Proudness: What Is It? Why Is It Important? And How Do We Design for It in College Physics and Astronomy Education?

The below post was originally written for the June 2015 Status: A Report on Women in Astronomy. The first few paragraphs are reproduced here (with permission).  Read the full article here.

Photo credit: Matt Beardsley

Dr. Angela Little is a postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University. Her current research asks: "How do students develop a sense that they are capable in physics?" She is also exploring multimedia as a tool to bring many cross-disciplinary and within/outside academia voices together around the idea of "feeling capable."  This article expands on her invited talk given at the 225th AAS Meeting, January, 2015, in Seattle, WA. [1]

Transitions are tough on students, especially big transitions like the one between high school and college. Among the many reasons why this transition in particular can be tough, a big one is that students from a wide variety of high school preparations are often thrown together into large introductory STEM courses. In these courses, it’s easy to mistake background for innate ability, and students often compare themselves to their classmates through grades and through their relative speed on homework and exams. These comparisons can heavily influence students’ decision to major in, for example, computer science [2] and most likely have similar effects on majoring in STEM in general. This tendency to mistake background for ability is likely amplified in courses and majors in physics, math, and computer science, where students face additional U.S. cultural narratives around the need for inherent “genius” ability: either you’re a math person or you’re not [3]. Researchers have also shown that such genius narratives particularly affect African Americans and women from all racial backgrounds due to U.S. stereotypes about these groups [3], [4], [5], [6].

Instructors can play a critical role in either pushing back on these genius narratives or amplifying them further. When instructors don’t point out to students that they might be coming from different backgrounds than their peers, don’t teach the holistic set of skills important to succeeding in science and college more generally, and don’t support students in learning how to give effective self- and peer-feedback to improve their work, no wonder students frame their struggle as something inherent to failures in their own brains.

I’m one of the co-founders of The Compass Project, an APS-award winning program at the University of California, Berkeley that supports undergraduate physical science majors, particularly from marginalized backgrounds. Compass builds an encouraging community, engages students in physics projects, and has a special focus on being reflective about the learning process. In my curriculum and program design work for Compass, I often felt that I was fighting against students’ experiences in introductory calculus-based physics. Among the experiences with negative impact on students is that courses were often graded on a curve, which served to amplify students’ comparisons with one another on every exam. Previously, as a TA for introductory physics, I even had one student in a section refuse to work with anyone else because he had done well on the first exam and “didn’t want to bring up the curve.”

What would it look like for students to have additional information, beyond comparison with other
introductory physics students, in deciding whether to major in physics and astronomy? How might it influence students’ decisions on a major if they were also engaged in a challenging project of interest to them in which they could acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses, be supported to grow and improve, and feel really good about the outcome?

This is just the first few paragraphs of this article. Read the Full Article in the June 2015 Edition of Status.

References Cited

[1] https://guidebook.com/guide/28858/event/10150262/

[2] Lewis, C. M., Yasuhara, K., & Anderson, R. E. 2011 August, “Deciding to major in computer science: a grounded theory of students’ self-assessment of ability. In Proceedings of the seventh international workshop on Computing education research, pp. 3-10. ACM.

[3] Leslie, S. J., Cimpian, A., Meyer, M., & Freeland, E. 2015, “Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines, ”Science, 347, 262

[4] Nasir, N. I. S., & Shah, N. 2011, “On defense: African American males making sense of racialized narratives in mathematics education,” Journal of African American Males in Education, 2 (1), 24

[5] Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. 1995, “Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans, ”Journal of personality and social psychology,” 69 (5), 797

[6] Spencer, S. J., Steele, C. M., & Quinn, D. M. 1999, “Stereotype threat and women’s math performance", Journal of experimental social psychology, 35 (1), 4

[7] http://www.berkeleycompassproject.org

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

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.

Women of Color in Astronomy and Astrophysics

"Women of Color in Astronomy and Astrophysics" was a joint effort of the AAS Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy (CSMA) and the AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA). It was written by Dara Norman, Jedidah Isler & Hakeem Oluseyi (CSMA) and Nancy Morrison, Caroline Simpson & Laura Trouille (CSWA). It is especially powerful because it describes strategies for overcoming the barriers that have kept the percentages of Women of Color in the sciences so low.

