Ignoring Half Of The Potential Space Traveling Population
Only 3 of 34 speakers at @ISPCS International Symposium for Personal & Commercial Spaceflight are female https://t.co/OnhRzQykjq #ISPCS2017 pic.twitter.com/IEyKVmkoS1
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) October 12, 2017
It appears NASA sent six speakers of which only one was a women. Have you contacted the folks at NASA to see why they at least didn’t balance their delegation of speakers better? I mean 6 to 1…
It’s not that easy. If they have more men than women with something to present, simply setting a quota means means (on average) sending less qualified women. You would basically be filtering out all the men who give terrible presentations and making the male speakers you do send appear better. That reinforces stereotypes. Which is not what we want to do.
One of the best ideas I’ve heard is to send younger, less senior people. As a group, they are much more diverse than the older generation. (Definitely true when I compare the first and second year graduate students to the tenured faculty in just about any university’s planetary science department.) If you preferentially send them to conferences (or, as an organizer, give them talks rather than poster presentations) you are making a difference. Better, you are doing it without any thing that can cause any sort of “just because she’s…” backlash. Better still, you’re doing it in a way that promotes young careers and people with new ideas, at the expense of the old, more stuck-in-their-ways crowd.
The idea is a good one, but schools will need to be more supportive since younger faculty often don’t have the financial resources older ones have. When I was a new faculty I skipped attending at least two conferences because I couldn’t afford to go under the university’s reimbursement policies.
I suspect that is one reason you see so many senior faculty attending.
Definitely, and not just at the institutional level. Professors with enough funding to send one person but not two to a conference need to ask themselves, “me or my student?” (Or, “If I stay in a cheap hotel, could we both go?”) Quite a few people already think that way, but certainly not all. As far as diversity is concerned, I’m afraid the current generation of senior scientists and engineers is a lost cause. So I favor advancing the next, more diverse generation.
Do people choose conferences based mostly on the willingness of an employer to cover the costs?
Don’t these events further personal knowledge? At the very least improving or solidifying career prospects? and isn’t there great personal benefit to the very same hallway talk that benefits scientific progress?
That’s a very broad topic, but in general people don’t pay out of their own pocket to attend scientific and professional conferences. I’ve done so occasionally, but I almost consider it an investment in future career opportunities and an expensive hobby. (And colleagues think it’s another reason to consider me a bit eccentric…) Given the pay scales, the idea of a graduate student or post-doc paying on their own is not realistic.
Since the individuals aren’t paying, someone has to. And that means, yes, people do attend based on their ability to get someone to fund them. Of course, people do attend for all the reasons you mention, but subject to financial constraints.
Sometimes it’s all up to the individual E.g. if that person has a grant and the grant’s budget included presenting results at a conference, then it’s largely up to them to decide which conference (within reason and international trips are more complicated.) If it’s someone else’s grant, and you’re just working for them, you need permission. A big project, like a flagship NASA mission, might want one person to several conferences and make an overview presentation. In that case, it might be a management call over who goes where.
And, to take this back to the original topic, the more levels of approval, or the more steps involved, the more room there is for some sorts of discrimination to become a factor. While I’m all for discriminating against boring speakers, that’s not what I mean. I’ve never noticed any gender-related issues with conference travel approval, but I haven’t actually been paying that much attention.
You’re making the assumption that the current speakers are being chosen purely by merit. That may or may not be the case.
Yes, I am assuming that, and I probably shouldn’t. I guess I’m thinking more of my own problems For the last session and the next conference I’m involved in organizing, I know the people involved, and organizer bias isn’t something I’m worried about. Gender imbalance in the submitted abstracts was and probably will be. So that’s the problem that I’m likely to worry about.
How do you actually encourage more women to submit abstracts to your event? What steps are take? You probably know many young women, by dint of your own longevity and exposure, and that’s a start, by asking them; but what else can actually be done by an event organizer?
