Astronomy
I'm going to start off this first post on this topic with a simple axiomatic statement: Women and men are equally capable of being successful astronomers. There is no inherent difference in mental capacity, creativity, ability to learn, or any other factor that plays into the success of an astronomer.
- The Gender Breakdown Of The Applicant Pool For Tenure-track Faculty Positions At A Sample Of North American Research Astronomy Programs
Figure 1: Left: Histogram of the number of searches versus F/(F +M) in the total sample (black) and for the searches at NRC ranked Astronomy programs (red). For the former, the mean and median of the distribution are ? 0.18±0.04 and 0.19, whereas for...
- On The Number Of Women Hired
In my previous post I provided an update on the number and percentage of women hired in tenure-track professor positions over the past year. In 2014, women were hired into 40% of available positions, representing a remarkable 16 out of 40 hires....
- Why Are There So Few Female Physics Faculty?
Analysis by the American Institute of Physics Statistical Research Center this summer by Susan White & Rachel Ivie questions whether the low percentage of women faculty in physics departments, and their absence from many departments, is evidence of...
- On The Math Achievement Gender "gap"
In previous posts I have written in support of affirmative action under the assumption that "men and women are equally capable of succeeding as professional astronomers. There is no inherent (intrinsic) difference in mental capacity, creativity,...
- First The Facts
Today's guest blogger is Annika Peter. I am a dark-matter and gravitational-dynamics junkie, currently finishing up a postdoctoral position at UC Irvine, and moving to a faculty position in the Departments of Physics and Astronomy at The Ohio State...
Astronomy
Where are the women astronomy professors?
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Entwives en Hiver by kaiorton |
Guest-post by John Johnson, professor of Astronomy in the Caltech Department of Astrophysics. His research is on the detection and characterization of exoplanets. This post is a re-post from his blog.
I'm going to start off this first post on this topic with a simple axiomatic statement: Women and men are equally capable of being successful astronomers. There is no inherent difference in mental capacity, creativity, ability to learn, or any other factor that plays into the success of an astronomer.
Given this axiomatic starting point, it stands to reason that the fraction of women on the faculty at the top astronomy institutions should reflect the fraction of women earning PhDs. A quick glance through the "People" pages of the websites for Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley and Caltech astro departments (hereafter referred to as the "Big-4") shows that 31% of the graduate students (with gender-identifiable names) are women. Granted, there may be some errors on the various webpages, and I wasn't able to identify the gender of every student. But as a quick sanity check, I do have access to the student records over the past 10 years in Caltech astro. During this time (2001-2011) there have been 47 PhDs, 14 of them women, or 29.8%. So 30% is a pretty solid number for the fraction of women graduating with astronomy PhDs over the past decade (records going back to 1991 show about 27% over the past 20 years).
However, among the active (not retired), tenured or tenure-track faculty at these four institutions, only 12 out of 76 professors are women, or 15.7%. Thus, there is a factor of two decrease in the number of women between grad school and the tenure track. On the one hand, this is really good compared to physics. Take Caltech Physics as an example, where only 3 of the 49 faculty are women (6%). On the other hand if we stay focused just on astronomy, it is clear that there is a major leak in the pipeline.
Why should we care that the pipeline is leaky? Well, if women and men are equally capable of success and we are only drawing from the male side of the pool, then we are trading a non-negligible number of highly talented women for less-talented men. For any institution that prioritizes "excellence"---as all of the Big-4 claim they do---this is a major problem. This leak results in some number of junior faculty not getting tenure, while individuals who would have succeeded in those positions fall out of the hiring pool.
It is for this reason---and many other compelling reasons---that excellence without diversity is an empty concept. Sadly, I've witnessed first-hand the prevailing attitude that excellence and diversity are orthogonal concepts: one can only increase diversity by giving up on "excellence." Indeed, I've heard a faculty member at one of the Big-4 institutions say, "It is not our responsibility to fix the world's woes. We must focus on astronomy." Well, if one truly believes that men and women are equally capable, then this notion is pure hogwash. If we are losing talent from the female side of the PhD pool then we are hampering our efforts at achieving true excellence, and it is our problem to solve no matter the institution.
- The Gender Breakdown Of The Applicant Pool For Tenure-track Faculty Positions At A Sample Of North American Research Astronomy Programs
Figure 1: Left: Histogram of the number of searches versus F/(F +M) in the total sample (black) and for the searches at NRC ranked Astronomy programs (red). For the former, the mean and median of the distribution are ? 0.18±0.04 and 0.19, whereas for...
- On The Number Of Women Hired
In my previous post I provided an update on the number and percentage of women hired in tenure-track professor positions over the past year. In 2014, women were hired into 40% of available positions, representing a remarkable 16 out of 40 hires....
- Why Are There So Few Female Physics Faculty?
Analysis by the American Institute of Physics Statistical Research Center this summer by Susan White & Rachel Ivie questions whether the low percentage of women faculty in physics departments, and their absence from many departments, is evidence of...
- On The Math Achievement Gender "gap"
In previous posts I have written in support of affirmative action under the assumption that "men and women are equally capable of succeeding as professional astronomers. There is no inherent (intrinsic) difference in mental capacity, creativity,...
- First The Facts
Today's guest blogger is Annika Peter. I am a dark-matter and gravitational-dynamics junkie, currently finishing up a postdoctoral position at UC Irvine, and moving to a faculty position in the Departments of Physics and Astronomy at The Ohio State...