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/

Crosspost: UF files motion to dismiss complaint of former astronomy Ph.D. student in ongoing lawsuit

Update: In April 2022, the university’s internal investigation found that the allegations were unsubstantiated and no sanctions were issued against the faculty member. The allegations on Twitter have since been deleted.

Written By: Grace Blair for WUFT News

<embedded tweet deleted, 7/12/2023>

The University of Florida filed a dismissal on Thursday afternoon to a complaint made by former astronomy doctorate student Sankalp Gilda in an ongoing lawsuit regarding Gilda’s reported mistreatment by his former program supervisor.

The legal complaint was filed by Gilda on Sept. 6 based on “unpaid overtime wages,” according to the complaint obtained through public records. UF filed a motion to dismiss the complaint after citing failure to state a claim, according to the dismissal.

Gilda, who worked under assistant professor Zachary Slepian for three years in the astronomy program, discussed some of his experiences in a tweet made on Sept. 15. In his post, which consisted of 24 tweets, Gilda described multiple instances of Slepian engaging in during his time as Gilda’s adviser, as well as the circumstances that led Gilda to sue UF for improper overtime compensation.

Gilda also announced through Twitter that he filed charges against the UF astronomy and astrophysics department on the basis of “racism, harassment, and retaliation.” Gilda filed a case through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) about Slepian’s behavior. The report consisted of Gilda’s experiences as a doctoral candidate from August 2015 to August 2021 and the various forms of “harassment and discrimination” that he faced during that time based on “national origin, race, and disabilities, unpaid wages, ADA violations, harassment, promissory estoppel, and intentional infliction of emotional damage.”

<edited, 7/12/2023> Read more about the case here:

https://www.wuft.org/news/2021/10/18/uf-files-motion-to-dismiss-complaint-of-former-astronomy-ph-d-student-in-ongoing-lawsuit/ 

The Price of Stories

Do you believe that racial discrimination and harassment occur in your department? Do you believe that sexual harassment has impacted the careers of its victims? Do you believe the climate in your department is safe for our LGBTQIA colleagues and students?

Your belief is irrelevant. We have facts at our disposal. Yet we extort a high price from those who experience harassment and assault in our community. 

Sexual Harassment – Changing the System I

[This post is Part 1 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]

With the issue of sexual harassment in the news, one hopes that student groups, academic departments, and university administrators are discussing what can be done to eliminate this vile plague from our community. There are fundamental flaws in the current system where Title IX offices are set up to protect the university, where all the pressure for righting these wrongs is placed on the shoulders of young women who are often in the most vulnerable stages of their careers, and where such harassing behavior can remain an “open secret” for years if not decades. In short, we have to find a way to change the system – to train those with privilege, especially senior men, to become not only allies who can support individuals but advocates who will add their voices and prestige to fight for right, to create a “safe space” where anyone facing sexual harassment can get help and advice, and to shine a light on the harassers who still operate in the shadows, destroying careers with their unprofessional conduct.

The Women In Astronomy Blog has already published advice for anyone facing sexual harassment, but here I focus on what can be done by people with power to begin to change the system. The target audience for this post includes senior academics and department chairs, but please don’t stop reading if you are not one of these! Sometimes senior people might want to help but don’t know how, or don’t consider this is a priority, or don’t think they have time. It might be your job to show them how to help, or convince them that this is important, or persuade them that they need to make time for this. Also, if you are not a senior person now, you will be some day. When you are chair of your department, will you know what to do? 

Becoming Allies and Advocates

Many senior members of our community admitted to knowing the “open secret” mentioned above. How can it be that so many did so little for so long while so much damage was being done? Think of all those young women, undergrads at a nationally renowned university, who left the field because their professor made a creepy advance. Think of all the discoveries they could have made but never will because they left astronomy before their careers had even begun. 

Why So Few? Department Climate and Culture II

The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), investigates the effects of college climate on female faculty in STEM fields. This chart shows the percentage of tenured and nontenured faculty who are women in selected STEM fields. First, we see that women make up a smaller share of faculty in engineering, the physical sciences, and computer and information sciences compared to the biological/life sciences (which is shown on the bottom of the graph). Second, we see that women make up a far smaller share of the tenured faculty in all these fields. This is significant because tenured positions are the more secure, higher-paying, and higher-status positions in higher education. Overall, there are fewer women in tenured positions in STEM fields than one would expect given the number of women earning Ph.D.s in these fields.

