AIAA Moves Toward Diversity And Inclusion – Old Mindsets Persist
Keith’s note: Looks like AIAA is making a positive step in terms of inclusion and diversity according to a post by AIAA President Dan Dumbacher on the AIAA members messaging system about using “crewed” and “human” instead of “manned” spaceflight. Well done Dan! (original post by Dan Dumbacher)
“AIAA is dedicated to open discourse across the Institute, including on member platforms such as Engage. AIAA prefers to use “crewed” or “human” rather than “manned” when referring to space travel in our publications and on AIAA.org. Increasing diversity the diversity of the aerospace community and the future workforce has been-and continues to be – a mission priority for AIAA. We’ve been seeing improvements in recent years, especially through the hard work of our dedicated AIAA Diversity Working Group. The Institute will continue our efforts to be as inclusive and diverse as possible, acknowledging that we as a community have work to do.”
Dumbacher’s post was at the end of a discourse on the AIAA’s internal forum “Engage”. Last night Lori Garver and several members had an interaction which is typical of the mindset that persists within the aerospace community. Kudos to Dan Dumbacher for trying to push an more open discussion ahead. (Larger view – participants’ identities anonymized)
– AIAA Responds To Diversity Concerns, earlier post
“However, the aerospace industry and AIAA need to better represent the diverse world around us. …. It will take years of intentional, hard–but important–work to increase the percentage of women and underrepresented minorities in our industry, but we must achieve this moral imperative. I urge everyone to help build a stronger more diverse workforce for the future.”
– AIAA Shuns Gender Diversity In Scholarship Selections, earlier post
Word games.
Yep.
I would love to know the numerous females reading technical papers from the AIAA who read about “manned spaceflight” then a single tear rolls down her cheek and says “well i guess i have to choose another profession because im not welcomed here”
It is a silly silly silly wordgame. Full of sound and firy and signifying nothing
When they read comments from males such as yourself, can you blame them?
We are both males…..im the one saying they are strong enough to not be discouraged by the word “manned” …. you are the male who is saying they are so fragile so as to be discouraged from entering a profession a result of the word manned.
I dare say its your attitude that is more hurtful.
But since you have made yourself the man to protect them from the english language as it has been spoken for centuries im sure they can now fearlessly enter STEM professions..so kudos them for having youand im sure theyre glad to have ya. :/
I never said women were not “strong enough”. or “fragile'”/ You are literally pitting words in my mouth. Ordinarily your comment would be deleted as trolling or spam but I am leaving it up to show just how much misogyny still exists, Thanks for making my point. BTW you are no longer welcome to comment here. Find another website to troll.
You’re thinking of the obvious and conscious issues. That’s not the problem. There are not a cabals of men conspiring to keep women out of certain fields. (Well, the world’s big enough that there probably are one or two such cabals.) There are not women who run in fear when they hear the word “manned”. (Again, the world is a big place, and out of about two billion English speakers, I suppose there are a few women like that.)
This is all about subtle, unconscious ideas about who belongs in which jobs. And there are plenty of studies to show that, yes, despite grammar, dictionary definitions and etymology, certain words and phonemes do cause those unconscious feelings of not belonging. A little girl might say she wants to grow up to be a firefighter. She’s less likely to say she wants to be a fireman.
I actually agree with Greg. As a female in STEM I don’t feel that i’ve ever been excluded or given a hard time. In fact the opposite. I’m encouraged and supported even more by work mentors and my admin than some of my male counterparts. I find it a bit annoying to be honest, because I don’t even want the appearance of getting special treatment based on my gender, when my work and ideas speak for themselves. Nobody who is serious about their field would be run off by Internet comments or wording like manned spacecraft.
That’s very interesting. Interesting enough that I need to ask a somewhat impolite question. How old are you? What you describe is very different from what female colleagues have told me. But they are all around my own age (50.) It is entirely possible that their experiences reflect what the climate was like two or three decades ago.
That’s actually a place where I think many advocates of diversity are hurting rather than helping. It’s a fact that any change will take a long time to have an effect. The number of qualified, tenure-track faculty at a university is limited by the number of people who majored in the field two or so decades before. That’s sometimes used to justify doing nothing, which isn’t helping. But sometimes, even mentioning the timescales is vocally dismissed by advocates of diversity. In practice, we’ve got a large amount of hysteresis in any social issue. An excellent solution could be dropped as a failure if it doesn’t produce results within a decade. And it’s also possible to overcompensate if no visible effects are seen within a few years.