 

This document is part of the 2013 conference entitled, “Seeking Solutions: Maximizing American Talent by Advancing Women of Color in Academia.” It is reprinted here with permission from the National Academy of Sciences, Courtesy of the National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.

 

Introduction

 

Women of color (WoC) are at the intersection of race and gender. While they experience issues that arise for both women and minority groups, they are often overlooked in efforts on behalf of either category, to the detriment of their persistence in academia [1]. The next section of this article enumerates barriers that face WoC in astronomy, starting with those that particularly affect career establishment (early graduate student to postdoctoral) and moving to those that impact later career stages. Later sections describe steps toward solutions to these problems, measures taken by the American Astronomical Society (AAS), and lessons learned from academic programs.

 

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%).

The Best Part of My Week

Two years ago I made the transition from academic science to data science. There are many aspects of industry that mesh better with my working style. However one very important industry practice that I feel is lacking in academia (at least for many of the people I have spoken to) are mechanisms for regular evaluation and feedback — especially for graduate students and postdocs.

Lately I've been facilitating workshops on the Impostor Syndrome and having many conversations with people about my process of dealing with and overcoming my own impostor feelings. For me a huge problem with my experience in graduate school was a constant nagging fear that I wasn't performing at an adequate level. There are so few metrics by which to measure success; if I didn't published N papers, make any major discoveries, or win any prizes or grants — how was I to know if I was ‘cutting it?’ And even if I did accomplish some of these milestones, there were always stories of other people who did it more, better, and faster. This was the perfect breeding ground for my impostor thoughts.

AASWOMEN Newsletter for October 31, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of October 31, 2014

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

This week's issues:

1.Stereotype Threat and the Math Gender Gap 

2.Respect Isn’t Enough

3.Reflections from an astronomer at the Grace Hopper Celebration of women in computing

4.Dr. Karen Masters wins Women of the Future award

5.Networking: Using Science To Grow Your Business

6.The 2015 James Smithson Fellowship Program

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

Stereotype Threat and the Math Gender Gap

Negative stereotypes about women’s and girls’ abilities in STEM persist despite considerable gains in the last few decades. Stereotype threat is related to the anxiety women face in a situation where they have the potential to confirm a negative stereotype about women as a group. Two common stereotypes are prevalent in society and form the foundation for the threat condition: (1) girls are not as good as boys in STEM; and (2) scientific work is better suited to men than to women. As early as elementary school, kids are aware of these stereotypes and can express stereotypical beliefs about which STEM courses are suitable for girls and boys (Farenga & Joyce 1999; Ambady et al. 2001).

 

Girls and young women are aware of, and negatively affected by, the stereotypical image of a scientist as a man. Although largely unspoken, negative stereotypes about women and girls in STEM are very much alive (Buck et al. 2008). A large body of experimental research has found that negative stereotypes affect women’s and girls’ performance and aspirations in STEM. Even girls who strongly identify with math - who think that they are good at math and being good in math is important to them - are susceptible to the effects (Nguyen & Ryan 2008).

 

Stereotype threat may help explain this discrepancy: girls get higher grades in STEM classes but lower scores on high-stakes tests like the math SAT and AP calculus exam. Stereotype threat may also help explain why fewer girls express interest in careers in mathematically demanding fields. Girls may be trying to reduce the likelihood that they will be judged through the lens of negative stereotypes by avoiding these fields all together.

Where Are All the Women?

The below is an op-ed piece reproduced from UC Berkeley's The Daily Californian by physics PhD student Kate Kamdin. Kate is the head coordinator for UC Berkeley's Society of Women in the Physical Sciences and was on the organizing committee for the 2014 West Coast Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics. Kate gave a wonderful talk at CUWiP where she summarized research regarding the "gender gap" of women in the physical sciences: Mind the Gap: A Statistical Approach to Understanding Gender Inequality in the Physical Sciences.