Why So Few? Department Climate and Culture I

The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), investigates climate and culture in science and engineering departments at colleges and universities. These areas are especially important for women - both students and faculty.

The graph shows that among first-year college students, women are less likely than men to say that they are interested in majoring in a STEM field. The difference is most pronounced in engineering (shown in green) and computer science (shown in red). However, women are more likely to major in the biological/agricultural sciences.

Working Toward the Ideal Astronomy Department

 

Today's guest blogger is Bruce Balick. Bruce is a former member of the AAS Council, a former department chair, and the past Chair of the Faculty Senate at the University of Washington.  He has been interested best practices for recruiting and retaining outstanding young faculty with long and productive academic careers ahead of them.

There comes a time in the lives of some academics when they wonder whether they are a happy fit into the their department (or similar professional unit).  To quote from an article in STATUS by Meg Urry, "Many of us have worked in unpleasant environments. What happens? You spend a lot of time thinking about the sources of friction, complaining to yourself and to others about the bad things that have happened, trying to calm distraught colleagues so they won’t leave."

Frustrated department members must wonder whether they or the larger unit are to blame.  Then they ask whether there are some objective standards that they are useful for answering this question. 

Yes, there are. 

Fed Up With Sexual Harassment: Power to Speak Up

To continue this week's series on sexual harassment, we have a guest post from Caitlin Casey, a McCue Fellow at UC Irvine who studies dusty galaxies at high-redshift.  Caitlin co-wrote, with Kartik Sheth, a Nature careers column entitled The Ethical Grey Zone, based on a workshop they developed and later implemented online through Astrobetter which focused on ethically ambiguous hypotheticals affecting academics' careers. Previous posts can be found here, here and here.

"Can we stop talking about this feminist
stuff and get back to work?"- Old Me

I haven’t always been an advocate for “women’s issues” in academia.  I have distinct [not-so-distant] memories of rolling my eyes when hearing about ‘diversity workshops’ or scholarship/fellowship opportunities only available to women or men of color or white women.  I thought we were beyond this. I thought the playing field was leveled.  I even thought such `nonsense’ did a disservice to underrepresented groups in science by unnecessarily reminding them of their uphill battle and struggles of the past.  And then I had a major wake up call.

“Wake up call” isn’t really the right term. I didn’t suddenly wake up one day and see that I lived in a world different to the one I knew growing up. “Waking up” took years of thought, questioning, self-doubt, and help from colleagues and friends, but it eventually happened.  I woke up to a world where I had been a reluctant recipient of sexual harassment and hated my job as a result.  It was a job I had once loved and invested so much in.  I was depressed, isolated and ready to quit. I blamed myself and my incompetence for a whole lot of strange, uncomfortable interactions with colleagues. 

Fed Up With Sexual Harassment: Survival of the Clueless

Picture from noworkplaceviolence.com

This is the second in a series of posts on the topic of sexual harassment in astronomy. The first can be found here (Defining the problem), with more to come later this week.

Long-term readers of the Women in Astronomy Blogspot will know that I “Came Out” as a victim of sexual harassment in 2011; you can read my story here. Helping victims navigate the confusing rules, hazardous landscapes, and blame-the-victim strategies has been part of my raison d’etre since joining CSWA. I am amazed at how much sexual harassment still goes on in the astronomy community. Unfortunately, it is not just a thing of the past. Here are a few examples of how sexual harassment manifests itself in the 21st century.

 Some sexual harassers have learned exactly how far they can push a situation before they have to pull back. They walk right up to the line and take a small step over it. The harasser can, for example, touch the victim on the shoulder when saying, “Good Morning,” or say something a bit unprofessional like, “You just look too nice today.” Depending on the reaction of the victim, the harasser can quickly retreat behind the line with profuse apologies for going too far. If, on the other hand, the victim reacts in a friendly manner, the harasser can redraw the line and repeat the tactic (more on this in tomorrow's post).

Request for arguments against affirmative action

Allow me to start by posing a hypothetical situation:

A top-25 astronomy department has a major gender imbalance on their faculty. Let's say the fraction of women professors is below 10% of the overall faculty (This is a safe example since we don't actually know of such a department, do we? Right? Anyone?). 

Let's suppose that the upper administrators at said hypothetical university (e.g. the Dean of Sciences) would like to address this problem with a radical approach. If the astronomy department conducts a programmatic search for a woman junior professor and identifies a candidate that meets the high bar expected of the university and department, then a special faculty line will be made available that won't count against future departmental hires.