviews with university students, which the girls read and answered questions about. The setup is described as follows: “Participants then read magazine-type interviews with three female university students displaying feminine (e.g., wearing pink clothes and makeup, likes reading fashion magazines) or gender-neutral appearance and characteristics (e.g., wearing dark-colored clothes and glasses, likes reading).” Is this the definition of femininity?  Feminine women don’t read books or wear black?  This strikes me as almost comically narrow.

4) Since the students were only reacting to a small number of role model interviews (n=3) and rating them in general categories such as “positivity” and “perceived similarity”, it seems to me that conducting interviews with participants regarding WHY they chose certain rankings would be advisable. This could serve to reassure the reader that the girls are basing their rankings on the characteristics that the study designers claim – femininity and STEM success. In the educational literature this is called establishing “content validity” and involves answering the question “does your instrument measure what you think it does?” I’m not a social scientist, but I imagine that such a thing is (or should be) standard practice.

5) The second study used a similar set of interviews but asked two more direct questions
a. “How likely do you think it is that you could be both as successful in math/science AND as feminine or girly as these students by the end of high school”
b. “Do being good at math and being girly go together?”
The effect here was the same, but more marginal than in the first study (see Figure 3 of the paper) and had fewer participants (n=42), a less-standard setup (some girls participated in a classroom and some at a county fair) and a procedural error through which an (unspecified) number of girls didn’t receive item 2.

While this study is an interesting and thought-provoking result worthy of further investigation, I would have liked to see more of an effort on the part of the authors to emphasize the small and preliminary nature of the study.  Scientists of all persuasions need to be careful about how their work will be interpreted by non-experts, and this study reaches some particularly dangerous and counterproductive conclusions to be throwing around before they are fully supported by evidence. It is NOT the final word on the advantageousness of feminine STEM role models.

Gender Politics

I would, ideally, like to keep politics out of this blog. However, given that this is an election year, politics seems to be butting its way into everything, so here goes.
The CSWA works hard to advocate for women in science. One issue that comes up over and over again is the problem of balancing career and family -- an issue for any working mother, really. A key to that balance is the ability to plan when and how many children to have -- something that many of us, like myself, take for granted.
So when a Republican-controlled House Committee convenes an all-male panel to discuss coverage for birth control, it's hard not to take it a little personally. It's bad enough that dependent care coverage is a real issue for many young astronomers, particularly grad students and postdocs, but to not even have coverage for birth control?
More recently was the whole kerfuffle between Ann Romney and Hilary Rosen about whether or not Romney "has actually never worked a day in her life." Given that Rosen was speaking specifically about women in the paid workforce, Romney's response that raising children was "work" sounded to me a lot like "gravity is only a theory."
Yes, raising children is a lot of work. So is being a scientist. Force times distance is also work. At any rate, why is it that stay-at-home mom are lavished with praise and put on pedestals, while working moms are frowned at? And, by the way, where is dad in all this?
It's great to be talking about getting more girls interested in science and math, since they are certainly smart enough. But girls are also smart enough to see the barriers ahead. If they can see that they won't be able to raise families on their own terms, no wonder they drop out.

Census: Women in Astronomy/Science Groups

This post is the sixth in a series on starting up and supporting a Women in Astronomy/Science group at your university or national lab. Click here, here, and here for previous posts by guest-blogger Meredith Danowski and here for my post on the AAS Spring panel discussion on this topic.

Recently a friend asked for advice on creating a website for the WOWSAP (Women of Wisconsin Strengthening Astronomy and Physics) mentoring and networking group at UW-Madison*. She wondered if there were websites for other Women in Astronomy/Science groups she could model hers on.

In responding to her, I thought I’d send the response out into the ether as well. Seeing the events and types of support these groups provide and the topics of discussion they focus on has given us many an idea for our own endeavors.

With that in mind, if you notice any groups, including those without websites, that I’ve missed (of which there are surely many), PLEASE let me know. The info is very useful to us at the CSWA, and I’ll post the final list at our resources link for all to access.

Women in Astronomy Groups:

• UC-Boulder
• University of Arizona (website?)
• CfA
• NASA (Women@NASA is a great site for EPO, but is there an internal group?)

Women in Physics & Astronomy Groups

• UW-Madison (website in progress)
• University of Minnesota

Women in Physics Groups

• MIT
• UC-Santa Barbara
• UC-Berkeley
• Purdue
• Ohio State University
• Oregon State University
• University of Michigan

(Many universities have Women in Physics/Science groups, but these websites provide more than just name and bylaws).

Women in Science Groups

• Boston University
• Harvard
• Michigan State University
• Washington State University
• Penn State University
• University of Rochester
• Texas A&M

Working Groups

• AAS Committee on the Status of Women
• IAU Women in Astronomy
• Astronomical Society of Australia
• Women in Planetary Science
• American Physical Society

*A few years ago a group of intrepid, goat-loving grad students founded WOWSAP, basing it on the UofAz group. It’s a pleasure to see that it continues to serve the department today, because of a few energetic and dedicated women grad students.

