Women In Astronomy: gender differences

Showing posts with label gender differences. Show all posts

Friday, September 27, 2024

AASWomen Newsletter for September 27, 2024

AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy
Issue of September 27, 2024
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Sethanne Howard, and Hannah Jang-Condell

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]

From Item #1

This week's issues:
1. Workshopping Success Beyond Research
2. Request for Comments: F.18 MOSAICS DRAFT Text
3. Gender-plus analysis of Canadian science and engineering grants
4. Job Opportunities
5. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
6. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
7. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

AASWomen Newsletter for March 25, 2022

Posted by Nicolle Zellner

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 25, 2022
eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Alessandra Aloisi, Jeremy Bailin and Sethanne Howard

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]

This week's issues:

1. Expanding Space in Astrophysics: A Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
2. New Graduate-Student Mentoring Program with NHFP Fellows
3. Out in Astronomy — A Panel Discussion
4. The rise of citational justice: how scholars are making references fairer

5. Gender Differences in Self-Estimated Intelligence: Exploring the Male Hubris, Female Humility Problem
6. Seattle-area high school senior awarded $250,000 for gravitational wave research
7. Job Opportunities
8. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
9. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
10. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

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1. Expanding Space in Astrophysics: A Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
From: Bryne Hadnott via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

Join APS and Physical Review D for a special event held in conjunction with the APS April Meeting 2022—Expanding Space in Astrophysics: A Wikipedia Edit-a-thon.

This virtual event will be held on Sunday, April 10, 12:00 p.m to 3:00 p.m. ET, where we will create Wikipedia pages about inspiring women and historically marginalized groups in astrophysics. Sound fun? Please RSVP by April 7, using this registration link (https://april.aps.org/events/wiki-edit-a-thon). Please note: You do not need to be a registered attendee of the April Meeting to attend.

Friday, September 25, 2020

AASWomen Newsletter for September 25, 2020

Posted by Maria Patterson

AAS Committee on the Status of Women AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of September 25, 2020
eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Maria Patterson, Alessandra Aloisi, and Jeremy Bailin

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. Be well! --eds.]

Spacesuit engineer Kristine Davis, item 1.
Credit: JOEL KOWSKY/NASA

This week's issues:

1. Government Executive: The Future of Space is Female

2. Major Physics Publisher Goes Double Blind

3. Diversity in science: next steps for research group leaders

4. The US National Academy of Sciences can now kick out harassers. So why hasn't it?

5. Fixing the Leaky Pipeline: Hispanic Heritage Month

6. COVID's Surprising Toll On Careers Of Women Scientists

7. Boiling points: 8 ways in which The Leadership reveals STEMM’s gender problems

8. Math-intensive fields have a gender problem: The men are worse at math

9. Job Opportunities

10. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

12. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

AASWomen Newsletter for March 16, 2018

Posted by Nicolle Zellner

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of March 16, 2018

eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Christina Thomas, and Maria Patterson

This week's issues:

1. Autism Isn't the Problem

2. Science — without the mansplaining

3. Same Course, Different Ratings

4. Female researchers publish childcare recommendations for conference organizers

5. Watch: Female Astronauts Speak About Women in STEM

6. Senior female scientist dropout rate causing concern

7. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

8. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

9. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

AASWomen Newsletter for April 07, 2017

Posted by Maria Patterson

AAS Committee on the Status of Women AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of April 07, 2017
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Cristina Thomas, and Maria Patterson

This week's issues:

1. Women In Astronomy IV - Join us!

2. An Early-Career Astronomer's Experience at AAS CVD 2017

3. Starting from girls, making women's lives count

4. Women's interest development and motivations to persist as college students in STEM

5. Girls' confidence level, not math ability hinders path to science degrees

6. Eos: Geosciences Make Modest Gains but Still Struggle with Diversity

7. Job Opportunities

8. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

9. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

10. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Why So Few? Unconscious Bias II

Posted by Joan Schmelz

The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), finds that women continue to experience more overt discrimination, as well as the more unconscious bias, in science and engineering. Research by Dr. Madeline Heilman at New York University shows that women in so-called masculine jobs or nontraditional fields, which includes science and engineering, often find themselves in a double bind.

