Blogging, Big meetings, and Bias

Regular blog readers may have noticed that a number of recent posts were not actually written by me (Hannah). This is part of an effort to bring a variety of new voices to the blog, and make it more truly about Women in Astronomy, rather than Hannah's Personal Blog With Some Thoughts on Women in Astronomy.

Who are these people? you might ask. We are the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy, and our membership can be found here. We were recently expanded from 8 members to 10. You can read our thoughts here on the blog, subscribe to our weekly newsletter AASWOMEN, and meet some of us in person at the upcoming AAS Meeting in Washington, DC. We are sponsoring a number of special sessions:

• 208 Longitudinal Study of Astronomy Graduate Students
  Monday, Jan 04, 2010, 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
  Virginia B
  
  
• 221 Mentoring Astronomers: Students to Faculty I (co-sponsored with CSMA
  [Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astrononmy])
  Special Session
  Wednesday, Jan 06, 2010, 10:00 AM -11:30 AM
  Maryland A
  
  
• 226 Mentoring Astronomers: Students to Faculty II (co-sponsored with CSMA)
  Special Session
  Wednesday, Jan 06, 2010, 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
  Maryland A

You might also be interested in this poster session on Tuesday:

• Public Policy Issues
  Poster Session
  Tuesday, Jan 05, 2010, 9:20 AM - 6:30 PM
  Exhibit Hall
  

Looking forward, one of the topics we want to bring up at the summer 2010 AAS Meeting in Miami is unconscious bias. An excerpt from our proposal:

When evaluating identical application packages, male and female University psychology professors preferred 2:1 to hire “Brian” over “Karen” as an assistant professor. When evaluating a more experienced record (at the point of promotion to tenure), reservations were expressed four times more often when the name was female. This unconscious bias has a repeated negative effect on Karen’s career. Ref: Steinpreis, Anders, & Ritzke (1999) Sex Roles, 41, 509.

I bring this up now because this story of the writer James Chartrand revealing herself (himself?) to be actually a woman has been all over the internets (h/t: Feministing). The upshot of the story is that she struggled for a while trying to earn a living as a writer under her real name, but as soon as she adopted a male pseudonym, she started earning real money. This is a 21st century story, mind you, not George Eliot's of the 19th.

So, when it comes to publishing scientific papers then, is it better to publish under your initials to hide your gender, or not? Personally, I chose to publish under my full, real name. Part of this was motivated by an arrogant desire on my own part to show the world that women can do excellent science. Has this come true, or has this hurt me in the end? I may never know for sure, but knowing that bias is alive and well in the world certainly has me concerned.

Interesting links

Someday, I will find enough space in my head and time in my life to come up with an honest-to-goodness posting, but for now I present you with a few interesting links.

Evgenya commented on the previous post about anonymous blogging, and coincidentally, Alice Pawley of ScienceWomen writes about the same subject here, weighing the costs and benefits of anonymous versus non-anonymous blogging.

Another interesting post comes from the always interesting Sociological Images blog, showing a comparison of paid parental leave in industrialized nations. Sadly and unsurprisingly, the US does not stack up well.

Updating the Blogroll

I've added a few blogs to the good ole' blogroll. Updates included a few regular commenters, like Alice of Alice's Astro Info, Astronomum of Astronomoms, and Mrs. Comet Hunter.  I've also included Dr. Isis of On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess because she's a hoot to read.

If you'd like your blog to be included too, leave a comment here!

Grand Re-opening

Welcome to the Women in Astronomy blog!

Yes, this blog has been around for several months already, but now we're going to dust it off, clear out the cobwebs, and use it as part of our effort to bring the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA) into the 21st century, at long last.

One idea is to move the AASWOMEN newsletter away from an email distribution list to an RSS feed.  Our first step toward doing that will be to post that newsletter here on this blog.  We will also be posting other items of interest from time to time.

Please bear with us as we figure out this new-fangled technology.  I already have at least one blog post formulating, along the lines of passion for science, and whether that's necessary or even helpful for promoting women and minorities in science.