AASWomen Newsletter for April 07, 2017

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

On Being a Transgender Astronomer

Today's guest post is by Jessica Mink, a positional astronomer and software developer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, who has written the commonly used software packages WCSTools and RVSAO and worked on a variety of astronomical projects over 40 years. Much of her story is told in this interview with the American Astronomical Society's Working Group on LGBTIQ Equality (WGLE). 

While I consider myself to be a woman astronomer, I have not always been one. Since I made much of my reputation with a different gender expression and remain in the field, I have to accept the fact that I am also a transgender astronomer, and as a representative of that small group, serve as an ambassador to the rest of the astronomical world.

While gradually (over 40 years!) transitioning from male to female, I have thought a lot about gender and its various facets, but when I volunteered to write a blog entry representing my gender minority for the Women in Astronomy blog, I realized that I hadn't been very systematic about it. It is likely that most readers don't have any trans* friends (that they know about), but this far into the 21st century, most thinking people are aware of our existence and might even know of one of us.

Sexual Harassment at Astronomical Observatories

Most sexual harassment rules apply to employees of a company/university/organization. What happens at an astronomy observatory when, for example, a staff member harasses a visiting scientist or the other way around? Or an advisor harasses an REU student or other intern? Or, if the observatory is run by multiple organizations, an employee of one organization harasses an employee of another?

Dealing with sexual harassment is a harrowing experience. If there are also layers of confusing and even conflicting bureaucracy, then reporting an incident gets even tougher. Getting a satisfactory outcome may be next to impossible.

During a recent discussion about sexual harassment with XXX, from company/university/organization YYY, which is running observatory ZZZ, it occurred to me that observatories now face the same type of challenges that the AAS faced ~10 years ago when dealing with sexual harassment. At an AAS meeting, astronomers come from across the country to attend a professional conference. The standard sexual harassment rules did not apply because harassers and victims would be, in many cases, from different institutions.

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.