First, women in these “masculine” jobs are often judged to be less competent than their male peers, unless the women are clearly successful in their work. But when a woman is clearly competent in a “male” job or position, she is often judged to be less likable. Because both likability and competence are needed for success in the workplace, women in STEM fields can find themselves in a double bind. Therefore, the implications of these findings are enormous. Being seen as either less competent or less likable can affect relationships with peers, evaluations, and recommendations for promotion and salary increases.

Astronomy Leadership: Applications, Interviews & Jobs

Posted by Joan Schmelz

I didn’t get the job. That’s how this post was supposed to start, but a strange thing happened as I was contemplating the future of my career in astronomy (but more on that later). This was supposed to be a post about the job application process, the invitation I received at the beginning that made all the difference, the boost I got from an anonymous blogger talking about why women don’t apply for high level jobs, the virtual shove I got from my husband at a crucial moment, the help, advice, and encouragement I got from other senior women. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Some of you may know that I was a professor at the University of Memphis with expertise in solar coronal spectroscopy. My department was evolving from physics, where the staff had many different specialties, to materials science. Those of us who worked in other sub disciplines were becoming more and more marginalized. I was unhappy with this trend and was looking to get out. My good friend, Pat Knezek, had just taken the job of deputy director of the NSF Astronomy Division. She asked me if I had ever considered a job as an NSF rotator. I started at NSF in September 2013.

Some of you may also know that I was CSWA chair for many years. It was during that tenure that I met Don Kniffen, a CSWA member. Don was there with me when I (with CSWA’s support) decided to blog about my own experience with sexual harassment. I came out as a victim in February 2011. Through my position at NSF Astronomy, I got back in touch with Don after a hiatus of several years. It was at about the same time that Arecibo Observatory ended up back on my radar. I had spent two years there as a grad student – not happy years, mind you – but I didn’t hear much about Arecibo while I was doing solar physics.

In a very real sense, CSWA provided the means and NSF provided the opportunity for the next step in my career. Because their jobs are temporary by definition, NSF rotators are always thinking, “What’s next?” I was no exception, so I was looking out for possibilities when I attended the AAS meeting in Seattle in January 2015 (OMG – that was this year!). It was there that I ran into Don. After an exchange of pleasantries, he asked me a question that simply had to be a joke – “You’re not interested in the job at Arecibo, are you?” I laughed. Knowing my unhappy history with Arecibo, I’m sure Don was expecting an answer like, “Not just no, but hell no!” It was a surprise to both of us when I answered, “Wait, are you serious?”

Addressing Gender Bias in the SDSS Collaboration

Posted by Joan Schmelz

Today’s guest bloggers are Sara Lucatello and Gail Zasowski. Sara is a staff astronomer at INAF - Padova Astronomical Observatory, in Italy. Her research focuses on understanding, through the study of stellar populations, the formation and chemical evolution of the Milky Way. Gail is an NSF Astronomy Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University in the US, where she studies the Milky Way's ISM and stellar populations; she also runs a space camp for middle school students and works to support public outreach and astronomy diversity programming. Both are active members of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and its Committee for the Participation of Women in SDSS.

In July 2012, at the yearly meeting of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Collaboration, a slide was shown that outlined the current leadership structure for the fourth generation of the SDSS, which was due to get underway in 2014. Of the 26 positions shown on the slide, only one was filled by a woman.

Many collaboration members in the audience were visibly taken aback, looking around to see who else was surprised. Soon the Sloan Foundation (the largest single source of funding for the SDSS) echoed the surprise and unease, and explicitly mentioned the lack of women in the leadership as a concern in their feedback during the process of granting funding for SDSS-IV.