It’s a serious question. The issue has been discussed over and over here and other places. And certainly the diversity issue is much wider than appealing to women. How is it done?
That’s a very good question. Especially since I think the goal is to make gender a non-issue. (And ethnic background; let’s not forget that women aren’t the only underrepresented group.) That means I’m not inclined to do anything that explicitly favors any group over another. I’m also concerned about side effects and unintended consequences. So most of what an event organizer can do seems a bit indirect and minimal. But there are a few things.
Organizers are supposed to advertise the event and encourage people to attend. For small, one-off meetings like the Habitable Worlds conference next month, some people may not even know they exist. If one of the organizers hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have thought my work on magnetic fields near Europa would be relevant (even though I decided not to go.) For big, annual meetings, like the December American Geophysical Union conference, everyone knows about it, but its huge (almost 24,000 people last year.) Someone won’t automatically know about a particular session which is especially relevant to their work. Well, if I’m supposed to let people know, there’s no reason I can’t send email notices to distributions which focus on women in science. It improves the odds of women submitting abstracts.
Second, at most conferences, there are “invited” talks. That is, talks from people who were specifically asked to present something on a particular subject. That’s usually about 15% of the talks. Invited speakers don’t get any money, but it’s a nice, gold star to go in your annual performance reviews and CV. If someone is invited, they are much more likely to attend than turn down the invitation. Organizers can pick who to invite, so they can do so in a way that promotes diversity. Personally, I’d rather target gender-neutral but diverse groups (i.e. graduate students or early career scientists.) But if 90% of the invited talks are by men, I think the organizers have done something wrong.
Third, funding to travel to conferences is an issue, and many conferences do have some money for travel grants. It usually goes to people who would otherwise be unable to attend. That’s typically students, but I’ve also seen conferences fund early career scientists and scientists from countries which lack much in the way of research funding. But people have know about these grants and apply for them. Surprisingly few people do. And many do not because they don’t think they have a chance of being funded, or don’t think they qualify. (E.g. a professor at a teaching college, doing unfunded research in the summer months, would qualify in most cases. But she might not know it.) As with the existence of the event itself, the organizers can and should let people know about these travel grants, and encourage them to apply. If that involves some targeted marketing, and making an extra effort to make sure women and underrepresented minorities know about it, well, there’s nothing wrong with that.
But wouldn’t the older scientists have more to say? By means of experience, and time in the trenches, these people have both perspective, and content?
On the other hand, I realized some years ago that it is time to turn things over to the younger people. And I know I did my best work when I was much younger. The stuff I write now i basically the same thing over and over, albeit a different slant each time.
I have an idea that this issue is going to resolve itself (which is not to say that our angst about it isn’t important). The younger people that I’ve come to know- too few, far too few – have sensibility towards sexism completely devoid of prejudice.
I don’t think older scientists necessarily give better talks, so I don’t see a problem with favoring younger scientists to promote diversity (among other reasons.)
I’d say, and it is a generalization, on average the younger scientists are the ones getting their hands dirty and doing the work, while the senior scientists spend more time supervising and advising younger scientists than working the nitty-gritty details.
As speakers, I think that means younger scientists would put more emphasis on presenting the measurements and how they were analyzed to reach a conclusion. An older scientist might be more likely to skip over the details of the data and analysis, and focus on the implications of the conclusion. Both are important, but I don’t think one is inherently more important than the other. So, if it’s a toss up, why not take the approach which increases diversity?
And, gives the young ladies more exposure at the same time.
You, Sir, are King for A Day. Make it so 🙂
My first year of engineering science undergraduate studies, we had 185 registered. Of that class, 3 were female. After the first year, we had 85 students left. Zero women, despite the fact that one of them had earned 100% on her Xmas chemistry exam. She switched to Chemical Engineering. Everyone, classmates and teachers alike, were keen on keeping the women in the class. Eventually, after 4 years we graduated with a class of 63. Nobody ever failed. All departures were voluntary. Sometimes, people go where they want to go and they are not victims.