In 2010, only about 20 percent of students with bachelor’s degrees or doctorates in physics were women, lagging far behind biology, chemistry, math and earth sciences. Only 8 percent of full physics professors are women. To address this underrepresentation, UC Berkeley hosted the West Coast Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics with more than 150 female students in attendance. In light of the press from the conference, I was asked to write about my experience as a woman in physics and why women in physics should stay in physics. I’d like to say now, before you read any further, that I am not here to tell women in physics to stay in physics. Women, I’m sure, are tired of being told what to do.

Why So Few? Stereotype Threat

The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), profiles the research of Dr. Joshua Aronson, a psychologist at New York University, who shows that negative stereotypes about girls’ and women’s abilities in math and science persist and can adversely affect their performance in these fields through a phenomenon known as stereotype threat. Stereotype threat arises in situations where a person fears that her or his performance will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype.

For example, a female student taking a difficult math test might experience an extra cognitive and emotional burden of worry that if she performed poorly, her performance would reinforce and confirm the stereotype that women are not good at math. This added burden of worry can have a negative effect on her performance. In one experiment, researchers gave a math test to two groups of female and male college students with similar math abilities. One group was told that men perform better than women do on the test (the “stereotype threat” group), and the other group was told that there were no gender differences (the “no stereotype threat” group).

Values Affirmation and You: What You Deeply Care About Affects Your Ability to Do Science (Now Featuring Peer Review!)

Today I am sharing a guest post from Dr. Sarah Ballard. Dr. Ballard completed her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Harvard University in 2012 and is now a NASA Sagan fellow at the University of Washington.

It was only several years into graduate school that I learned that language already existed to describe my academic experience in science. I’m an unusual astronomer in some ways, having arrived in the field only after devoting my early undergraduate studies to Peace and Conflict Studies and Gender Studies. I was inculcated in the early years of college with language that describes the human experience. I was literally tested on phrases such as “intersectionality of oppression” and “safe space.” Value is assigned in these disciplines, in the form of grades, to a student’s ability to articulate ideas of bias and privilege. I wrote essays in exam rooms, after poring over assigned articles, on how wrongs get righted within human group dynamics. I thought and wrote about the activities people undertake to restore feelings of dignity and agency to underserved groups: this was once my major. 

Let me describe to you here why this is relevant to you, an astrophysicist. Let me describe a way that you can leverage the knowledge other fields accrue about imperfect human functioning under high pressure. Let me make the argument to you that reflection on self-worth can alleviate distress and underperformance in yourself, your colleagues, your mentees.

Is science is in the eye of the beholder? [Hint: NO]

This week we have another guest post by Renee Hlozek, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University. Take it away, Renee!

Side note: The past couple months haven't been great for women in science and science journalism. This post links to all the stories of racism and sexism as as experienced by Danielle Lee (#standingwithdnlee!!) and the sexual harassment allegations made by Monica Byrne and Hannah Waters. To be honest, I am pretty overcome by the stories of late. I (like a surprisingly large number of female scientists I know) have experienced sexual harassment, albeit of a rather different kind to that discussed in the articles. While I have lots of thoughts on the pieces, I'm going to save those thoughts for another time and discuss something perhaps a little less obvious. I was actually pretty nervous to discuss even this one for fear of the usual comments it might elicit, but that makes me all the more decided to do so.

We all have bias. If you think you don't, try this eye-opening test on implicit bias from Project Implicit. It'll make you think. 

But while we're getting much better on average at identifying obvious forms of bias and sexism (at least I feel there is forward momentum!), one form of sexism is much more subtle: benevolent sexism. Rather than just giving a definition of the term, I'm going to try and relate what happened to me as an example and explain how this well-meaning person made me so angry and frustrated that I had to take a few (many) moments away from my colleagues to calm myself.