The issue of gender balance is of course a hot topic for those watching STEM groups and STEM culture. A number of measures have been put in place over the last several years to promote diversity and reduce the effects of explicit and implicit bias. These actions have met with varying degrees of success, as discussed frequently on this blog and elsewhere. Such initiatives are, however, generally implemented at the institutional or funding agency levels. But in modern astronomy, work is increasingly done in large collaborations, which bring together many -- sometimes hundreds of -- scientists from a variety of nationalities and backgrounds. These also face the challenge of dealing with a wide range of backgrounds when it comes to diversity issues, but usually without the infrastructure of, say, a university, to log problems and enforce solutions. Therefore, it becomes crucial to find new approaches to identifying issues and devising new practices aimed at creating a climate of fairness and inclusiveness, regardless of sex, gender identity, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, economic background, and religion.

With this challenge in mind, in late 2012, the SDSS-III management created the Committee for the Participation of Women in SDSS (CPWS). The initial members were carefully chosen to include both men and women, and to span a range in career stage and seniority. The CPWS was charged to evaluate the gender balance within the collaboration and the leadership, assess the general inclusivity and perceived climate, and make recommendations to get rid of any widely perceived barriers to the participation of collaboration members.

We note that this was a genuine gesture on the part of the SDSS management. That is, despite having initially been inspired by the concerns of the Sloan Foundation, the management was truly concerned about the presence of biases against women and other underrepresented groups; it was interested in ensuring an inclusive scientific climate within the Collaboration (which includes approximately 500 participants from more than 18 countries in North and South America, Europe, and Asia). We emphasize this because we feel it highlights part of the problem with these increasingly ubiquitous large collaborations -- even with genuine awareness and goodwill on the part of many individuals, there is often no structure in place for turning that awareness into best practices applied evenly and fairly across the board for all collaboration members.

As a first step in establishing such a structure for the SDSS, the CPWS conducted both a demographic survey and a series of interviews of collaboration members, spanning all ages and levels of leadership responsibility. CPWS made some recommendations to the SDSS management to improve the hiring practices and to encourage more people to apply for leadership positions. These recommendations came at a critical time -- just under a year before SDSS-IV would begin full operations, while many positions within the SDSS infrastructure and the individual projects (MaNGA, APOGEE-2, eBOSS, TDSS, SPIDERS) were being filled.

In mid-2014, the CPWS conducted another, more extensive, demographic survey, followed by a round of interviews with the PIs from the primary SDSS-IV projects. The aim was to take a snapshot of the incipient SDSS-IV and establish a baseline in terms of gender balance[1], both in general and for the leadership. This was to be the first of a series of annual surveys, in order to monitor the Collaboration in terms of climate, diversity, and equal career opportunities.

One critical goal of this survey was to get a sense of what sorts of people were in leadership roles, whether those were officially recognized by the collaboration or not. To that end, we asked people to self-identify as leaders, based on a deliberately broad definition[2], with separate questions about the official recognition (e.g., having a job title) or salary status of their position.

About 50% of the active SDSS members responded to the survey, most located in North American or European institutions. About two thirds of the sample are faculty members or research scientists, while about one third are postdocs and graduate students. The fraction of women, both in the general sample and among members who are in self-reported leadership positions, is about 25%. This number is consistent with the fraction in the US astronomical community, but considerably higher than that in the IAU, which is only 15%.

While this indicates that the SDSS has been successful in recruiting a leadership that is representative of its overall composition (and of the US astronomical community), the aggregate numbers tell just one part of the story.

The details make it clear that there is still a long road ahead to optimize gender balance and equalize career opportunities. For example, it is true that SDSS women have increased their presence in the high ranks of the org chart (compared to the situation described at the beginning of this post), and actually take on self-identified leadership positions at similar rates as men. However, upon closer inspection, the data clearly indicate that women very disproportionately assume roles related to education and outreach, while technical or exclusively scientific positions at the top are almost entirely male-dominated. Full details on the SDSS-IV demographic survey are available in the complete CPWS report.

Another informative dimension was added by interviews with the PIs of the SDSS-IV projects and the SDSS-IV director on the topic of hiring practices. Because of financial and/or time constraints, several of the top level positions were either inherited from SDSS-III or filled, without open calls, by people already networked into the project. Interestingly, the data suggest that openly advertised positions resulted in a higher fraction of female hires. However, the PIs anecdotally reported to have encountered reluctance from female scientists to volunteer or apply for leadership positions at a higher rate than male scientists, even when explicitly encouraged to join or apply. This suggests that taking on the responsibilities and commitments of these positions is not perceived as worthwhile or feasible for women scientists, who are very likely to already be more over-committed than their male colleagues.

