Astronomy
I recently attended a local meeting on women in computer science, at the invitation of someone I met at a different meeting on high performance computing. Not that I consider myself a computer scientist, rather I'm more of a scientific computationalist, with the major focus of my research involving high performance computing.
Still, it's an interesting contrast. While the percentage of women in physics and astronomy has generally grown over the last three decades, the percentage of women in computer science reached a peak around 1982, and has decreased ever since.
You can make any number of guesses for cause of this decline. I've heard that it's because computer science grew out of math departments, but moved into engineering departments in the mid-1980s, so it followed the trends of those two fields. I've also heard that it's due to the rise of gaming and the rampant culture of harassment of women (see here for just one article on the subject). However, I didn't see much exploration of that. Granted, I missed half the meeting because of teaching obligations. Still, it was really great to see a big room filled with women in computer science, ranging from undergraduates to tenured faculty.
There were discussions about imposter syndrome, gender bias, and work-family balance. At one point I was talking about my hour-long commute and my reasons for it (my husband commutes an hour in the other direction, so we split the difference), and I was asked, "how do you manage?" My answer to this question is always, "I make it up as I go along." Which is really all any of us can do, when it comes to work-life-family balance. On the other hand, I met another woman at the meeting who had the same commute as me for the same reasons. So even though we're making it up as we go along, at least you learn from meetings like these that you're not alone, and maybe you can even carpool along the way.
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Astronomy
Scientific computing versus computer science
I recently attended a local meeting on women in computer science, at the invitation of someone I met at a different meeting on high performance computing. Not that I consider myself a computer scientist, rather I'm more of a scientific computationalist, with the major focus of my research involving high performance computing.
Still, it's an interesting contrast. While the percentage of women in physics and astronomy has generally grown over the last three decades, the percentage of women in computer science reached a peak around 1982, and has decreased ever since.
There were discussions about imposter syndrome, gender bias, and work-family balance. At one point I was talking about my hour-long commute and my reasons for it (my husband commutes an hour in the other direction, so we split the difference), and I was asked, "how do you manage?" My answer to this question is always, "I make it up as I go along." Which is really all any of us can do, when it comes to work-life-family balance. On the other hand, I met another woman at the meeting who had the same commute as me for the same reasons. So even though we're making it up as we go along, at least you learn from meetings like these that you're not alone, and maybe you can even carpool along the way.
- Why So Few? Transition To College
The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), finds that despite the overall positive trends in high school, the transition to college is a critical...
- Making A Difference
I've recently become involved with an effort on my campus to establish a Women's Advancement and Research Center. Its purpose is to promote women on campus at all levels of leadership, with a special emphasis on women in STEM disciplines. Now,...
- How To Encourage More Girls To Enter Science?
Women earn the majority of college degrees in the U.S. and, since 2009, the majority of doctorates. This is not the case in astronomy or physics. Why are we different? The American Institute of Physics has studied the enrollments of girls and boys in...
- Outliers
First, I want to give a brief shout-out to those who attended the DPS Women's Lunch at last week's DPS Meeting in Pasadena! I found it to be a great opportunity to network and share ways to support fellow women astronomers. Susan Niebur has a...
- Time Management
(I apologize for the absence of posts lately, but I've been quite busy lately. I'm debating whether or not to write up my observations about demographics at the conference I was just at, but for now, I'll leave you with this.) I've been...