January 28, 2015 • 43 mins
Today's lady astronomers are following a trail that was blazed by brilliant women centuries ago, but it hasn't always been easy-going. Cristen and Caroline examine the state of this fascinating STEM field and the women who are helping to map the sky.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristin
and I'm Caroline, and welcome to part two of our
Stargazing Women's series about women in astronomy. And before we
dive in, Caroline, I had a moment of astronomical synchronicity
(00:29):
happened in the car yesterday. Can I tell you about it?
Because I got so excited because we were doing this
podcast today. So I'm listening to NPR per usual and
an announcement comes on talking about this comment called the
love Joy comment that was passing over Atlanta, where Caroline
and I are located. And I got really excited, not
(00:53):
so much about the comment, but because they interviewed a woman,
a strong themer at our local fern Bank Observatory, all
about this comment. And I was like, Oh, this is
a woman. She the podcast has come alive. It's a
woman astronomer. They exist, and she's so excited about the
(01:15):
stars and here this whole time, I thought when the
podcast came alive, it would be on ice. No, not
that's later. Okay, that's a that's one that's a project
still in the works. You and I have to get
our our ice dancing. Yes, yes, um, but yeah, I
really nerded out in my car by myself. There was
no one to tell, so I just kind of yelped aloud.
(01:38):
Yes I was doing the same thing. But in my
bathroom getting ready to come to week, you heard the
same announcement I did. It's like it's as if we
both listened to NPR. Yeah, it's like we're both total
nerds who knew Um. When we left off in part one,
we had gotten up into this factory system of astronomical observations.
(02:03):
Women like Maria Mitchell were starting to make inroads in
terms of women in astronomy. You had observatory set up
at some women's colleges like Vasser, but we were still
kind of pushed off to this side in a lot
of ways. Right, A lot of the women who were
in astronomy in this era were definitely in the more
clerical positions. And it wasn't because hey, women are so smart,
(02:25):
we love women. Put them in the clerical positions so
they'll they'll make amazing discoveries. The popular opinion was more like,
we don't trust women to use their delicate lady brains,
so let's put them in these clerical positions so they
can pour over astro photography data for hours on end.
But the great thing is that even in these positions
(02:47):
of you know, supposed lesser power or lesser ability, they
still managed to make some pretty amazing discoveries. And one
of the biggest names in this whole factory like setting
of astronomy was Charles Pickering at the Harvard Observatory. So,
thanks to photographic technology that was developing at the time,
(03:07):
they were able to see more than ever before. But
they needed to analyze all of these snapshots of the
sky that they were getting and it was very, very
tedious work. Yeah, and so Pickering had this guy as
his assistant and I don't know what the guy was doing.
I don't know if he's fallen asleep on the job,
but either way, he's just letting Pickering down. And so
(03:29):
Pickering was like, screw you, dude, you're not doing your job.
I need somebody who's actually competent. And who did he
consider to be competent around him. Well, that would be
Wilhelmina Fleming, his maid. She's a single mother who Pickering
brings on as his astronomy assistant because he's like, I
know you, you hang out around me a lot, and
(03:50):
you're pretty competent, and so he passes along all of
this astro photography analysis to Fleming, who ends up working
at Harvard for more than thirty four years thanks to
her skill at computing and copying, and she was the
first woman to have a formal appointment there. And during
Pickering's time at Harvard, which lasted from eighteen seventy seven
(04:12):
to nineteen nineteen, more than eighty women worked for him
in mostly clerical capacities, doing computing and cataloging work, and
they are referred to often as Pickering's women, or alternatively
as Pickering's harem. Yeah, that's just great, that's so great. Yeah,
lots of lots of respect, so much respect. But they
(04:33):
were doing important work despite the stupid name. They provided
data that ended up forming the empirical basis for larger
astronomical theory. But of course they were earning just twenty
five to fifty cents an hour, half of what a
man would have been paid in the same position. Yeah,
and the Hard Observatory is an interesting case study in
(04:56):
how women contributed more data, particularly on variable stars, which
your stars that change in brightness than their counterparts did.
And it's largely due to this system that they had
set up of all working together and sharing information and collaborating.
And I've got to give a shout out now to Cosmos,
(05:18):
the show hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, which in the
episode Sisters of the Sun, he takes the time to
focus on the women in the Harvard Observatory who were
laying the foundation for all of these incredible astronomical discoveries
to come, because without Pickering's women, we would know so
(05:41):
much less about the stars in the sky. Absolutely, and
Dorritt Hofflett from Yale University, who herself was a giant
name in astronomy, wrote about variable stars in particular, and
she talked about how from the eighteen eighties, so Pickering time,
to the nineteen fifties, women contributed way more data on
these types of stars. Variable stars are the kind that
(06:03):
change brightness than their male counterparts did. By n nine,
in fact, women including Willamina Fleming, had discovered more than
of the more than fourteen thousand named variable stars then known.
