Women In Astronomy

Monday, December 19, 2011

AASWOMEN for December 16, 2011

Posted by Unknown

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of December 16, 2011
eds. Joan Schmelz, Caroline Simpson, and Michele Montgomery

This week's issues:

1. Family Leave Policies for Astronomers

2. Autumn Conferences

3. CSWA Web Resources

4. Giving the Tech Industry a Makeover Will Draw More Women

5. America's Women

6. Minorities, Women Often Discouraged from Entering Engineering, Science Fields

7. Job at Florida International University

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

Petition, Please Sign, Family Leave Policies for Astronomers

Posted by Unknown

In the interest of fully supporting the intellectual efforts of astronomy graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, we* have created a petition to encourage the establishment of family leave policies by Astronomy Departments and Fellowship Committees. These policies will provide astronomers with the freedom necessary to excel in academic pursuits while raising a family.

Please indicate your support by signing the petition at:

http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/aaron-geller/petition/index.php

Update: Since posting this message on Tuesday (Dec. 13), over 590 astronomers have signed. Thank you for this support. And thank you for forwarding the message to your departments and institutions. Let's particularly encourage faculty (currently 13% of signatures), staff scientists (currently 8% of signatures), and other mid/late career astronomers to sign.

We will then share the document with all Fellowship program officers and Department chairs and move on to the next phase of this effort.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please email:

astrofamleave@gmail.com

Thanks for your support.

*Emily Freeland, Aaron Geller, Nick Murphy, Laura Trouille

and the AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy

To add to the wiki of current departmental and postdoctoral fellowship family leave policies, please visit: http://www.astrobetter.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Leave+Policies

Monday, December 12, 2011

AASWOMEN for December 09, 2011

Posted by Unknown

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of December 9, 2011
eds. Joan Schmelz, Caroline Simpson amp; Michele Montgomery

This week's issues:

1. "Womanspace" Nature article follow-up

2. Impostors Welcome

3. Water, Ice, and the Origin of Life Summer School

4. Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunities

5. Job Opportunities

6. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

7. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

8. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

Impostors Welcome

Posted by Ed Bertschinger

My title is one of the slogans proposed to increase awareness of Impostor Syndrome by a group of faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students who participated in a facilitated conversation about this subject in my department. Impostor Syndrome is the feeling of not deserving to be in the position you are, and of being afraid that advisors, instructors, or peers will come to realize that you are not as capable as you may seem. The effect can be harmful when it selectively reinforces negative messages and causes people to try less hard because they are convinced they are incompetent when they are not. Conversely, the ability to identify and counter these feelings with positive reinforcement and determination can be very helpful in increasing ability through effort and practice.

I experienced Impostor Syndrome vividly when I started teaching as a faculty member at the very university that rejected me for undergraduate admission. How could I ever hope to teach such brilliant students? Although no one had told me about the syndrome, I knew instinctively that I just had to persevere through my fears. Experience and hard work came to my aid. The lesson? Persistence matters.

When postdoc Kathy Cooksey proposed leading a discussion of Impostor Syndrome in my department, I was delighted that others would learn and share from our collective experience. We also benefitted from an informal survey of graduate students conducted by Stanford Professor Margot Gerritsen. (See her presentation at a career development workshop for graduate students and postdocs in the geosciences.) The survey was not officially endorsed by Stanford nor were the survey questions vetted by experts. Nevertheless, its results ring true and point out a concern for gender equity: women appear to experience Impostor Syndrome more than men. 43% of males surveyed and 62% of females surveyed "often or always" think "I'm afraid to be found out" while 30% of males and 15% of females never or rarely felt that. Responses to these feelings also show gender differences: 52% of males who admitted such feelings felt that their performance was negatively affected compared with 87% of females; 27% of males with such feelings reacted positively ("work harder") while only 7% of females did. Even though the statistical significance of these differences cannot be established, the results are concerning.

It's important for educators to be aware of Impostor Syndrome as well as preventative and palliative measures. It's endemic at my university and maybe at yours. We should educate students that they're not alone in having these feelings and that there are helpful responses. As Kathy suggests, having a malleable rather than a fixed mindset is helpful. Successful people everywhere learn that failure is the first step towards mastery.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." We must not allow ourselves to retain feelings of inferiority. Had I succumbed to that response 30 years ago, I would not be writing here today.

Friday, December 2, 2011

AASWOMEN for December 2, 2011

Posted by Unknown

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of December 2, 2011
eds. Joan Schmelz, Caroline Simpson amp; Michele Montgomery

This week's issues:

1. Why Aren't Prizes Gender Balanced?

2. Gender Balance Among Tenured Astronomers?

3. Percentage of Women Colloquium Speakers: Information Needed

4. Astronomical Bullying

5. Responses to 'Women as Planetary Science Role Models'

6. Working Women Still Struggling

7. CSWP Woman Physicist of the Month Nominations

8. Wanted: Students to Write on Women in Science for Scientista Foundation

9. Childcare Options at 219th AAS Meeting - Austin, TX

10. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

12. Access to Past Issues

Women at Conferences

Posted by Hannah

The CSWA has been making an effort to keep track of the percentages of women speakers at conferences. Recently, we featured a conference with a very high percentage of women speakers, right here on this blog. It's great to see that we are making progress. So, when I received the November 14th mailing from the AAS about the upcoming January meeting in Austin, I couldn't help but read the following enthusiastic description about the invited speakers with some amount of dismay:

"After a weekend of workshops and Historical Astronomy Division (HAD) sessions, the main part of the meeting kicks off Monday morning with the Kavli lecture by Lyman Page (Princeton University) on neutrinos and the cosmic microwave background. Over the next four days we'll hear about award-winning research from other eminent astronomers, including HAD Doggett Prize winner Woodruff T. Sullivan III (University of Washington) on the early days of radio astronomy, High Energy Astrophysics Division Rossi Prize winners Peter F. Michelson (Stanford University) and W. B. Atwood (University of California, Santa Cruz) on doing science with the Fermi Large Area Telescope, and Heineman Prize winner Robert P. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) on Type Ia supernovae and the accelerating universe.
Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg (University of Texas) and Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, will explore the intersection of science, society, and economics in their two invited lectures. Astronomer-astronaut Steven A. Hawley (University of Kansas) will take stock of challenges and achievements in 50 years of human spaceflight. And Linda Tacconi (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics) will close out the week's plenary presentations with her Berkeley Prize lecture on molecular gas in star-forming galaxies in the early universe."

After a bit of investigation, I realized that no, there was actually more than one woman invited to speak at the meeting. It just so happens that only two of the prize winners were women, and it just so happens that one of those women is receiving the woman-only Cannon award, and the other is speaking in the last time slot on the last day of the meeting. That still leaves the question: even if the invited speakers list for the AAS meeting is somewhat gender balanced, why aren't the prizes?

In a similar vein, Female Science Professor proposes boycotting conferences with all-male slates. I wonder if that would really do any good, though, since that might have the effect of skewing the gender balance at that conference to even more all-male. Then again, direct complaints to conference organizers also have a tendency to fall on deaf or denying ears. But then, that's why the CSWA established the conferences webpage in the first place.

EDITED TO ADD: I want to make it clear that I am not at all advocating a boycott of the upcoming AAS Meeting. In fact, I am going myself and look forward to the meeting. (Come see me at the CSWA Special Session on Monday at 2pm!) And I do know that the AAS is sensitive to diversity issues and makes a real effort to achieve diversity of speakers. However, the email advertising the slate of speakers was unfortunate, as it did not give that balanced point of view. So the moral of the story is two-fold: nominate women for prizes, and remember to advertise women as well as you advertise men.