Friday, January 3, 2014

AASWOMEN Newsletter for January 3, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of January 3, 2014
eds: Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, Nick Murphy, & Nicolle Zellner

This week's issues:

1. Professional Development at the 2014 Winter AAS Meeting

2. WGLE's Plans for the January AAS Meeting

3. Flirt with extreme caution #AAS223

4. How this is Related to Astronomy?

5. Give her a dolly that laughs and cries

6. Maternity news

7. What Can I Do? Share Advice & Resources

8. Microloans to Benefit Women in India

9. University of Chicago to Provide Affordable Child Care Grant to Grad Students

10. For women, it's not a glass ceiling but a plugged pipeline

11. Job Opportunities

12. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

14. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter


1. Professional Development at the 2014 Winter AAS Meeting
From: Laura Trouille via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

The number of professional development opportunities at the annual AAS meeting seems to grow every year. And the upcoming January meeting is no exception. This year’s conference features workshops, panel discussions, and talks on everything from Python programming to interviewing skills to changing demographics to maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

To see a list of the career and skills development sessions as well as sessions of particular interest to AASWOMEN readers, please see

http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2013/11/professional-development-at-2014-winter.html

[Reposted from November 22, 2013]

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2. WGLE's Plans for the January AAS Meeting
From: Van Dixon via the WGLE members email list

If you are planning to attend the AAS meeting in Washington next week, please join us for the following Working Group on LGBTIQ Equality (WGLE) events:

WGLE Town Hall Monday, January 6, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM, National Harbor 4 Last spring, the LGBT+ Physicists released a best-practices document for academic departments that want to be more LGBT friendly. We are working with them to expand this document to include the needs of astronomers. I will present our results at a town hall on Monday.

LGBTIQ Networking Dinner Monday, January 6, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM, AAS Registration Desk We'll have our traditional dinner on Monday evening. Meet us at the AAS Registration Desk.

Poster 450: How did the Supreme Court ruling on DOMA affect astronomers? Thursday, January 9, 9:00 AM - 2:00 PM; Exhibit Hall ABC Jane Rigby will inform our colleagues what the demise of DOMA has (and has not) done for astronomers.

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3. Flirt with extreme caution #AAS223
From: Kelle Cruz via AstroBetter

At all conferences, the boundary between professional and social interactions can be very blurred. While one of the best things about conferences like the AAS Meeting is hanging out with friends and meeting new people, we all need to remember that these are still primarily professional relationships and we need be very conscious about socially acceptable behavior which in a professional context, can make many people uncomfortable and have unintended consequences.

To read more please see

http://www.astrobetter.com/flirt-with-extreme-caution-aas223

For AAS's anti-harrassment policy, please see

http://aas.org/policies/anti-harassment-policy

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4. How this is Related to Astronomy?
From: Jessica Kirkpatrick via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

As part of my role as Blogger-in-Chief for Women in Astronomy, I cross-post blog articles to groups on various social networks. Cross-posting has been great at getting wider exposure for this blog, and our readership has increased dramatically since I've started doing this.

However, with increased readership and exposure, we also get increased feedback, criticism, and frustrating responses to our posts. As the person who posts these blog articles to these communities, I get notified when people comment, and its been very interesting to see how many people don't believe that discrimination, harassment, or biases exist in scientific communities, or don't think information about these issues is relevant to them.

Below are some examples of these discussions, with links to the threads on Google+ and Facebook. I encourage those of you who read this blog to participate in these discussions (mostly in the Facebook Astronomers Group and the Google+ Science Community although there is also discussions in the LinkedIn Groups Association for Women in Science, APS Physics, Women in Physics, and American Astronomical Society. In my opinion, the fact that people vocalize these views means that we have much more work to do.

To read more please see

http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2013/12/how-this-is-related-to-astronomy.html

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5. Give her a dolly that laughs and cries
From: Hannah Jang-Condell via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

The holiday gift season is winding down now, which is a big relief to me. I even managed to avoid stepping foot into Toys R Us this year. Why do I despise Toys R Us so much? Because when you walk in, the store is neatly divided into the PINK half, and the black-and-blue half. It drives me crazy how gender-segregated children's toys are these days. This article about the toy aisles in Target is spot-on, if extremely snarky.

What gets me the most is the LEGO Friends thing. On the one hand, I can get that LEGO wants to market to girls. On the other hand, those LEGO Friends toys are not LEGOs anymore. You can't take them apart and build an entirely new vehicle or building of your own design and have fabulous adventures limited only by your imagination. As Andrea Petri says in the article above,

"Pretty much everything in the pink aisle was designed in a way that limited the number of stories you could tell with it. In the blue aisle, accessories vary. There’s a Batman with a submarine. There’s a ninja with a castle. Not in the pink aisle. Everybody just had hairbrushes."

To read more please see

http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2014/01/give-her-dolly-that-laughs-and-cries.html

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6. Maternity news
From: Ed Bertschinger via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

This map is from @Amazing_Maps, and it surprised me. I knew that our maternity (and paternity) policies in the US are far behind those of Europe, especially the Nordic countries. But we're no more advanced than Suriname, Papa New Guinea and Liberia? That's news.

Yes, there is a value judgment here, namely that in order to achieve and sustain excellence, organizations and societies that help women and men balance family and work are preferable to those that do not.