But we should back up first for a minute. Yeah,
we need to hop back to six. When a woman
(06:24):
named Annie Jump. Cannon transfers from Wellesley, where she helped
conduct experiments on X rays, to Radcliffe College in order
to make her way into Pickering's observatory. And what she
did was simplify Pickering in Willamina Fleming's system for classifying
stars and the work that Cannon does. The simplest way
(06:46):
to explain it is that she, I mean, she almost
set up like a Dewey decimal system for the stars.
She figured out how to categorize and label all of them.
I mean, then this is still the system that we
used today, right, And in ninety two, this this definitely
did not go unnoticed because in nineteen two, the International
(07:08):
Astronomical Union ended up adopting her method of categorizing stars,
which was based on their temperatures, as the official classification system.
So that's no small potatoes, and she received a whole
lot of accolades going forward. In five she was the
first woman to be awarded an honorary doctorate from the
University of Oxford, and in nineteen thirty three, after becoming
(07:30):
the first woman officer in the American Astronomical Society, she
established their Annie Jump Canon Award, which is given to
a North American Female astronomer four distinguished contributions to the field,
and we will have more to say about that award
and how it changed later in this nineteen seventies. But
in nineteen thirty eight, Harvard appointed Canon the William C.
Bond Professor of Astronomy. So she is definitely one of
(07:54):
the huge names in astronomy, specifically as someone who came
out of Lemmings, you know, group of women. I won't
say Harem, I just said Harim. Yeah, we need a
better name rather than I don't even like pickerings women.
Does that even sound so possessive? So maybe we should
rename them, I mean Sisters of the Sun, which is
(08:16):
what Neil deGrasse Tyson called them, or whoever wrote his scripts.
I thought was pretty good. And at the end of
that episode side note, Caroline, he's drinking some wine with
this older woman. I think he's in Italy or something,
and he looks into the camera and raises his wine
glass and toast the Sisters of the Sun. And that's
well he should. It's an amazing moment. But anyway, there's
(08:38):
another woman that we need to mention. He was working
alongside Annie Jump Cannon at this time. She actually joined
the Harvard Observatory in just a year prior to Annie
Jump Cannon. And this is Henrietta Swan Levitt. And what
she did was figure out a way to men sure
(09:00):
the distance of stars really really really far away. It's
something called the Seafia variable period luminosity relationship. Of course, yeah,
I mean which obviously, um so it's often referred to
as the distance key. And this made possible all subsequent
discoveries in astronomy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries because
(09:23):
they could finally get dimensions to these farther away kinds
of stars. So not only do we have Cannon who
is labeling and categorizing all these stars, now we have
lovet coming along to offer some distance in there. And
then when we get to we have Cecilia Paine, who
(09:44):
then offers us this breakthrough information on the composition of
the stars. Right. And so what's interesting about Cecilia pain
is that you know, she makes these amazing contributions, but
there's a little bit of self doubt in there. But
first let's established why she's so awesome. Cecilia Paine is
the first person to receive a PhD from the Harvard
(10:04):
Astronomy Department, and her thesis rocks the astrophysics world because
she demonstrated that the Sun was made almost exclusively from
hydrogen and helium, thus its makeup was way different from
the Earth, because leading up to the scientists had thought
that the Earth and the Sun were basically composed similarly.
(10:25):
But you know, Kristen, you and I have talked about
the imposter syndrome on the podcast before. To protect her reputation,
Paine inserted a clause at the beginning of her thesis
stating that the results were quote probably not real, just
in case somebody laughed at her or said this is ridiculous.
