Planetary Science Has A Workplace Diversity Problem
Keith’s Note: BTW I picked this picture – nothing personal guys. According to a PSI press release regarding a new American Astronomical Society report: “A survey quantifying the long-standing lack of workplace diversity in planetary science offers NASA and other groups possible strategies to resolve the problem.”
“Survey results show that members of minoritized groups, including non-white scientists, scientists who are disabled, members of the LGBTQ+ community, or women, are underrepresented as Principal Investigators or Co-Investigators in planetary science spacecraft mission teams …”
“The 2022 Decadal Survey is the first to include consideration of the state of the profession and actions for enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in the field,” Rathbun said. “The 2020 workforce survey included questions on demographics and respondents were also asked how many times have you been a PI on a mission proposal – never, once, two times, three times, more than four times – and how many times have you been a Co-I on a mission proposal.”
More: Survey Results Point Out Lack Of Diversity In Planetary Science Workplace
9 responses to “Planetary Science Has A Workplace Diversity Problem”
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Looking at the report, women are 37% of the community that responded – the response rate was 48%.
From the chart on PI opportunities (page 16), 16% or so of men reported being a PI 1 to 4 or more times, women about 10%. That’s in line with their representation in the community. In looking at the breakdown, the seem to be underrepresented as a PI 2 or 3 times, somewhat overrepresented as a PI once, and nearly on par with men as a PI 4 or more times.
What is missing is breakdown by age. PIs are going to be heavily weighted to older, established scientists.
In that picture, what’s significant is that of the senior managers who are women sitting in the back row. And in this picture (NY times) https://static01.nyt.com/im… there’s women in the control room actively participating. And in this picture (LA Times: https://ca-times.brightspot… there’s women in the control room.
Certainly there’s a ways to go, but I’m not sure that’s a great example (it’s from 10 years ago, and things have gotten better – take a look at the pictures of the folks operating Ingenuity, which was led by a woman, Mimi Aung)
Please post the gender distribution stats. if you age them The photo I posted was real at the time of landing. The faces are the faces.
But it is also 10 years old. I think you’d do better today (at least I hope you’d do better) I’ll see what I can find. It’s a JPL stock photo, but I couldn’t find it quickly this afternoon. Identifying the people is easy. Age of people less so.
On the other hand, the report you cite is talking about PIs, which is more of an academia issue. Most PIs, I think, come from the halls of academe. People building spacecraft, on the other hand, at JPL (and other centers that do missions) it’s more engineers than scientists – the vast majority of the folks in that picture are engineers on console for EDL, which is a tiny fraction of the people working on the project as a whole. So it’s probably not a great picture to illustrate the inequities in PI land.
Every face in that picture -at their console 0 real. full stop. There is a gender imbalance. Everyone tries to explain it away but it is still there and it needs to be fixed.
The imbalance begins in colleges. While women today get more STEM degrees than in the past (and more degrees overall than men), they are heavily concentrated in biology, social sciences, and health/medicine. It boils down to math. The more math in a field, the fewer women study it. And that starts in middle school, where boys pull ahead of girls in math ability.
https://www.forbes.com/site…
This has nothing to do with inate ability in math or anything. Rather, It has to do with artificial barriers imposed on one gender
Where did I say anything about innate ability?
The fact is that boys pull ahead of girls in math in middle school. Thst has downstream effects in choice of classes taken and majors in college.
Myth not fact. This is your last post on this topic. Reference: “The Myth of the Male Math Brain” https://www.aauw.org/resour…