The 2015 edition of the SDSS Demographics Survey is currently underway. Though largely similar to last year's questionnaire, some changes were made to enable reliable tracking of demographics across time. Now, we more carefully explore the issues described above and assess whether members -- of any gender -- hesitate to apply and/or assume leadership positions, and what the underlying reasons may be.

We hope that these efforts will help make the SDSS collaboration an inclusive and fair environment, where every member is afforded equal opportunity to hone and use their skills as scientists, putting forward their best possible work for SDSS and for the community at large.

Progress has been made on some but not all issues, and this effort is certainly an ongoing one, with many people taking part. And as many SDSS members go on to work in other large collaborations, we hope that this self-reflection and internal enforcement of fair practices becomes the norm in these incredibly productive and diverse groups.

[1] We note that the survey gathered information on more than just gender -- data were also collected on racial/ethnic identity, geographical location, career level, etc. These statistics will also continue to be tracked.

[2] We defined a leadership role as any "whose tasks and responsibilities include making decisions that affect other people and the SDSS, organizing regular project discussions or meetings, professional mentoring, or influencing/directing others in their tasks."

Monday, August 24, 2015

Fierce Conversations

Posted by Unknown

In my new role as Director of Citizen Science* at the Adler Planetarium, much of my time is spent in 'managing' - setting goals, determining how we'll reach those goals, pursuing grants, managing grants, mediating relationships within the group, across departments, and with external partners, etc. In seeking management advice that resonated with my personality and background, I had some difficulty until a friend recommended:

"Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time", by Susan Scott

I'll admit, as with most advice books, I skimmed through the fluff and much of the anecdotes. But each chapter has worthwhile specific advice and 'tasks' to test out new ideas. I was surprised by how empowered I felt by the advice that emphasized how I could take advantage of my strengths (being a good listener, asking questions rather than immediately providing answers, being diplomatic, bridging relationships, etc.) to be the most effective in my role. Somehow seeing it in print gave me permission to be myself and play on my strengths. The book also highlights that you don't need to know everything and have all the answers. In fact, it's beneficial to relationship building and empowering for team members to know you're authentically including their voice and insight in decision making. This probably seems obvious to you, but as a relatively junior person stepping into a management role, part of me felt that to prove myself worthy, I needed to immediately have all the answers and a crystal clear vision (or at least appear to). I can imagine I'm not alone in that feeling.

In thinking about my reaction, I wonder whether management books tend to have gendered, career-stage reactions. Does the management style advice offered by this book typically resonate more with more junior women? Are there others in this genre that you'd recommend?

Why So Few? Unconscious Bias I

Posted by Joan Schmelz

The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), finds that bias, often unconscious, continues to limit women’s progress in scientific and engineering fields. Research by Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, a former AAUW fellow, and her colleagues at Harvard University shows that even individuals who consciously reject negative stereotypes about women in science often still believe that science is better suited to men than women at an unconscious level. These unconscious beliefs or implicit biases may be more powerful than explicitly held beliefs and values simply because we are not aware of them.

Math and Verbal Performance of Men and Women Under Competition and Time Pressure

Posted by berkeleyjess

The following post was reproduced (with permission) from the June 2014 Issue of Status: A Report on Women in Astronomy. The author is Nancy D. Morrison, The University of Toledo, Department of Physics & Astronomy.

Recently, we've heard a lot about the gender gap in wages: the full-time median salary for women is lower than that of men in almost all occupations, [1] and a gap persists in many occupations when age and skill level are controlled for. Explanations can be grouped broadly into three categories: bias, whether conscious or unconscious; entry of women into lower-wage occupations because of skills or preferences; and less competitiveness among women than among men.

There are many ways to slice the data. It is commonplace to say that workers in female-dominated occupations generally earn less than those in male-dominated ones. Women being less willing to negotiate is another point; [2] all are aspects of self-selection by women. Discrimination is still a factor. [1] Another recent finding [3] is that the salary gap is greatest in business and law, where per-hour pay for employees working longer hours is greatest, and thus reflects the culture and the structure of the occupation.