To read more please see

http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2013/12/maternity-news.html

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7. What Can I Do? Share Advice & Resources
From: Caroline Simpson via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

Spread the word in casual conversation, in class, wherever it seems appropriate, about resources online for women in science. Have links on your own webpage to them. Good examples would be the CSWA Advice page and the CSWA Resources page. Post your favorites in the comments section so the rest of us can share them.

Make sure your department webpage and/or Facebook page occasionally donates some time and space to women-related issues, items, resources, and news announcements. This doesn’t need to be limited to items directly related to your department; include national and international items that indicate that your department is conscious of the challenges facing underrepresented minorities. If you have policies or benefits that are of particular interest to women or dual-career couples, highlight that.

To read more please see

http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-can-i-do-share-advice-resources.html

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8. Microloans to Benefit Women in India
From: Neil Gehrels via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

The holiday season is a great time to spend time with family and friends. The conversations range far and wide from new boy and girlfriends for the kids to world wars and peace. I have a "sister", Shermali, from Sri Lanka who's astronomer father was a colleague of my dad and she lived with our family through undergrad and grad school years. She now comes to my parent's house in Tucson with the rest of us for Christmas. This year the topic of microloans in India came up in our discussions.

Organizations make small loans to rural families in India to allow them to get started in business. There are hundreds of millions of people who can not get credit because they have few assets for collateral Many of them are women who often have less education and not as many business connections as the men in the village. The loans are typically $100 to $200. A common use of the money is to buy a cow or a sewing machine.

To read more please see

http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2013/12/microloans-to-benefit-women-in-india.html

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9. University of Chicago to Provide Affordable Child Care Grant to Grad Students
From: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein [chanda_at_mit.edu]

Here at MIT, our child care centers give scholarships to make them more accessible, but the amount that the cost is reduced by is a joke to my postdoc friends. Unless their spouse makes a lot more than they do, it's completely out of reach. Grad students shouldn't even bother looking. Because of this, I was especially pleased to hear the following news from my friends at the University of Chicago: After a hard fought battle, student organizers and the Graduate Student Union have won affordable child care grants for grad students. This is an enormous challenge to other American universities who seek to compete with Chicago: will they be left behind? Of course, it remains to be seen as to whether the terms Chicago offers will make the child care genuinely affordable, but it's clear the administration is feeling the pressure.

http://uchicagogsu.org/2013/12/gsu-delighted-to-welcome-affordable-child-care-to-u-of-c-campus

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10. For women, it's not a glass ceiling but a plugged pipeline
From: Nancy Morrison [nmorris_at_utnet.utoledo.edu]

"Gender bias hasn't vanished; it's just gone underground. Stubborn stereotypes about what women can't do are operating in surprising ways."

By Rosalind C. Barnett and Caryl Rivers

" ... A woman we interviewed told us: 'I coordinated and ran the network depot for a nationwide network ... and a young male student was given a monetary and certificate award for the work that we did, and I was not mentioned.... And then he was given the official leadership on the next project.'

"We heard stories like this often from women around the country. It is an especially disturbing finding because in most cases, it isn't conscious discrimination against women. It's just that the stereotypes we all have in our heads about what men and women can or can't do are incredibly deep-rooted.

"Heilman of NYU also found that men who are competent are seen as forceful, worthy of promotion and likely to succeed. It's all on the upside for them.

"But women who display competence are too often seen — by both men and women — as unlikable, unfeminine, aggressive, conniving and untrustworthy."

To read more please see

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rivers-women-workplace-plugged-pipeline-20131226,0,5827801.story#axzz2ozV9ZErx

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11. Job Opportunities

For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here:

http://www.aas.org/cswa/diversity.html#howtoincrease

* Observational Astronomy L/SL position at Victoria University of Wellington http://vacancies.vuw.ac.nz/positiondetail.asp?p=6739

* Astrophysics L/SL position at Victoria University of Wellington http://vacancies.vuw.ac.nz/positiondetail.asp?p=6740

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12. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

To submit an item to the AASWOMEN newsletter, including replies to topics, send email to aaswomen_at_aas.org

All material will be posted unless you tell us otherwise, including your email address.

When submitting a job posting for inclusion in the newsletter, please include a one-line description and a link to the full job posting.

Please remember to replace "_at_" in the e-mail address above.

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13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

Join AAS Women List by email:

Send email to aaswlist+subscribe_at_aas.org from the address you want to have subscribed. You can leave the subject and message blank if you like.

Be sure to follow the instructions in the confirmation email. (Just reply back to the email list)

To unsubscribe by email:

Send email to aawlist+unsubscribe_at_aas.org from the address you want to have UNsubscribed. You can leave the subject and message blank if you like.

To join or leave AASWomen via web, or change your membership settings:

https://groups.google.com/a/aas.org/group/aaswlist

You will have to create a Google Account if you do not already have one, using https://accounts.google.com/newaccount?hl=en

Google Groups Subscribe Help:

http://support.google.com/groups/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46606

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14. Access to Past Issues

http://www.aas.org/cswa/AASWOMEN.html

Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to aaswlist+unsubscribe@aas.org.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to aaswlist+unsubscribe@aas.org.

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