Senior women in astronomy provide us with mentors and role models. They can change or even transform the culture, dynamics, and environment of a department or research group. They can stand with us and fight for us if we find ourselves the victim of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, or unconscious bias. They can make an organization more female friendly.

CSWA began compiling a list of the percentage of women among the tenured faculty members of Ph.D. astronomy departments in the US. This list has now been expanded to include the percentage of women researchers/faculty/staff with tenure or the equivalent for US astronomy institutes/universities/observatories. For US government installations such as NASA GSFC, the equivalent of tenure is considered to be a civil service appointment. Numbers and percentages were confirmed by a member of each organization.

The table below shows that the range is wide, with Indiana University leading the pack with 50% women on the tenured faculty, but with some other institutions still in the single digits. The average is 15.1%, with a standard deviation of 10.6%.

For comparison, 18% of full members of the AAS are women. In addition, 30% of named postdocs have been women for the past 20 years; they represent some of the most highly qualified potential candidates for tenure-track positions. These data are public domain and were compiled by the demographics panel for Astro 2010. We received special permission to share the results at the 2009 Women in Astronomy III conference. Here's a link to the paper.

Why tenured women? Other surveys of women in astronomy have been more general. See, for example, the article in the June 2004 issue of STATUS entitled, “Portrait of a Decade: Results from the 2003 CSWA Survey of Women in Astronomy” by Jennifer Hoffman and Meg Urry.

In my mind, tenure means success. Of course, there are many ways to succeed in astronomy, but tenure may be the most universal. This survey was narrowly focused to begin to answer a very specific question, "Are women succeeding in astronomy?” One way to answer this question is, "Yes, individual women have always succeeded in astronomy." Another answer, related to the group rather than the individual is, "Yes, but progress is all too slow."

This list is meant to be an evolving document, so as members of your organization get tenure, retire, arrive, leave, etc., we invite you to send the new numbers to CSWA so we can keep an accurate tally. Please feel free to contact us with any changes, updates, and questions. Also, if you would like to add your department or research organization to the list, please send us the necessary figures.

• For joint appointments, we include the fraction of time devoted to astronomy.
• These data are for the entire department, not just the astronomy component of a department.
• Assistant professors, research professors, junior members, part-time instructors, soft-money researchers, postdocs, emeritus faculty, etc. are not included in this list.

For additional comparative data (posted by the webmaster):

For comparative data for 2003, 2005, 2007, readers may consult the data on race and gender balance in the faculties of the top fifty departments in various scientific and engineering fields, including astronomy, compiled by Dr. Donna J. Nelson of The University of Oklahoma.