Gender Parity in NSF Astronomy Research Programs

 

During my first year as a Program Officer in NSF’s Astronomy Division, I was able to compile data on the success rates of different opportunities in the Individual Investigator Programs. As chair of CSWA, one of my top priorities was to look for gender differences.

 

The results* for Astronomy are summarized in the table. The top line is for the Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Grants (AAG), our main grant program. PIs are mainly (but not exclusively) senior and mid-career scientists. There is both good news and bad news here. The good news is that the percentage of female awards (19 +/- 2%) is equal to the percentage of females in the pool (19 +/- 1%). The bad news is that the percentage of women in astronomy at the senior and mid-career levels is still so low. The next line in the table is for Faculty Early Career Development, the CAREER program, which generally makes less than 10 awards per year. The following line is for the NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships (AAPF), which currently makes 9 awards per year. Although the numbers are smaller and the uncertainties are larger, the results for both of these programs agree with those of the AAG. If we do weighted averages of all three programs, we again find that the percentage of female awards (22 +/- 2%) is equal to the percentage of females in the pool (22 +/- 1%).

Elite Male Faculty Employ Fewer Women

My title has removed the words "in the Life Sciences" from the title of an article published June 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  While I do not have statistics to demonstrate the universality of this conclusion, I do have some relevant experience and connections to the work to share.

In their article, MIT biology graduate student Jason Sheltzer and physics graduate Joan C. Smith showed that senior male professors in biology, especially those who have prestigious awards or are members of the National Academies, train a significantly smaller percentage of female graduate students and postdocs than their female or junior colleagues.  The most prestigious labs, led by men and offering many of the best career development opportunities, are the least likely to train women.  The data are convincing, and the effect is clear: women are less likely than men to get either the professional development opportunities or the top letters of recommendation from these prestigious labs.  It’s no wonder that only 36% of assistant professors in biology are women, even though half of the PhDs in biology go to women.

I have a very personal perspective on this study.  Joan C. Smith was an undergraduate physics major at MIT while I was the Physics Department Head.  We worked together to organize the 2011 Northeast Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics, a national conference of great importance to our field (a photo of which is at the head of this blog entry).  She is also a superb experimental physicist, programmer and engineer.  I am thrilled that she turned her statistical and data analysis talents to shine such a clear light on a major problem of the professoriate.

It’s personal too

But it’s not just the biologists who should ask, “Have I done everything I can to identify, encourage and advance talented individuals applying to my research group?”  You see, Sheltzer and Smith were led to this study when they heard a physics graduate student at a dinner party mention she was the first female student her advisor had graduated in 20 years.  I couldn’t help but wonder, was it my graduate student they spoke with?  So I looked up my record and found an 18-year gap between my PhDs awarded to women, 2 out of 16 total.  Ouch.  As I spoke with pride of my students and their successes over the years, I never stopped to think about how I was shaping the future face of the profession.

In recent years my research group has been gender balanced; by including undergraduates, that is easy to achieve even in theoretical astrophysics at MIT.  However, we must ask not what is easy, but what is right.  Unless "elite male faculty" recruit, mentor and promote more women and others from underrepresented groups, science will suffer from our failure to adequately draw talent from more than half the population.

I encourage other faculty members, male and female, to take this matter personally, too.

When CSMA? Will Women Astronomers Outnumber Men in the Near Future?

You may have heard the "On Point" news article on May 12 on public radio about men vs women college graduation rates.  The basic point was that the percentage of men receiving college degrees in the US is less than 50% and falling.  This made me think about the effect on astronomy.

First, here are the college numbers.  The Census Bureau reported that 685,000 men and 916,000 women graduated from college in 2009, or 43% men and 57% women.  The numbers for men have been flat since 1980, while women are steadily rising.  The radio show was focused on the stagnation in the male graduation rates and what can be done about it. 

I considered a different angle:  will women soon have equal numbers to men in astronomy departments?   That would be a positive development from our CSWA (Committee for the Status of Women in Astronomy) standpoint.  But, let's not jump to conclusions too quickly.  Here is a plot I made of fraction of women PhDs in astronomy vs year, with extrapolation into the future.  The data are from the American Institute of Physics.  Yes, there is a significant steady trend of increasing percentage of women receiving PhDs in astronomy.

AASWomen for March 7, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of March 7, 2014

eds: Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, Nick Murphy, & Nicolle Zellner

This week's issues:

1. Sometimes Being Good Isn’t Enough

2. Part II Nail Salons: Appropriate Astronomy Women’s Group Venue? Survey Results

3. The 2013 CSWA Demographics Survey: Portrait of a Generation of Women in Astronomy

4. Childcare Available at Boston AAS Meeting

5. Career Profile: Astronomer to Director for the Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics

6. L’Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science Fellowships: UK and Ireland

7. How to Level the Playing Field for Women in Science

8. In Academia, Women Collaborate Less With Their Same-Sex Juniors

9. Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage

10. A Mighty Girl: Mighty Careers

11. Change sought in women's depiction in text books

12. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

14. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Where are all the women professors? Among the recently hired!

I recently wrote a series of posts entitled "Where are all the women professors?" here and here. I began with a simple premise: "men and women are equally capable of succeeding as professional astronomers. There is no inherent (intrinsic) difference in mental capacity, creativity, ability to learn, or any other factor that plays into the success of an astronomer." From there I examined the role of unconscious bias as one of the factors in a "leaky pipeline" that has resulted in an underrepresentation of women among astronomy professors.

A commenter wondered, "What is the fraction of women hired on tenure track during the same time period as the statistics of the graduating students?" While the present representation of women among various astronomy faculty hovers somewhere around 15%, is there evidence that there have been improvements in recent years? The question stuck with me, but I wasn't sure how to assess it. However, the method recently became obvious: the Astronomy Rumor Mill!

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

Maybe There Is Hope After All

Greetings from Sweden, home of the most generous parental leave policies in the world!

I'm here attending a scientific conference this week. As I've been going to talks and interacting with people, I couldn't help but notice something interesting about the representation of women here, so I worked out the numbers during an idle moment. Here's what I found:

Women accounted for

42 of 126 participants	33%	(probably an underestimate, since it's based solely on names)
7 of 20 contributed talks	35%
7 of 15 invited talks	47%	(actually one less, because one had to cancel at the last minute)
14 of 35 speakers total	40%
2 of 13 session chairs	15%

I'm willing to forgive them that last number. All in all, this makes me pretty proud to be part of this meeting. Of course, as I mentioned before, some subfields of astronomy do better than others are retaining women, and I happen to be in one of them. There really does seem to be something of a critical mass that's required before women begin to really feel welcome in a particular field of study.

As a side note, I had an interesting conversation about problems facing in astronomy with someone here, and he wasn't a woman, and I didn't bring it up.