In science, we confront all these issues. In addition, the early stages of our careers are strongly affected by math-based tests such as the GRE, both the quantitative general test and the physics subject test, on which women tend to score lower than men. For example, on the quantitative general test in 2006-2007, the median score for women was more than 50 points lower than that for men, and the 75th percentile score was about 30 points lower. [4] This difference is enough to disqualify a significant number of women and minorities from graduate admission if a hard cutoff score of 700 is used, as it often is in elite programs. If we assume that women are just as good at math as men, then why the difference?

Interesting research on the performance of women and men on math-based tests has been carried out by Olga Shurchkov, Assistant Professor of Economics at Wellesley College. [5] In lab experiments, she assessed the performance of male and female students who were paid to solve verbal and math puzzles, in competitive and noncompetitive environments and with high and low time pressure. In her analysis, she took care to tease out various effects on the students' performance. She also carried out a labor market analysis to investigate whether her findings on time pressure and competition carry over into the workplace. Her paper provides background on the research area. The rest of this article discusses her methodology and findings, which bear on several aspects of the gender gap outlined above.

The Gender Breakdown of the Applicant Pool for Tenure-Track Faculty Positions at a Sample of North American Research Astronomy Programs

Posted by Joan Schmelz

Figure 1: Left: Histogram of the number of searches versus F/(F +M) in the total sample (black) and for the searches at NRC ranked Astronomy programs (red). For the former, the mean and median of the distribution are ≃ 0.18±0.04 and 0.19, whereas for the latter they are ≃ 0.19±0.03 and 0.20. Right: F/(F + M) versus the total number of applicants.

Today's guest blogger is Todd Thompson. Todd is a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the Ohio State University. His research involves core-collapse supernovae, the birth of neutron stars, the origin of the heavy elements, gamma ray bursts, stellar and relativistic winds, and magnetars; the physics, structure, and feedback processes of starburst galaxies and active galactic nuclei; and few-body dynamics of stars and their compact objects.

Introduction

The demographics of the field of Astronomy is an active area of investigation. Among many characteristics of the population, gender --- including gender balance, gender bias, and the gender-related component of the leaky pipeline --- have been the focus of recent work.

The American Astronomical Society's Committee on the Status of Women (CSWA) published the results of a survey in 2013 that provides information on the fraction of women at each level in the astronomical workforce. For graduate students (at all levels) they report F/(F+M)=404/1155 = 0.350, while for postdoctoral researchers F/(F+M)=186/645 = 0.288, and for assistant professors F/(F+M)=57/193= 0.295.

AASWOMEN Newsletter for February 13, 2015

Posted by Nicolle Zellner

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of February 13, 2015

eds: Daryl Haggard, Nicolle Zellner, Meredith Hughes, & Elysse Voyer

This week's issues:

1.Postdoc Parenting Work-Life Balance

2. Thanks for Attending the State of the Universe Briefing

3. Gender Issues: Articles in McKinsey Quarterly

4. Every Mom and Dad a STEM Mentor

5. Is the Professor Bossy or Brilliant? Much Depends on Gender

6. Young, Gifted, and Black: Facing Microaggressions as a Young College Professor

7. Madam C.E.O., Get Me a Coffee

8. The 20 Best-Paying Jobs for Women in 2015

9. Job Opportunities

10. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

12. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Cogitations on Gender at the "dot Astro" Conference

Posted by Unknown

Today's guest post is by Brooke Simmons, an astronomy postdoc at Oxford and the Henry Skynner Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College. Brooke researches the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies and is actively involved in citizen science within the Zooniverse, including Galaxy Zoo and other projects.

Last week I was at the .Astronomy meeting at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. .Astro ("dot astro") is less a meeting about any specific science and more a meeting about being a scientist, and using the internet to do and communicate science. It's also more than that, and partly its structure is what makes it hard to define: about half of it is an unconference whose agenda is set on the fly by the participants. This choose-your-own-adventure meeting means that each .Astro is different, but it also means that a single .Astro is different for each person there.