Perhaps you should review the statistics from 2016 cited above by Thomas Matula. Institutional bias exists. Bias in hiring exists.
Perhaps you should look at it yourself. I only see tables about enrollment and degrees awarded. Where is there information about “hiring” or “earning”? Sure, enrollment is low for females in Engineering and other STEM fields, although it’s not as bad as when I was an undergraduate. What is missing from these arguments about the statistics of outcomes is the huge effort already being put into recruiting minorities, and the biggest majority of all, females. Every search committee I’ve ever seen bends over backwards for find someone, anyone to fill the void. I’m sure Harvard were delighted when they nabbed their famous Cherokee female for their law school. Two groups with one hire! Efficient.
Yes, what the report shows is that the pool of applicants to draw from is very limited. First step is to find out why and make it larger, much larger.
A good place to look is at the men working in STEM fields and the environment that exists in those stem fields. There is no shortage of reporting on the bias that can exist in the workplace and in the classroom.
The suggestion that “….people go where they want to go and their not victims” ignores that bias. I’d suggest that some men have great difficulty recognizing and understanding what women face in fields traditionally dominated by men. I’d suggest that men discussing the problem will not result in progress or answers. Women need to be at the table, too.
All this means is that they enter a culture that they did not create. Either they adapt, or change the culture by being there. It’s impossible for everyone to go around in life trying to imagine everyone’s feelings all the time. People have to take responsibility for their own feelings. To pretend otherwise leads to total paralysis. I’ve been in areas of endeavor that are totally dominated by females. They don’t go out of their way to accommodate males. In fact, they can be downright hostile to men. I didn’t whine about it. You just just have to get on with life.
Then there’s this: http://news.mit.edu/2016/wh…
Why is this even portrayed as an issue? If this were a session on the societal impact of space travel or how space is changing the workplace then, yes, women would have valuable and different contributions. But having gone to this event, largely organized by a team headed by a woman, this concern is irrelevant. This is largely a conference about the technology, business cases and scientific benefits of low cost space travel – all of which are completely gender neutral. More to the point while it’s a shame that more women don’t go into this arena, this is not the venue to address it – that is a topic more appropriate to a STEM education conference not this meeting.
If more women entrepreneurs were developing new space services (I don’t think there are ANY) or if more than 12 percent of aerospace engineers were women then, again, it would be a relevant question – but they aren’t and the issues under discussion here do not involve gender issues nor should they.
Some folks- perhaps you, Mr. Obs?- some folks must actually see the contribution made by women.
It can be much more subtle than the topic of the meeting or the technical details. A friend once pointed out an interesting study about teaching college-level science. The instructor can either describe or demonstrate a phenomena and then talk about the physical processes or natural laws which explain the phenomena. Or, the instructor can do it in the opposite order and use the experiment or demonstration as an illustration. There isn’t anything inherently right or wrong about either approach. But some people find the material easier to understand and absorb when it’s done one way; some people with the other approach. According to the study, there is a sizable gender difference over the preferred approach. I strongly suspect the same is true of presentations at scientific and technical meetings. Some styles and manners of delivering the material are easier for people to follow. Even if the material is completely gender-neutral, the delivery may make a gender-related difference to understanding and contributing.
Another point is that, as Keith’s title implies, the gender difference in speakers means we’re not using about half of the available talent pool.
If that is representative of the attendees overall, then it seems hard to fault ISPCS; the problem is a deeper one if that is the case.
Fellow gentlemen, I think you are looking at this all wrong. Perhaps women entrepreneurs like to work in sectors where there are profits from customers and not funding from the government. I am being profoundly serious and only half sarcastic. Women are discriminated against when seeking venture capital. Women CEOs have fewer lawsuits, stop projects sooner, spend less money, exaggerate less than men and there are many more documented attributes of women CEOs. Despite the data there are few women CEOs and even fewer women who get real venture capital. Space is no different. Please just be aware this is a real issue and not an invented grievance.