Chairing Review Panels

Enough time has gone by that I can now tell this story without fear of breaching confidentiality. I “recently” chaired a NASA proposal review panel. The identity of the panel members is generally confidential; you don’t know the participants ahead of time, and you don’t discuss the results after the panel business is complete. I have participated in these reviews since I started in solar physics – almost 25 years ago. My name comes up every two or three years, and I head to DC. The panel spends several days reviewing proposals, and comes up with a ranking for NASA. The process usually works pretty well.

In all the years I have been doing this, I have never been part of a panel that was chaired by a woman. (Since the panel membership is not public domain, I only have information on the panels I have served on.) I have noticed a trend – the panel chairs used to be more senior than me, then about my level, and recently, younger than me. These chairs can be reasonably effective or not particularly effective; in some cases, the NASA discipline scientist takes over most of the chairing duties, so the panel still gets the job done.

A few months after participating in the panel review process, I happened to run into the NASA discipline scientist at a conference. The situation was right to have a quiet word about this business of chairing panels. It did not take me long to realize that I had walked right into a trap! Always on the lookout for panel members, he immediately asked if I would chair a panel in the next round of reviews. I was expecting to do this in two to three years, not two to three months. But I had asked for it, and here was an opportunity. I simply had to agree to chair the panel.

What Can I Do? CSWA Town Hall

I often get questions from graduate students and postdocs related to how they can help CSWA. They know they don’t have the time to commit to being a full-fledged committee member, but they believe in what we’re doing and want to do something to support women in astronomy & help create a female-friendly workplace. We have had some great suggestions from CSWA members, CSWA alums, and AASWOMEN readers. Today’s suggestions is especially timely because the CSWA Town Hall, “Unconscious Bias, Stereotype Threat, and Impostor Syndrome,” is taking place TODAY, Tuesday, June 4, at 12:45 - 1:45 pm in Wabash Ballroom 3 of the Indiana Convention Center.

Today’s suggestion: Invite your department chair/boss/research supervisor to attend the CSWA Town Hall.

Hope to see you there!

CSWA Town Hall in Indianapolis

CSWA is hosting a Town Hall at the Indianapolis AAS meeting. Please join us!

Title: Unconscious Bias, Stereotype Threat, and Impostor Syndrome
Date: Tuesday, June 4
Time: 12:45 - 1:45 pm
Place: Wabash Ballroom 3 (Indiana Convention Center)

Abstract: Women and other underrepresented groups in astronomy can face a powerful combination of hidden obstacles. With unconscious bias, men and women both unconsciously devalue the contributions of women. This can have a detrimental effect on grant proposals, job applications, and performance reviews. Stereotype threat is the anxiety women face in a situation where they have the potential to confirm a negative stereotype about women as a group. This anxiety alone can result in documented cases of lower scores on standardized math tests. Highly competent women may also face impostor syndrome where they find it impossible to believe in their own competence. They live with a fear of being discovered. The CSWA Town Hall at the Indianapolis AAS meeting will discuss these issues in the context of the AAUW report entitled, “Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.” The Town Hall will include at least 30 minutes for discussion and answering questions from the audience.

The Subtle ‘Stereotype Threat’ That May Be Driving Women Out of Science-Related Fields

The following is taken from Doug Barry's recent post at jezebel.com


According to new research into the glaring gender gap in science and math-related fields, the psychological phenomenon known as the "stereotype threat" may be discouraging female scientists from relishing their work, which sucks because without more women entering the scientific workforce, America is probably going to soon become a nation of cave-dwelling primates that believe thunder is just God's giant cosmic dog thumping against celestial floorboards in an effort to scratch behind its ear. Or some such non-scientific wackiness.

NPR's Shankar Vedantam reports on a study about why so many women drop out of science-related fields conducted by University of British Columbia psychologist Toni Schmader and her University of Arizona colleague Matthias Mehl. Using a device called an Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) that the Stasi would have been super jealous of, Schmader and Mehl collected daily soundbites (about 5 an hour and 70 a day) of women working in science-related fields. They found that, whereas men seemed more energized when discussing their work, when women talked to their male colleagues about work, they seemed disengaged. When women talked to other female colleagues about work, however, they seemed engaged, and when they talked to men about leisure activities, the anxieties that marred previous work-related conversations vanished. Schmader and Mehl looked for instances of men being overtly hostile or nasty to their female colleagues as a possible explanation for this disconnect, but, finding that all the conversations were perfectly civil, they realized that there was another far more subtle phenomenon causing women who'd endured grueling Ph.D. programs to suddenly cut their science careers short.

