Unearned Advantage

Unconscious bias goes hand-in-hand with the concept of unearned advantage. The two kids on the seesaw start out at the same level and can play together. As time goes by, however, one accumulates advantage and the other disadvantage. Any one slight may seem minor, but small imbalances and discrepancies accrue. Not only will they no longer be able to play together in future, but these disparities can have major consequences in salary, promotion, prestige, and advancement to leadership positions (Merton 1948; 1968).

There is no such thing as an unimportant small difference because they all add to the total. Success comes from creating and consolidating these small gains, and successful people seem to know how to take advantage of this. “Mountains are molehills piled one on top of the other” (Valian 1998).

Raising the Bar in Physics Graduate Education

By Meg Urry, Yale University (Department of Physics and Department of Astronomy) 

The following is adapted from a keynote address given at the APS Conference on Graduate Education in January, 2013.  

Reproduced from the June 2013 Issue of Status: A Report on Women in Astronomy

I am pleased to be addressing (and attending) this conference and I also know this audience is deeply committed to graduate education, so you probably don’t need to hear what I am going to say. Nonetheless, I thought a keynote address should be provocative, so I’ve done my best to push some buttons...

The invitation to speak tonight came shortly after the election last November. Front and center in the news was the Republican party’s concern about the shifting demographics in the United States: talking heads and columnists described the vanishing white male, the increasing diversity of the American population, and the sense that modern political parties have to adjust accordingly.

AAS Women for October 18, 2013

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of October 18, 2013
eds: Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, Nick Murphy, & Nicolle Zellner

This week's issues:

1. Statistics on tenured astronomy faculty updated
2. Request for arguments against affirmative action
3. ADVICE: Workplace Bullying in Astronomy I
4. Inspiring New Policies from Spain for Gender Parity in STEM
5. STEM Roundup: Bias, Not Babies, Hamper Women in STEM
6. The First Step to Having More Women in Science Is Maternity Leave
7. Career Profiles: Astronomer to Electrical Engineer
8. 2014 NSF Professional Skills Development Workshops for Women Physicists
9. APS Meetings Child Care Grants
10. Job Opportunities
11. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN Newsletter
12. Access to Past Issues of the AASWOMEN Newsletter

Two Body Careers Survey

The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy is conducting a survey regarding two body careers. Please help us in our pursuit to better understand how two body careers impact the astronomical community. 

Go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CSWATwoBodyCareers to complete a brief survey. We appreciate your input and welcome participation from all members of the astronomical community.

Career Profiles: Astronomer to Electrical Engineer

The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy and the AAS Employment Committee have compiled dozens of interviews highlighting the diversity of career trajectories available to astronomers. The interviews share advice and lessons learned from individuals on those paths.

Below is our interview with Andre Wong, an astronomer turned electrical engineer at Teledyne. If you have questions, suggestions, advice to share, etc. about this career path, please leave a comment below.

For access to all our Career Profile Project interviews, please visit http://aas.org/jobs/career-profiles. We plan to post a new career profile to this blog every first and third Thursday of the month.

Request for arguments against affirmative action

Allow me to start by posing a hypothetical situation:

A top-25 astronomy department has a major gender imbalance on their faculty. Let's say the fraction of women professors is below 10% of the overall faculty (This is a safe example since we don't actually know of such a department, do we? Right? Anyone?). 

Let's suppose that the upper administrators at said hypothetical university (e.g. the Dean of Sciences) would like to address this problem with a radical approach. If the astronomy department conducts a programmatic search for a woman junior professor and identifies a candidate that meets the high bar expected of the university and department, then a special faculty line will be made available that won't count against future departmental hires.

ADVICE: Workplace Bullying in Astronomy I

Photo: Louie Douvis

Unprofessional behavior is not limited to gender discrimination and sexual harassment. There are cases when “something is just not right” in the workplace, which may involve no sexual overtones whatsoever. One such example is Workplace Bullying, which can have some characteristics in common with childhood bullying. It is not limited to women. It can involve teasing or taunting. It can be overt or covert. It can be physically or psychologically threatening. It can come from a supervisor or a collaborator. It can involve spreading rumors about your qualifications or abilities as a scientist. The stress associated with a bullying situation can affect your work and your health. You may even feel that your future career is in jeopardy.

Here is a bullying variation on an astronomical theme that I have heard more than once. Someone (probably more senior than you, but probably not your advisor) inflicts him/herself into your science. He/she could be stealing your ideas, giving the impression to others that you could not succeed without mentorship from him/her, or undermining you with your advisor or collaborators.