You are probably not far off. It would explain why the business classes I teach usually have 60-65% women in them. Also my two daughters who are very good in math and were exposed to science early (astronomy, rocket launches, etc) chose to go into accounting and HR respectively because they saw them as offering more stable career opportunities than the STEM fields.
>offering more stable career opportunities than the STEM fields
Reminds me of a discussion on Slashdot about lack of women in IT (first year in college classes larger percentage of women, smaller percentage in senior years, much smaller in the working field). The question was asked why are women dropping out from IT? Someone replied of why do so many men still stay in IT (with many sys ad positions of very long work days, unrealistic schedules, decreasing benefits, low chances of advancement, many jobs slated to be offshored)?
Good point! Men do seem to be drawn to fields where the work conditions are lousy.
I remember talking to one educator who mentioned that aerospace engineers are just high tech migrant laborers, moving from one government funded project to another, often from one part of the country to another. Always one Congressional vote away from unemployment and having to move on to the next job..
It IS a very important issue – and you didn’t even mention the pervasive discrimination in the IT industry (which I think is less egregious is space industry, probably due to government oversight). But it’s not the focus of this conference. AIAA, Women In Aerospace and other venues are more appropriate to work this issue.
Hi All,
I thought you might this interesting in terms of this discussion. It adds some data points to it. It is the 2016 Report from the Council of Graduate Schools which tracks this type of information.
http://cgsnet.org/ckfinder/…
“Gender. In Fall 2016, the majority of first-time graduate students at all degree levels were women – 58.9% at the master’s degree and other level and 52.8% at the doctoral level. Women also earned the majority of graduate certificates (63.1%), master’s degrees (57.4%), and doctoral degrees (52.1%) awarded by U.S. institutions in 2015-16. However, men still constituted a majority share of first-time graduate students in business, engineering, mathematics and computer sciences, and physical and earth sciences.”
So women are earning the majority of Ph.D.’s nationwide, and the percentage of women finishing their degrees is about the same as men, but when looking at the tables they earn only 22.8% in Engineering, 25.8 % in Mathematics & Computer Sciences and 33.6% in Physical & Earth sciences.
So that is the real challenge, finding out the reasons for such low enrollments in these fields and then correcting them.
Have to visit the high schools and parents where the decision making starts on what to do and where to go after high school… I wonder how many parents push the daughters into the hard sciences?
Or their High School advisors.
But is pushing the right strategy? Most folk I know in science were pulled there by their own interests as kids over other careers. If you read the bios of many scientists they started at young age. So High Science might well be too late to change the pattern, you need to start earlier.
How many high schools discourage women and minorities from pursuing the technical fields? I dealt with this personally in junior high school, where a guidance counselor tried to steer me to a vocational high school, in spite of my academic performance.
How many of them aren’t White?
No idea. No pictures posted.
Only one, Kazuo Ishiguro in literature. He is from Japan. Drawings and bios of winners are here. It is as bad as it is for women.
https://www.nobelprize.org/…
BTW, National Geographic had a recent article on the history of women winning the prize. It shows well the long term bias against women in science.
http://news.nationalgeograp…
Nearly 900 People Have Won Nobel Prizes. Only 48 Were Women.
By Michael Greshko
PUBLISHED October 6, 2017
This is especially sad…
“The last woman to win a Nobel Prize for physics, Maria Goeppert Mayer, was honored in 1964.”
She was only the second woman to win it.
And this is just wrong…
“Lise Meitner, one of the co-discoverers of nuclear fission, was nominated for the physics prize 29 times from 1937 to 1965 and the chemistry prize an additional 19 times from 1924 to 1948, according to Nobel Foundation archival records. She never won.”
As a follow up this year’s Noble Prizes have been announced. Again, there are no women. Which means no women role models.
http://www.apnewsarchive.co…
The Latest: For 2nd year, no women among Nobel winners
Associated Press
Oct. 9, 2017 8:24 AM ET