Schmader and Mehl identified the "stereotype threat," a psychological phenomenon first identified by psychologist Claude Steele, as the culprit behind the dearth of women in science-related fields. Steele explained the threat as something that, though never necessarily overt, would hang over the heads of certain groups of people like a cloud, affecting the way they saw themselves in the context of a larger group of people. Describing how the "stereotype threat" affects us, Steele wrote,

Everyone experiences stereotype threat. We are all members of some group about which negative stereotypes exist, from white males and Methodists to women and the elderly. And in a situation where one of those stereotypes applies - a man talking to women about pay equity, for example, or an aging faculty member trying to remember a number sequence in the middle of a lecture - we know that we may be judged by it.

As it pertained to Schmader and Mehl's study, the stereotype threat made women second guess themselves when they talked to a male colleague because there's an implicit cultural assumption that men are just naturally more inclined towards the sciences than women. That, coupled with the fact that the sciences are dominated by men threw female scientists off-balance in their work-related conversations with male colleagues. According to Schmader,

For a female scientist, particularly talking to a male colleague, if she thinks it's possible he might hold this stereotype, a piece of her mind is spent monitoring the conversation and monitoring what it is she is saying, and wondering whether or not she is saying the right thing, and wondering whether or not she is sounding competent, and wondering whether or not she is confirming the stereotype.

Schmader and Mehl warned that people shouldn't take this to mean that the difficulty women have staying put in science fields is all some elaborate, paranoid fiction — the stereotype threat is a very real and pernicious phenomenon that keeps people from feeling confident about their standing within a particular community. When women look around a lab and see a bunch of lab-coated penises flopping from petri dish to petri dish, they might wonder if they really belong in that environment. "If people like me," Schmader said, explaining a female scientist's dismay at finding herself the seeming exception to some unspoken stereotype, "aren't represented in this field, then it makes me feel like it's a bad fit, like I don't belong here." The only way to combat the stereotype threat, then, is to more actively encourage women to enter the sciences, which in turn will keep America out of the caves and maybe help us staff up a mission to Mars. Come on, people, we can totally do this.

For the full NPR All Things Considered New Story, click here.

Posted by L. Trouille

Walking on Eggshells

Today's guest post is by Bekki Dawson, a graduate student in the Astronomy Department at
Harvard University. Her research focuses on the dynamics of planetary systems.

The battle for gender equity is sometimes waged at picnic tables, during the sliver of Boston summer weather pleasant enough for someone to bother rounding up a few of us to eat outside. The table gradually fills as people emerge from the building with their microwaved Tupperware. One colleague pauses as he approaches the table. "I hope I'm not interrupting a Women in Science Meeting."

I hadn't noticed until now that all four of us seated at the picnic table are women. For a moment, no one says anything and I should definitely say something, but not just anything, and I don't know how to respond, only how not to. My list of How Not to Respond goes like:

1. For goodness sake, don't “overreact”.
2. But whatever you do, don't just pretend like nothing happened! This is exactly that sort of remark that can subtly cause women to feel like they don't belong in our field. Go on, champion some gender equity!
3. Also, don't spend the rest of the lunch distractedly dissecting your sandwich as you try to put yourself in his shoes. You'll find it hard to empathize, because your own experiences with skewed gender ratios are off by a couple orders of magnitude: like at the packed physics seminar, when you look around and see only one other woman in the audience and realize, with a mixture of unease and glee, that you're Not Supposed to Be Here. "I hope I'm not interrupting a Men in Science Meeting."

Maybe, despite my attempts at adherence to How Not to Respond #1, I am overreacting. Maybe this is just like if all four folks at the picnic table were wearing khakis. Someone wearing corduroys might feel awkward.