As female that worked for 33 years at NASA as an engineer and as a manager, I did not and still do not find the terms like “manned” exclusionary. My father was an engineer and a big supporter of women in STEM fields and that was the impetus for me getting into engineering. Teachers, professors, guidance counselors, and others along the way were either supportive or not supportive. (My high school guidance counselor suggested more traditional fields for me to go into.) When I came to NASA, I found that my co-workers and my managers were very supportive of me as an engineer. There were one or two folks along the way that seemed to have an issue with that, but that was their problem. I have seen some of my contemporaries leave the engineering profession and pursuing other careers. It would be interesting to understand not only why females are not going into STEM, but also why some have left STEM careers. I think the key is not the language used, but more about having people in positions of influence (teachers, guidance counselors, mentors, professors) that continue to encourage females into STEM, particularly in the formative years of middle school and high school.
As an antidotal example, I do know a woman who left planetary science and became a manager in an aerospace corporation. She was a post-doc at the time and she specifically told me that it was because of the professor she worked for. She said she just didn’t want to deal with his “Jekyll and Hyde” way of treating people. The professor in question is usually fairly reasonable, but responds to any disagreement or criticism of his opinions with loud, harsh and abusive comments. I’m not sure if there is any gender-related issue with that; I’m not sure how many men would want to work for someone like that. But it’s a pretty good example of a hostile work environment.
I’d like to have met your dad.
Thanks. He was a great engineer and a great Dad.
Greg- i’ve had a couple of days to think about your comment. And on one level I get what you’re saying; it’s perhaps a little simple. I have to agree with you on this. In some ways, it’s just silly.
But stay with me on this. What follows will be thought a little sensitive by some.
Would you agree with me that the societal pressure brought to bear on the formerly frequent, hateful use of the N-word by whites was a recognizable and important part of the way we are collectively reforming our attitudes towards Black people?
Our country is so much richer for the efforts and progress made in the civil rights arena. Language was a big part of that.
Perhaps you’d point out that comparing the N-word with the gender neutral substitutions discussed herein is over the top. Perhaps!
But there are parallels to be drawn.
As a liberal American who values the rights of every citizen, I’ve seen a great deal of change in my 70 years. And who knows? Who knows what can happen by simple substitution of a few common words?
I’m sorry if you find this offensive, but I think you comment shows that you are part of the problem and don’t care about the solution. It is worth asking why some people think we should not use the terms “manned” and “unmanned”. It is worth thinking about how we can use other words to address those concerns. Personally, I object to Orwellian attempts to change the English language. But there can be ways to address those concerns without doing damage to the language.
Who said it was offensive?
We are all humans. Since using “man” is apparently so objectionable even if it’s part of a word what should we use in it’s place? hupersons maybe hucritters…
It’s not objectionable just stupid. Especially when you consider all the real problems the world faces today this is just a ridiculous first world non-issue.
Off my soap box and I will now shut up.
“Who said it was offensive?”
On average, something like a dozen people at every conference and professional meeting I go to. (Well, it depends on the size of the meeting, but I’d call it a large minority who think so.)
Half of the time, I think think people like that are being unreasonable. I’m not changing Spanish grammar and referring to people as “Latinx” and, sorry, but “they” is a plural not a singular pronoun. And I was also one of the Wikipedia editors who argued against expunging the phrase “maiden flight”. But things like “manned” spaceflight do cause some offense and unconscious impressions. If there’s an equally good way to say it differently, that’s probably a sensible thing to do.
Cool! I get to say everyone’s wrong!
Seriously, it isn’t about word games, and the dictionary definitions and etymology of “manned” craft is not the point. The problem is that many aspects of society and fields like aerospace engineering and planetary science discourage some people from entering them. Specifically, woman and underrepresented minorities. It is a fact that “manned” spaceflight implies male astronauts to some people. Even if that impression is unconscious and incorrect, the implication is still there. That’s a problem and a barrier to improving diversity.
But I seriously object to making deliberate changes to the language and inventing new words. That, to me, is Orwellian almost by definition. I also don’t like the fact that one of these invented words, “crewed” is a homonym for “crude”. Not only does it sound bad to me, but it’s hard to make people use it. Inevitably, engineers and managers will not want to say, “We spent a decade and billions of dollars developing our crude spacecraft.”
My preference is to use “robotic” rather than “unmanned”. It’s not perfect, since many people think of a “robot” as being anthropomorphic. But it has the advantages of being gender-neutral, reasonably accurate and actually a word which you can find in a dictionary. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a good alternative for “manned.” I can generally avoid that with phrasing. (E.g. “The first Dragon flight with astronauts on board” rather than “The first manned Dragon flight”.) But that’s a bit cumbersome. Since the internet is a near-infinite source of opinions, creative ideas and general weirdness, I’m open to any suggestions anyone wants to toss out.