She was like, oh, hey, I'm just gonna put this
here about what the Sun is made of. But who knows,
(10:47):
maybe it's wrong. Well, I mean, she had already gotten
flak from professors. I forget, there's a specific guy at
Harvard who had looked at her work and was really
skeptical just because it was such a revolutionary idea. And
imagine too that your Cecilia Paine. And she came to
the United States from Britain specifically because in Britain at
(11:11):
the time, she couldn't go to college, she couldn't study
alongside men. So I mean imposter syndrome on top of
impostor syndrome for this woman who is studying theoretical and
anatomical physics and blowing people's minds at a time when
in the place that she's from, she wasn't even allowed
to go to school, right, and her work ended up
(11:33):
laying the foundation for our understanding of stars compositions in general,
not just the sun, and a Guardian article referred to
it as the astrophysical equivalent of Darwin's origin of the species,
so clearly laying some amazing groundwork for astronomy. So did
a similar pattern of allowing more women into the fold
happened during World War Two for women in astronomy as well. Yeah,
(11:57):
I mean it definitely did. World War two shook up society,
as we know and have talked about many times on
the podcast. STEM jobs were definitely no exception because as
we've seen from the last episode on Astronomy and as
we're talking about now, educational and professional opportunities were definitely
expanding as more women's colleges were opening their doors to
(12:18):
researchers and helping women get a foot in the door
um not to mention the the social change as far
as ideas about women not being physically or mentally fit
to work outside the home or in scientific fields were
starting to fall away, and the notion about married women
needing to stay home was also falling away. Of course,
it's not totally though, because that's still kind of as around.
(12:41):
But during the war, during World War two, there were
fewer male grad students around, and so there was a
relative increase in the number of female astronomers in the
nineteen In particular in the United States, the National Science
Foundation estimated that bachelor's degrees in physics reach the high
of up from fourteen percent in nineteen forty. And the
(13:04):
reason that we're pointing out physics and in particulars that
most astronomy grad students do have a physics degree. And
thanks to the technological research happening during World War One
that's fueled by military pursuits, astronomy is still an evolving
field because you get the emergence of radio astronomy, which
happened during the war thanks to radar research, and so
(13:27):
you have this combinations of new fields and branches within
the field and also fewer men. So in Australia. Ruby
Payne Scott became one of the first radio astronomers and
was the first woman radio astronomer, and she was also
an author on numerous early papers and became a scientific
leader until after the war. Right, Yeah, when the men
(13:53):
start coming home from the war and women's overall numbers
not only in the workforce in general, but also in
astronomy and other stem fields. When men's numbers increase, in
women's numbers decrease. After the war, pain Scott still managed
to make huge contributions to the understanding of solar radio
bursts and the development of radio astronomical techniques and instruments.
(14:18):
So that's great, right, Like she manages to hold on
when so many women were shoved out of the workforce
when men came home. It didn't last long because even
though I literally just mentioned a second ago that the
idea that women needed to stay home and be wives
and mothers and oh you better not higher wives and mothers,
because women in the workforce are obviously like aberrations of
(14:40):
the norm. Ruby pain Scott was doing great. She had
to hide the fact though, that she was getting married,
and when she got pregnant she ended up having to
resign from the field. And of course this follows the
fact that she was also suspected of being a comy
and was definitely an outspoken feminist about getting other women
(15:00):
involved in astronomy and stem fields, and so people were like, wait,
so you're a comi feminist, outspoken scientific lady, and now
you're getting married and having a child. Get out of here.
The world was not ready for Ruby Payne Scott. Now
it sounds like well, and when it comes so to
that whole marriage factor, this is a pattern that you're
(15:22):
gonna see throughout the next few decades in terms of
UM observatories and research facilities having these anti nepotism rules,
which essentially meant that if your husband is working in
a lab, then his your the wife is not going
to be allowed to work in the lab because that's
(15:43):
what they considered nepotism, which actually hampered a lot of
women's careers because, I mean, it makes sense that you know,
you're an astrophysicist, you meet another astroid physicist, you fall
in love, you know, stars, and you're literally the stars aligne.
So there, you know, that's that's that's sort of a
(16:06):
downer of a rule for a number of these astronomers
astronomers working. But of course, when it comes to this
anti nepotism rule, it's the wife who has to go home,
not the husband typically, which leads us to second wave feminism. Yes.
According to the National Science Foundation, though, uh, from nine
to nineteen seventy, the proportion of women earning bachelor's degrees
(16:29):
in physics states still at about four to six percent,
So not a ton of women studying physics. Yeah, but
when you move into the sixties and seventies, the numbers
start to increase. In nineteen seventy two, for instance, if
we're talking about bachelor's degrees, women earn seventeen percent of
bachelor's degrees in astronomy. And during that period of the
(16:50):
sixties to the seventies, while the number of female PhDs rose,
the percentage of women in the American Astronomical Society, for instance,
dropped to just eight percent buying nineteen seventy three. So
the numbers are sort of all over the place. And
during this time, the job prospects are still terrible for
married women. There was a lot of fear about women
(17:10):
taking time off to have children. Oh yeah, the workplace
issues for working moms in astronomy echoes so many of
the workplace issues we still hear about today for working moms,
that whole sneering at part time work of trying to
balance family and this really intensive research because understandably, astronomy
is like say, being a lawyer, is a field that
(17:34):
requires and you're expected to pour so many hours. It's
not a forty hour week kind of gig. And with that,
there are still echoes of the Pickering's women or Pickering's
harem era going on. Um. Which leads us to the
story of Joscelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars. F y,
(17:56):
I pull stars are remnants of massive stars after they've exploded.