From: L. Trouille

Boston AAS: Panel Discussion on Transforming Cultural Norms...

Yesterday we held a panel discussion during the Boston AAS meeting entitled "Transforming Cultural Norms: Mentoring and Networking Groups for Women and Minorities". In order to more widely disseminate the ideas and resources shared during this discussion, I'm taking advantage of our blog conversations.

Thank you to all those who attended and contributed to the conversation. We were very pleased to see the mix of men and women in the audience, although there's definitely work to be done in engaging more senior men in these discussions.

In this first post, I'm providing our extended community the resources page distributed at the start of the disucssion. Please send me your comments for any additional resources that you'd like to see included. The final list will be published for posterity at the CSWA 'Resources' page.

My next post will provide the videotape we made of the discussion. As a teaser, I'll note that our discussion yesterday highlighted examples of concrete steps to take to enable sustainability, obstacles to be aware of, how to develop allies through making it clear the ways your program champions your institution's priorities, acknowledging the realities of needing to work within existing structures, and the limitations of our recent decadal survey with respect to accomplishing the goals of the 'State of the Profession' white papers.

Till that's posted, another big Thank You! to our panelists for their ongoing efforts to improve the culture and climate at their institutions and for their thoughtfulness in considering the questions we had composed prior to the session to help guide the discussion.

Our panelists were:

• Marcel Agueros -- astronomy faculty and Director of Columbia University's Bridge to PhD program in the Natural Sciences
• Ed Bertschinger -- Chair of the MIT Physics department and deeply involved in a number of mentoring, networking, and cultural change initiatives, member of the CSWA
• Kim Coble -- physics/astronomy faculty at Chicago State University, a minority serving institution in Chicago, deeply involved in mentoring and pipeline issues
• Meredith Danowski -- astronomy PhD student and co-founder of Boston University's women in STEM mentoring and networking program
• James Ulvestad -- NSF-AST director, head of astro2010 demographics study group, and former member of the CSWA

Keep in touch and tuned in to future blog posts containing additional resources and information with regards to this ongoing discussion.

MENTORING/CULTURAL CHANGE RESOURCES

Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA)

• To subscribe to the weekly CSWA newsletter - http://lists.aas.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aaswlis
• Website - http://www.aas.org/cswa/
• Blog - http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/
• STATUS semiannual publication - http://www.aas.org/cswa/STATUS.html
• Pasadena Recommendations - http://www.aas.org/cswa/pasadenarecs.html
• Articles, links, and other resources on the “two-body problem”, “work-life” balance, mentoring, sexual harassment, unconscious bias, and re-entering the work force after a career break - http://www.aas.org/cswa/resources.html
• Mentoring advice - http://www.aas.org/cswa/advice.html

Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy (CSMA)

• Website - http://csma.aas.org/
• SPECTRUM biannual publication - http://csma.aas.org/spectrum.html
• Links to presentations from previous AAS sessions on mentoring - http://csma.aas.org/events.html
• Research on the benefits of diversity in higher education - http://csma.aas.org/issues.html
• Minority faculty recruitment, promotion, and tenure - http://csma.aas.org/issues.html
• Affirmative Action - http://csma.aas.org/issues.html

NSF ADVANCE grant program to recruit and retain women in STEM careers

• Website - http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5383
• Portal to search for NSF ADVANCE websites relevant to your topic of interest - http://www.portal.advance.vt.edu/index.php/search

Miscellaneous

• NSF postdoctoral mentoring plan requirement - www.nsf.gov/eng/iip/sbir/Sample_Postdoc_Mentoring_Plan.doc
• National Postdoctoral Association, mentoring plan suggestions - http://www.nationalpostdoc.org/publications/mentoring-plans/mentoring-plan
• MIT Mentors & Postdocs Toolkit - http://web.mit.edu/mitpostdocs & in particular, http://web.mit.edu/mitpostdocs/PostdocWebDocs/Mentor%20toolkit%20w.%20intro-policy-mentor%20plan%20outline%203-2-11.docx
• Statistics on trends in the participation of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in STEM - http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/women/
• ‘Decade of Lessons Learned’ article on models of success and barriers to success in STEM programs at 4 Minority Institutions -cmmap.colostate.edu/scienceEd/docs/WalterEtal.pdf
• Univ. of Washington’s ‘Faculty Retention Toolkit’ -- guide to chairs and deans to facilitate retention and advancement of women/minority faculty - http://www.engr.washington.edu/advance/resources/Retention/index.html
• Association for Women in Science mentoring resources - http://www.mass-awis.org/mentoring
• MentorNet - http://www.mentornet.net/

-L. Trouille