“Occupied”?
“Populated”?
“Human-bearing”?
Why not Piloted Spacecraft? Or Human Spacecraft?
Those have potential, but I don’t really like them. They are definitely better than “crewed”. But, to me, “piloted” implies someone flying the vehicle (or navigating it, in the case of a ship.) What about a Dragon 2 flying on autopilot with six scientists on board as passengers? “Human spacecraft” implies the vehicle is a member of our species, and I’m fairly sure that’s not correct. (Enough genetic engineering to make it so would probably mean a separate species.)
On the other hand, I’m the person who also dislikes “citizen scientist” (does getting paid for scientific research mean I’m not a citizen?) and “native American” (I was born in Washington D.C. and my family has lived on this continent for over 350 years; how can I not be a native?) So my opinions on terminology may be a bit eccentric.
There are no such people as Native American. “American Indian” people came from Asia into America at least 15,000 years ago, possibly much earlier, via Beringia.
Native American is considered better than American Indians but the preferred term is “First Nations People”, emphasizing that they were here first and they had sovereign nations when the Europeans arrived and over ran their society.
Unfortunately, quite a few of those sovereign nations weren’t in very good shape when the Europeans showed up. It would have been interesting if the Algonquins had been in a position to say “no” to the French setting up a fort and customs post at Quebec.
Maybe “human capable”?
“It is a fact that “manned” spaceflight implies male astronauts to some people.”
Said/thought…well, no reasonable person…ever.
Wonderful. I’m worrying about whether a five year old child gets an unconscious impression that “girls don’t do things like that.” You’re dismissing everyone you disagree with as unreasonable.
While we’re at it, what do you think about the Teen Talk Barbie mess from 1992? Mattel came out with a line of dolls with voice synthesizers, programmed to say the sorts of things they thought female teenagers usually said. Things like “Math is tough” and “Lets go shopping.” (Although I did like protest where someone swapped chips with talking GI Joe action figures. And the _Sylvia_ cartoon that prompted…)
Lori Garver makes excellent, coherent and simple points. Words matter. They have the potential to embrace or to exclude. Its surprising and ironic that in a profession where we routinely debate words and procedure and definitions and meaning to three decimals of exactitude, it appears that all of a sudden some responders think words dont matter! They do.
I think my field’s emphasis on numbers and details is actually part of the problem. We are trained to be impartial when it comes to our professional work, and most of us take pride in being impartial. But people, regardless of their professional training do have unconscious biases. Especially about personal and social issues. I’ve seen quite a few people who don’t admit that, even to themselves. To many scientists, saying they are biased and not totally objective and impartial sounds like you are accusing them of being unprofessional and incompetent. The reality is that unconscious biases do exist and we need to find a way to avoid or minimize them. But that doesn’t happen if people feel admitting that they have unconscious biases is a sign of incompetence.
I am not going to comment on the original point of whether it matters or not. But comparing the difference between “crewed” and “manned” to the importance of engineering requirements is a bit of a stretch.
Maybe. On the other hand, yours is the POV of a male, employed engineer, amirite?
Forgive the snark
. But some of us- me – often need a slap up side the head to focus our attention…That’s also the justification for diversity. There is a difference between diversity and just fair, unbiased and non-discriminatory behavior. It’s because a diverse group is likely to include people with different ideas or points of view. Diverse collections of people have been shown to be less prone to things like group think and getting set into a particular mindset. That’s because someone in a diverse group is likely to provide that occasional and necessary slap to the head.
That’s why I complain about a room full of men in suits and ties not being diverse, regardless of the colors of their skins. If their education and professional experience have trained them to all think and act alike, they aren’t a diverse group.
I also saw a recent article about how a lack of diversity was to blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The headline was definitely exaggerated clickbait, but there was a good point underneath. The CIA was (and may still be) predominantly white, male, Protestant, and ivy league liberal arts majors. Some guy in a cave, with a long beard and a turban, posting political rants to YouTube _in_poetry_? That just wasn’t something they could see as a credible threat rather than a random nutcase. He didn’t get very high on their priority list as a result. If there had been more moslem or Arab-American people involved, they might have pointed out that his image was exactly what would appeal middle eastern, fundamentalist extremists, and the potential suicide bombers might be eating out of his hand.
