AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of February 6, 2009
eds. Joan Schmelz, Caroline Simpson & Michele Montgomery
This week's issues:
1. Thanks to Henrietta Leavitt
2. The Doctor is In
3. The New Girls' Network
4. How to Submit, Subscribe, or Unsubscribe to AASWOMEN
5. Access to Past Issues of AASWOMEN
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1. Thanks to Henrietta Leavitt
From: Nancy Evans [evans
head.cfa.harvard.edu]
To celebrate the centennial of Henrietta Leavitt's first discussion of the
Cepheid Period-Luminosity law, an afternoon Symposium "Thanks to Henrietta
Leavitt" was held Nov. 6, 2008, at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics. Speakers included: George Johnson (New York Times, "The
Search for Henrietta Leavitt" based on his recent biography), Wendy
Freedman ("The Leavitt Period-Luminosity Relation: Past, Current, Future"),
Fritz Benedict ("Galactic Cepheid Astrometry with the Hubble Space Telescope
in Aid of the Cosmic Distance Scale"), Nancy Remage Evans ("Multiplicity
and Masses of Cepheids: Fundamental Parameters"), Gail Schaefer ("Direct
Detection of the Close Companion of Polaris with the Hubble Space Telescope"),
Massimo Marengo ("Galactic Cepheids as Seen with Spitzer"), and (in
absentia) Annie Baglin ("Pulsation in the Era of Corot"). Alison Doane
provided a display of plates and notebooks actually used by Henrietta
Leavitt.
Power point versions of the talks, as well as pictures from the event can
be found at:
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/events/2008/leavitt/
As a result of the meeting, a letter was sent to the AAS Council to request
them to encourage the use of the "Leavitt Law" for the Cepheid
Period-Luminosity Relation because of the continuing significance of the this
discovery and the AAS has agreed.
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2. The Doctor is In
From: HannahWomen in Astronomy Blog, Feb 3, 2009
This article from the LA Times has been making the rounds in the feminist
and women-in-science blogosphere:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-dr-jill-biden2-2009feb02,0,548459.story
You can see commentary from Pharyngula:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/snubbing_degrees_as_a_new_kind.php
The upshot of the story is that Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President
Biden, has been going around being addressed with the title "Dr." since she
has a doctorate in education. The LA Times seems to think this is a big deal
because she isn't an MD, and she's the first second lady (did you parse
that correctly?) to continue working while her husband is in office. The
subtext there is outrage that Dr. Biden would dare make herself more educated
than her husband and then flaunt it by continuing to work, with disdain for
intellectuals in general thrown in for good measure.
I worked hard for my degree, thank you very much, and like being addressed
by Doctor, even if it does come across as pompous. It's especially
important if my male peers are being addresses as doctor: I should get the same
respect. I can't win, anyway: Miss doesn't fit, Missus bothers me, and Miz
comes across as bitchy. Why should my marital status matter anyway?
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3. The New Girls' Network
From: Hannah
Women in Astronomy Blog, Feb 2, 2009
It's been quiet on the blog here, and my excuse is that I've been busy with
travel recently. I'm on an 8-day tour of the Bay Area, giving three
seminar-length talks and one 20-minute conference talk while I'm here.
I'm following a piece of advice I picked up in grad school: whenever you
get the opportunity to give a talk somewhere, do it. It will increase your
exposure, and even if they aren't hiring at the time, it will still help you
establish connections and share your science with people. So, while my
original purpose in coming here was for this conference at the end of the week,
I managed to work my network to score speaking gigs at three different
institutions in the area.
The interesting thing is that most of my network is women.
My first talk was arranged mostly through a grad student friend at her
university.
For the second talk, I got in touch with people I knew there and basically
bugged them until they gave in. In this case, my contacts were mostly men,
actually.
At the AAS Meeting in January, I ran into a friend of mine and mentioned
that I would be in the area, and she invited me to come by her institution
and give a talk there, all of which she handily arranged for me.
My friends largely work in completely different areas than I do, so I'm all
the more appreciative that they helped arrange my visits. There might be
something in there about those of us in the minority sticking up for one
another, but there's more to it than that. There's true friendship and
camaraderie that I'm drawing on here, and maybe it's simply the way we women tend
to relate to each other.
Anyway, the moral of the story is to never underestimate the value of
networking, and that that includes friendships with your peers as well as
schmoozing with people in high places.
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4. How to Submit, Subscribe, or Unsubscribe to AASWOMEN
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5. Access to Past Issues of AASWOMEN
Past issues of AASWOMEN are available at
http://www.aas.org/cswa/AASWOMEN.html
Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.
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