And I think that before Burnell figured that out, we
thought that they were aliens. Really, yeah, the little green men.
Really yep. I had no idea. I'm learning so much
from you, Kristen. Well, I'm just I just learned a
lot from the Neil de Grass type. So well, there
(18:19):
we go. Um, and this is coming from natural geographic
But in nineteen sixty seven, Burnell, as you said, discovered
pulsars while she was in grad school four radio astronomy. Hey,
Ruby Paine Scott at Cambridge in England, and Burnell was just,
you know, no big deal, studying three miles worth of
(18:39):
paper from a radio telescope that she helped build when
she made this discovery, and hooray it resulted in a
Nobel prize. That's wonderful, right, Yeah, but the Nobel Prize
went to her male supervisor and another male astronomer. Yeah.
So Burnell, the way that she explains it is the
picture people had at the time of the way the
(19:00):
science was done was that there was a senior man,
and it was always a man who had under him
a whole load of minions, junior staff who weren't expected
to think, who were only expected to do as he said.
So how did I mean that sounds exactly like pickerings women. Yeah.
And I heard an interview with Burrell on the BBC
from not that long ago and they played a clip
(19:22):
of the male supervisor who had received the Nobel Prize
and he stood by it. He essentially said, well, you
just have to understand that there's a difference between the
captain of the ship and the crew. So when you know,
if there's a successful voyage, who's really to think? And
so I mean this guy clearly fancies himself a captain
(19:44):
of of a pleasure group. Do you think he wears
like a jaunty captain's hat. Yes, I knew, and Belle
Burnell when she was asked by the BBC reporter for
her response to that, she was essentially like, that's where
he stands. If I got if I continue to get
mad about this every day, then I would not be
(20:04):
able to do any work. But she made so clear
how challenging it was constantly to be a woman in
this field, even before the whole balancing of family and career.
When she first walked into like an auditorium sized classroom
in college, all of the men in the room started
(20:25):
stamping their feet and whooping because that was just tradition,
because she was, you know, the only woman in the room,
and so of course she was going to get heckled.
And so that's what was happening when she was in
graduate school. And then she gets the Nobel Prize just
snatched out from under her. And a National Geographic points
(20:46):
out that even though yes, this woman discovered pool stars
should have been given a Nobel Prize, etcetera, many of
the positions she was offered in her career were focused
on teaching or administrative and management duties because that was
still seen as more women appropriate work. Yeah, and she
does point out that it was extremely hard combining family
and career, which is something that women today obviously still
(21:09):
struggle with. Times have not changed that much, But as
of Burnell was a visiting astronomy professor at the University
of Oxford. She recently chaired a working group for the
Royal Society of Edinburgh and she was tasked with finding
a strategy to boost the number of women in stem
fields in Scotland. And there was one more think here
only that jumped out to me. In that BBC interview
(21:33):
we mentioned that the impostor syndrome and Cecilia Paine's work
in the nineteen twenties. Bell Burnell specifically called out the
impostor syndrome as well, and she even asked the report
She was like, if you ever heard of this thing
called the impostor syndrome. Yeah, It's essentially been something I've
had to fight every single day of my career. That
(21:53):
sense of oh, well, no, I'm going to be found
out at some point because I surely I don't belong here.
But obviously those feelings of not belonging have nothing to
do with her actual intelligence and prowess, but the environment,
the hostile environment she's been working in now for decades.
And then as we moved through the nineteen seventies, there
are a couple more developments in the field of astronomy
(22:16):
that had a lot to do with women. Um in
nineteen seventy one asked her physicist Margaret Bourbage declined the
Cannon Prize. Now we mentioned the Cannon Prize earlier. It
was supposed to go to, you know, incredible female astronomers
who've made great strides and made great contributions to the field.
But Bourbage said that the prize was discriminatory because it
(22:37):
was available only to women. And the direct result of
this was that the American Astronomical Society established basically a
Lady Committee that recommended the prize become a research award
for which women in early stages of their careers could apply.
The reasoning being that women faced numerous disadvantages early on
(22:58):
in their education, in their grad school career and getting
a career going off the ground, and so yeah, basically,
the reasoning was like, if we give it to women
who were still in school, then that's not as discriminatory.