> It’s because a diverse group is likely to include
>people with different ideas or points of view.
Got me thinking perhaps NASA lacks diversity when it came to decide a new HSF vehicle they chose one that is just like Apollo. Unlike SpaceX chose something different with hardware that has flown.
That’s almost certainly correct. People do tend to gravitate towards familiar solutions. A large amount of innovation does come from groups who’ve never done something before and are approaching it with a fresh eye.
But it goes beyond that. SpaceX, the CubeSat and small satellite revolution, and a whole bunch of “new space” ideas are tied to how people handle risks. Is it acceptable to try something, fail (sometimes very cinematographically), learn from the mistake, and try again? Is it more important to make sure no one gets killed in the process? I’m not about to say that women or ethnic minorities are more likely to make one choice or another. That in itself is more than a little offensive. But I think it’s true that a diverse group is more likely to consider a wider range of options and possibilities.
You might be surprised. Those engineering requirement, for NASA spacecraft, use very, very particular phrasing. Saying a system “will” do something is nothing at all like saying that same system “shall” do the same thing. Many scientists actually know and care about the difference between “accuracy” and “precision.” A whole lot of things in science and engineering depend on clearly defined terms, using the terms correctly and making sure the audience understands exactly what the speaker is trying to communicate.
Would it help to point out that NASA’s official guidance on this has been to use “crewed”? This isn’t new either. It’s been official for many years now. For me, it’s enough that NASA says “manned” is an obsolete term when it comes to spaceflight.
IMHO, that men have been fighting this for years is telling, but not in a good way. These fights happen online else single time someone says “manned” and someone corrects them by saying “crewed” is the official NASA term (because it is).
As I stated in the beginning of my note, I am not commenting on the argument crewed vs manned. My point was that the comparison of the importance of policy (manned vs crewed) to engineering requirements was a bit stretched.
I grew up and have by habit used the term “manned” for spacecraft, regardless of the gender of the occupants! But, I have always used the term inclusively, regardless of the gender of the crew member. I agree that the use of the word “crewed” can be confused with “crude” in spoken context.
The hoopla over two female astronauts doing an EVA is far overblown. So, they didn’t have enough short-torso suits (poor logistical planning on somebody’s part). It didn’t delay the actual job very much. They just plugged in a different crew member. Now they can do the EVA with two astronauts who happen to use short-torso suits.
Yes, there probably was a bias against women for the Apollo program, but don’t forget they wanted experienced military pilots, and at the time there were no such things. Nowadays, it’s different! So get the most qualified people to do whatever jobs in space are required, and stop this PC nonsense!
Listen up, people! It’s what’s between your ears that counts. Not what’s between other parts of the body!
Ad LEO! Ad Luna! Ad Ares! Ad Astra!
Folks today forget what a very different world it was in the 1960’s. Voters worried that if a Catholic like John Kennedy was elected President he would take orders from the Pope. And supermarkets were only open from 9 am to 5 pm because that was when housewives had time shop, while the kids were in school and their husband at work.
Yes, the United States has changed greatly since then. But Yes, we also still have a long way to go. And updating the language is an important part of it as language does shape thought and impressions.
The two female astronaut EVA business wasn’t so much overblown as off topic. The people involved never made a big deal of it and, as I understand it, some media relations person decided to make a big deal about it. Which then exploded in their face when they had to change astronauts. But I think it’s reasonable to ask why they don’t have (anywhere) size “small” suit torsos, or why the available mix of suit sized on station was more suitable for male rather than female astronauts. One side effect of the whole thing was an article I read containing a list of a dozen workplace, ergonomic issues which are male-biased, simply because no one thought of it. Female police officers sometimes have to choose between safety and serious discomfort. Many bullet proof vest manufacturers forgot that half the species needs a little more volume around the chest. Even office thermostats have a problem by about four degrees. The conventional wisdom about the temperature is based on 1960s studies of men wearing business suits.
And, yes, in the 1960s, there was definitely a bias against women, but again, it wasn’t anything people thought about. They did exactly what you describe. For various reasons (some good and some bad) they decided they wanted military test pilots. It wasn’t until well after the fact that anyone even realized that excluded women by definition. (When they did, the official response did amount to, in effect, “so what?” But when the decision was made, this wasn’t even in the back of anyone’s head.)