If one little innocent joke can unnerve me for hours, it's no wonder that some astronomers feel like they're walking on eggshells. They're kind and well-meaning people full of hearty good humor unbounded by political correctness; they find themselves unable, despite their excellent intentions, to comply with whims and dictates of the sensitive and easily-offended.

I have a message for anyone who thinks that women in astronomy advocates are often overreacting: I hear you. The feeling that you're walking on eggshells, that people are taking offense at what you say and do with your best intentions, is legitimate. But any advocate for overturning the status quo is by definition “overreacting”.

When I first came to the Center for Astrophysics, I got lost a lot; a century of remodeling has produced a network of buildings with unexpected dead ends and floor numberings that don't line up. Even as an Nth year graduate student, I still get lost on occasion, and it rattles me to be somewhere so comfortable and familiar and then suddenly, disorientatingly have no idea where I am. When you've endeavored to be a good person all your life and then find yourself inadvertently offending people, I imagine it's sort of like getting lost in your own astronomy department.

But sometimes you have to embrace getting lost. Getting lost makes me realize that though I think I know the Center for Astrophysics well, all I actually know is just my own flawed, inaccurate perception of it, that doesn't include a second entrance to the library or a neglected corridor on the first floor. If you -- reader who struggles to walk on eggshells -- can embrace the idea that sexism and unconscious bias sometimes make the astronomical community a disheartening place for women and others from underrepresented groups, perhaps you'll recognize that those eggshells you find yourself walking on don't represent fragile, shoulder-chipped egos primed for a fight but a delicate, budding sense of belonging, a feeling of Not Being Not Supposed to Be Here, something that is worth taking care not to crush.

Let's turn now to the related situation in which you wish -- with the best of intentions -- to discuss something related to underrepresentation in astronomy, but you're worried about offending someone. What to do? Here are some of my suggestions, and I hope that others will share their own suggestions in the comments:

1. Listen as much as possible. In the case of women of astronomy, many have experienced not being able to get a word in edgewise -- or of speaking but not being heard -- so it would be particularly frustrating to have that happen in a conversation about women in astronomy.
2. Instead of soliciting an opinion on a sensitive topic in front of a group, forcing someone to serve as a spokesperson for an underrepresented group, consider having a conversation one-on-one.
3. Demonstrate your trustworthiness by keeping personal stories confidential unless the person you're speaking with gives you explicit permission to share. But see what they would prefer -- maybe they would like to spread the story to raise awareness.
4. Even if your first reaction is skepticism (for example, to someone's claims of discrimination) try to be open-minded. All you have to judge by are your own perceptions and experiences, and there may be parts of the building that you've never discovered.

More Responses to Tierney

Since my last post on Tierney's NY Times Op Ed piece, he's published part 2 of the series, which continues the argument that the only obstacles that women in science face are themselves. A number of bloggers have taken on the task of debunking the articles, including astronomer Ed Bertschinger. He notes,

As Head of the MIT Physics Department, I categorically reject his conclusion that stereotype threat and implicit bias play no significant role in holding back women in the hard sciences. They do; I have seen them at work.

I recommend you go read the whole article, it's quite a good read.

Our very own CSWA has taken on the issue of implicit bias and stereotype threat at recent meetings, including plenty of data on the subjects. But, as Isis notes, Tierney does enough cherry-picking to make a pie. After all, Tierney himself demonstrates the bias that women face, by blaming our lack of advancement on our soft maternal natures, rather than realizing that the assumption that we care more about work-family balance than our careers is an example of the kind of bias we face.

Finally, I just wanted to note that I was a little surprised that I didn't see more of an uproar on the blogosphere on Tierney's articles than I did. After all, he did "dare" us to confront him. But I think many of us are suffering from outrage fatigue. After all, it's the same tired arguments over and over again. So I think it's worth taking Zuska's point to heart: Tierney's audience is not us, women in science and our supporters. Rather, he is lobbying against a specific piece of legislation that would help us. And right there is the reason that we should continue to fight, no matter how tired we become of the battle.