It was the sixth "dot astro" meeting (the first was in 2008), and it was my third time attending. It's my favorite conference in my schedule, and I spent some time this year observing the event itself and others' reactions to it.

One of the things I was curious about was whether the expectations, experiences and reactions of first-time participants were different for different genders. Nowadays I find that a lot of my friends and colleagues have heard of .Astro, but they have wildly different ideas of what it is. I've heard "that's a meeting for astro coders, right?" and "that's a meeting about outreach, right?" from people on either side of me at the same group lunch. The answer to both questions is yes, and more. Anecdotally, I noticed a lot of conformation to gender stereotypes when talking to people about .Astro, mainly because when I've spoken to women who thought it was just for coders they've also usually followed up by saying they didn't think the meeting was for them.

Rob Simpson, the creator and organizer of .Astro, spends a lot of time thinking about how to make .Astro a more diverse place. Last year he wrote a series of blog posts about taking steps to ensure better gender equality for .Astro 5. The steps worked pretty well, and this year he took pre-emptive action, changing the application form to decrease the barrier that makes women less likely to attend conferences "for coders" and less likely to volunteer to give a talk.

That worked pretty well too, though there's still work to be done. The gender balance for the whole conference was 40% female, 60% male, 0% other, which continues the positive trend from last year. Although there was still a relative lack of female speakers giving longer talks, that did improve for the lightning talks. However, one of the attendees noted during an unconference session that despite this progress we were still self-separating into standard biased roles: the unconference sessions about software and development skewed male and the outreach-oriented sessions skewed female.

On the last day of .Astro I sent out a short survey to the participants. Just over half of them answered it (thanks all!) and I found the responses very interesting. First of all, the survey responses are overwhelmingly positive across the board. All of the (anonymous) responses either explicitly state they'd like to come to .Astro again or talk positively about what they'd like to see in future meetings.

Two of the questions on the form were "What did you think .Astro was about when you applied to attend?" and "What do you think .Astro is about now?" Both returning and first-time attendees generally changed their answers between these questions, either to describe a complete change of outlook between pre-attendance and now, or to add a few extra words to the "now" question. Nobody mentioned they had expected the meeting to be primarily about outreach, but a few people said they'd expected .Astro was about tech and programming for astronomy. A few representative responses are listed below.

What did you think .Astro was about when you applied to attend?

A meeting about hacking
Learning about cool stuff people are doing at the intersection of astronomy, CS and education. Meeting cool, talented people.
I knew it was about tech and astronomy.

What do you think .Astro is about now?

A meeting about hacking and so much more.
And now I know what hacking is.
Learning about cool stuff people are doing at the intersection of astronomy, CS and education. Meeting cool, talented people. Feeling like I've had a lobotomy because these guys seem to know all this stuff I've never heard of.
AWESOMENESS.
I think it's about changing the field - of astronomy, but ultimately of science. I think it's about using technology, the internet specifically, to communicate, to learn, to visualize, to share science in a way previously impossible.

Each of these answer sets are from women who had never been to .Astro before.

In a separate open comments box, 5 out of 15 women mentioned feeling like they didn't know enough code and/or wishing there was a tutorial day for learning some of the basic tools used in a lot of the hacks, like Javascript and D3. 1 man (out of 16) mentioned that a tutorial day or thread might be useful for the less confident. In a survey of 31 people total and where the sample is split into 2 parts, is 6% versus 33% in the noise, or is this saying that women and men report a different experience of .Astro? I'm casting my vote for the latter.

It's no surprise to anyone who's paying attention that achieving gender balance in astronomy is a complex problem. .Astro is a unique conference where the organizers are very aware of how easy it is for the process of a conference to uphold gender stereotypes and have taken active steps to prevent it. Yet even though they've succeeded in achieving a gender balance of participants that's equal to or better than the balance of our field, there are still issues with encouraging women to give a talk, and women and men still self-select for more stereotypical roles. This in part means they still have different experiences of .Astro.

One thing is clear, though: actively talking, strategizing and planning has made a dramatic difference in gender equality for this conference over the last 6 years. Given the .Astro philosophy and community, I have no doubt this active approach to diversity will continue and expand to improve .Astro's diversity among many other axes as well.