The problem isn’t about a bunch of men sitting down behind closed doors and secretly conspiring to keep women out. That’s absurd (or, at least and I hope, very outdated.) It’s the fact that the whole workplace environment affects whether or not someone wants to apply for a job in the first place. If you don’t like being yelled at, you don’t apply for a job where people frequently settle differences with shouting matches. If fewer women than men want to deal with that, then you will have a problem with diversity. And that doesn’t mean we can just shrug it off as gender-related personal choices. It means seriously looking at the workplace environment, figuring out want discourages some people from entering a given field, and asking whether that aspect of the environment is actually necessary for the job.
Currently, gender does influence one’s career choices – but it shouldn’t, and the world is missing out because of it. Women flee from some tech fields, for instance, not because they aren’t interested in the actual work, but because poor treatment at the hands of their coworkers and management *pushes* them out (and I have seen this first hand, though at the academic level rather than professional level). Meanwhile, men disregard social work and nursing for fear of being thought “unmasculine” and ostracized by other men for doing “womanly things.”
It’s suboptimal all around.
And, I’m afraid I sometimes see studies which make me think the problem isn’t solvable.
Science can be taught by explaining a theory and then using a demonstration or lab work to illustrate it. Or by presenting the empirical data and then describing the theory which explains it. Guess what? How well someone learns from those two approaches is gender dependent. So I’m a bit lost about what a gender-neutral curriculum should be.
There are studies about how parents complement their children. They tend to be directed at the person in the case of girls (“You’re great”) and more about an action in the case of boys (“Great job”) To make it even worse, I once saw a study about how parents speak to infants. Apparently, their use of nouns rather than verbs depends on the gender of the infant. And I have no idea what that means or how it affects the kid.
Human nature may be more myth than science. On a good day I think it’s very malleable, for good. Even so, whatever studies may show about our leanings, genetic, evolutionary, cultural or otherwise, policy is infinitely malleable, as are laws. So we have all manner of attempt there to make a workplace and an education and life more fair to all. Gotta start somewhere, who knows, we may surprise ourselves.
I basically agree, but policy needs to be informed by facts. It’s very hard to solve a problem if you don’t really know what the actual root cause of the problem is. So when I hear about things like nouns versus verbs spoken to infants, I’m at a loss about what should or could be done.
No, I’d certainly say gender can legitimately influence career choices. There is, and will probably always be, gender disparity in jobs which require physical strength. There should be more women in jobs which involve smaller sizes or lower metabolic rates (although, in terms of submarine crew selection, that hasn’t caught on with the world’s navies…)
What I think you’re missing is that there are also _illegitimate_ reasons for gender influencing career choices. It’s hard to imagine many five year old girls wanting to grow up and become professional football players. When it comes to American (not association) football, female teams are basically nonexistent. It probably wouldn’t ever enter her head that such a future was possible. So one real question for NASA (and the scientific community) is whether we’re doing something which, even subtly and unconsciously, is making children think of astronauts and scientists as men.
Diversity.
Meanwhile, the amount of people of color has actually plummeted in the technical disciplines. I can count the amount of Black FCR operators in the MCC on one hand, and continue to enjoy going to meetings at work being the only Black person out of roughly 100 folks.
In some ways, diversity has gone backwards.
That sounds worst than I thought. At the last OPAG meeting, there was a presentation on diversity, and Dr. Rathbun made a point that, while gender diversity was at least improving, ethnic diversity among planetary scientists was poor and flatlined. It sounds like you’re talking about engineers, and if that’s trending in the wrong direction, that’s definitely not good news.
But, while we’re on the subject, I’d like to hear what people think about an idea I had. I once heard a good talk on the subject of diversity from sociologist who used us planetary scientists as subjects. She said that there are all sorts of problems limiting diversity until it gets to the 30% level. Based on a whole bunch of studies, that seems to be where things start getting better for women in a given field. But afterwards, I asked her what that means for ethnic minorities, since you obviously can’t have 30% of every one. (And, no, you can’t honestly lump Indians, Khmer, Chinese, etc. all into a catch-all “asian” category.) She didn’t have a good answer, so I thought about it a bit. What if at least 30% isn’t the magic number? What about less than 70% of a single, homogeneous group? I know magic numbers don’t really exist, but does that idea make any sense to people?
I think there is much to be said for the idea of a “critical mass”. <70% seems more reasonable as an indicator than >30%.
Numbers are useful for measuring things, but in this case they are measuring the wrong thing.
My sense about diversity is in many ways selfish. Oh, sure, I like to see people succeed; but what I really like is for all of us to succeed. That’s why measuring participation is so crude. It doesn’t measure success. And I don’t know how, either.
I just know that when I see a homogenous group I wonder about the brown Einsteins or black Hoyles, or woman Diracs might be. What a loss.