AASWOMEN for September 10, 2010

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of September 10, 2010
eds. Joan Schmelz, Caroline Simpson amp; Michele Montgomery

This week's issues:

1. Partner Accommodation and Dual Career Appointments

2. Maybe There Is Hope After All

3. Video Interview with Professor Margaret Murnane

4. Conference for Undergraduate Women

5. Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mentoring

6. US-Israel Travel Grants & Workshop Program

7. Humboldt Research Fellowships

8. Faculty Position in Astrophysics/Particle Physics

***The following positions were taken from WIPHYS***

9. How to Submit, Subscribe, or Unsubscribe to AASWOMEN

10. Access to Past Issues of AASWOMEN

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.

AASWomen for September 3, 2010

Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of September 3, 2010
eds. Joan Schmelz, Caroline Simpson amp; Michele Montgomery

This week's issues:

1. The "Astronomy in Society" chapter of the Decadal Report

2. Essential Cosmology school

3. Young Leaders Program for Undergraduate Women in their Junior Year

4. Tenure-track Faculty Position in Astrophysics

5. National Research Council Canada (NRC) - Fellowship Postings

*** FOLLOWING JOB POSTING TAKEN FROM WIPHYS ***

6. MIT Pappalardo Fellowships in Physics

7. AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships

8. How to Submit, Subscribe, or Unsubscribe to AASWOMEN

9. Access to Past Issues of AASWOMEN

Decadal Survey Town Hall redux

Yesterday, I went to the Decadal Survey Town Hall held at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC. This being within easy driving distance of University of Maryland, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Space Telescope Science Institute, I was fully expecting to have to fight for seating.

Only a few dozen people showed up.

Does this mean that everyone has heard their fill of the Decadal Survey already? That everyone is completely happy with the results? That they don't care about it? That the meeting wasn't well-publicized? That people are afraid of Washington, DC?

As for the Women in Astronomy^TM perspective on the meeting, I believe I personally knew every woman except maybe one in the room. For all that astronomy is the study of the universe on the largest scales, it's a pretty small world.

AASWomen for August 27, 2010

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of August 27, 2010
eds. Joan Schmelz, Caroline Simpson & Michele Montgomery

This week's issues:

1. National Academies Report on Gender Differences

2. MIT Opens Discussions on Endorsements of the Pasadena Recommendations

3. Balancing Work-Life

4. SETI Gurls

5. Women Astronomers: Reaching for the Stars

6. NASAs Summer of Innovation Project

7. AAAS Awards and Prizes

8. National Research Council of the National Academies

9. Postdoctoral Fellowships at Swinburne University

10. How to Submit, Subscribe, or Unsubscribe to AASWOMEN

11. Access to Past Issues of AASWOMEN

AASWomen for August 20, 2010

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of August 20, 2010
eds. Joan Schmelz, Caroline Simpson & Michele Montgomery

This week's issues:

1. New CSWA Members

2. 10 Tips for Women Students in Science Fields

3. Update on Women Speakers

4. More on the Tierney Talking Points

5. NASA and Mary J. Blige Encourage Science Careers for Women

6. Astronomy Enrollments and Degrees

7. How to Submit, Subscribe, or Unsubscribe to AASWOMEN

8. Access to Past Issues of AASWOMEN

Decadal Report

As virtually every US astronomer knows, the 2010 Decadal Report was released on Friday the 13th, August 2010. Personally, I was on vacation at the time and missed the live webcast. What I have gathered is that if you work in a field that was prioritized by the report and would benefit by WFIRST, then you think the report is great. Otherwise, you think the report sucks.

Kidding aside, I'm not here to discuss the science prioritization. I'm here to discuss the small part of the report relevant to the Women in Astronomy blog, the chapter entitled "Astronomy in Society."

After downloading all 81 MB of the report and giving it a cursory read, I note that they say all the right things about bringing in more minorities and women into astronomy. I'm glad that they also note that retention of women in particular is tied into the narrow career trajectory that astronomers are expected to follow. However, the thing that I think is missing from the report is integrating these issues of diversity in with the science priorities.

There are definitely some subfields of astronomy that have fewer women than others. Offhand, I would list cosmology, theory, and instrumentation as those that have fewer women, and exoplanets and extragalactic observation as those that are more enriched with women. So if the top science priorities are high redshift astronomy, exoplanets, and fundamental physics, I'd guess that exoplanets are enriched in women and the other two depleted.

What I would like to understand is how program prioritization based on the Decadal Report's recommendations is going to affect the demographics of the astronomy community. But given the way the panels were subdivided into science topics separate from demographics, perhaps it was inevitable that an integrated perspective would be lacking. What we can do with this report now that the science priorities for the next decade have been announced is to encourage young women to pursue growth fields and hope that they succeed.