.Astro is many things, but I think one of the underlying principles is a "yes, and" philosophy. If you're on board with that and you have ideas about how to do astronomy better, including how to make our field more welcoming to underrepresented groups of all kinds, please consider signing up for .Astro 7!

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Fed Up with Sexual Harassment II: The SAFE study w/ Dr. Kate Clancy

Posted by Unknown

Image: Dr. Kate Clancy (UIUC)

The "Survey of Academic Field Experiences (SAFE): Trainees Report Harassment and Assault" study that was published in PLOS ONE on July 16, 2014 by the team of biological anthropologists Kate Clancy (UIUC), Robin Nelson (Skidmore), Julienne Rutherford (UIC), and Katie Hinde (Harvard) revealed several issues relating to harassment and assault within the field of anthropology.

Some of the issues highlighted:

A lack of awareness on codes of conduct and sexual harassment policies.
2/3 of the 666 respondents reported some form of harassment (71% of women respondents and 41% of men respondents) or assault (26% of women respondents).
90% of women and 70% of men were trainees or employees when harassed or assaulted.
Perpetrators of harassment and assault differed between men and women, with women typically being targeted by people senior to them and men by peers.

Dr. Kate Clancy was kind enough to be interviewed for lessons learned from the study, how this results may impact other scientific fields (like astronomy), and next steps for solving the issues at hand.

Why So Few? Department Climate and Culture II

Posted by Joan Schmelz

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

Posted by Joan Schmelz

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.

Why So Few? Spatial Skills

Posted by Joan Schmelz

The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), investigates the area of spatial skills learning. One of the largest and most persistent gender gaps in cognitive skills is found in the area of spatial skills, where boys and men consistently outperform girls and women on average. Spatial skills are thought to be critically important for success in fields such as engineering, and many people believe that they are innate and, therefore, some believe that the gender difference in spatial skills explains why there are so few women in engineering, for example.

Research highlighted in the report, however, shows that spatial skills are not fixed and can improve dramatically in a short time with training. This picture shows a sample question on mental rotation, one example of spatial skills. Do you know the right answer? It is D.

Stop Interrupting Me: Gender, Conversation Dominance, and Listener Bias

Posted by berkeleyjess

I've lost track of the number of times I've experienced the following scenarios:

1) During a heated discussion―speaking clearly and out loud―I say something that no one appears to hear. A man repeats it minutes, maybe seconds later, to accolades and group discussion.

2) I am participating in a group interview of a candidate. When he answers questions he looks directly at the men in the room, but never or rarely looks at me―even when I was the one to ask the question. He asks questions of the men only―even questions which I am clearly the most appropriate person to address.

3) I am at a party. The topic of physics (or cosmology, or data science) comes up. A male I have just met proceeds to explain to me a New York Times article he has read on the subject. I mention that I have my PhD and I'm an expert on the topic. Instead of using this as an opportunity to ask me questions and learn from me, he continues talk about what he knows. Bonus points: He turns to my boyfriend―who isn't a physicist or a data scientist―and asks him questions about the topic.

4) I am part of a male-dominated discussion. I keep trying to participate but repeatedly get interrupted and talked-over. The only way to be heard is to interrupt back, talk-over people myself, or call out the behavior and ask people to let me finish. All of these feel overly aggressive and makes me uncomfortable, so I end up remaining silent, not contributing to the discussion.

Why So Few? Contrast-Sensitivity Ability

Posted by Joan Schmelz

The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), profiles research by Dr. Shelley Correll on gender differences in self-assessment, or how good you think you are at a particular activity or subject. Dr. Correll is a sociologist at Stanford University and finds that “boys do not pursue mathematical activities at a higher rate than girls do because they are better at math. They do so, at least partially, because they think they are better.”

Dr. Correll first became interested in gender differences in self-assessment when she taught chemistry to high school students. She realized that no matter how well the girls in her classes did, she had trouble convincing them that they had any scientific ability. At the same time, she found that no matter how poorly the boys in her classes did, they continued to believe that they were very good at chemistry.

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