And so in nineteen seventy two they recommended that the
a S set up a group to review the status
of women in astronomy, And in nineteen seventy three, that
(23:18):
new committee, the Working Group on the Status of Women
in Astronomy, released a report where they found that the
percent of women in the a a S was the
lowest ever in its history, that women were underrepresentative officers
and other people in this group, and that the United
States was seventh, and the percentage of female members of
the International Astronomy Union. So basically, basically this group is like, hey,
(23:42):
women aren't in enough places in astronomy. Yeah. And as
a result of all this information that they're finding out
the data that they're collecting about women in the field,
in nineteen seventy nine, that Working Group on Women finally
became a standing committee and as a result of their work,
(24:03):
members developed what was called the Baltimore Charter, which had
the goal of promoting a culture that would help both
men and women realize their full potential in stem careers.
So the question that is what is that full potential
look like for astronomers. Today, we'll talk about that when
we come right back from a quick break and now
(24:26):
back to the show. So, Caroline, what does being an
astronomer entailed today? I mean, is it? Have we learned
everything there is to know about the stars? I mean,
certainly not. You know, as we mentioned in our first
episode on women in Astronomy, some major discoveries were still
being made in the nineteen nineties, back when that Women's
(24:50):
Committee was developing charters to encourage people in the field
of astronomy. We still have so much to discover. But
the field of astronomy itself is RelA totally small, and
this is coming from numbers from the Bureau of Labor
and Statistics. There are only about six thousand professional astronomers
in North America, and it's super competitive because there are
(25:10):
a hundred and fifty North American job openings per year
and there are one hundred and twenty five pH d
grads per year, so a lot of people vying for
not that many jobs. Yeah, and if you do get
a job, though, it pays pretty well to be an astronomer.
In twelve, the median pay was one hundred and six
thousand dollars per year or per hour. If you're you know,
(25:35):
wanted to keep track of it that way, And the
kinds of things obviously that you'd be studying include planets, stars, galaxies,
and other celestial bodies. And there's all sorts of equipment
that's involved as well, including ground based equipment like radio
and optical telescopes, as well as space based equipment such
as the Hubble space telescope, which a lot of listeners
have probably heard of. And you generally are either making
(25:58):
observations are working on theory. So what are some of
the modern observations that astronomers today have been making, Caroline, Well,
it's not so much that astronomers are looking through a
telescope and sweeping the sky, as the ladies in our
first episode did very often, but rather use computers and
(26:19):
super sophisticated telescopes that can detect radiation other than visible lights,
such as gamma rays or radio waves, and rather than
making direct observations by sweeping the sky with a telescope,
theoretical astronomers typically use data from observational astronomers to develop theories.
And we should also mention too that telescope technology has
(26:41):
also spawned numerous medical applications, so there are day to
day repercussions of the work that astronomers are doing, and
typically they're employed at colleges, universities, and professional schools. UM.
They're also involved in research and development in the physical
engineer in life sciences. And of course if you are
(27:03):
in aspiring astronomer astrophysicists, you can get a job with
the federal government. You can work BANASA or the Department
of Defense. Right, only of astronomers and astrophysicists end up
in those cushy, high paying federal government jobs like NASA.
Most of them are at colleges and stuff. But alright,
(27:26):
so now that we've laid out what astronomers are doing today,
that they're using big supercomputeras what does it look like
out there for ladies today in astronomy. Well, astronomy is
usually highlighted as a stem field that is friendlier to women,
which seems ironic considering you know, the Jostle and Bell
(27:47):
Burnell stories and the other ones that we've shared. Um.
But by and large it does tend to attract more
women than other stem fields. But it's still suffers similar
leaky pipe line issues as we see all over stems.
So when it comes to the pipeline issue. It's usually
the same old tale of women starting out they're interested
(28:10):
in physics, are taking the courses and their bachelor's degrees,
but they don't make it to the PhD level. And
then if they make it a PhD level, there's a
drop off after that as well. Right, And a lot
of these numbers, though, can be deceiving. It really depends
on what phase of a woman's science career or astronomy
career you're looking at. Because we mentioned that uh, physics
(28:34):
and physics bachelor's degrees were important to talk about because
typically that can lead then to astronomy um. And so
when you look back at middle school and high school,
girls make up half of physics students, but that number
definitely drops way off in high school and definitely in
higher education. But you also have to keep in mind
that most high school students or a lot of high
(28:57):
school students have to take the like physics or chemistry
or whatever, and so it's just important to keep in
mind that, well, yes, there is a pipeline issue. Sometimes
you just have to remember that certain things are inflating
numbers and parts of the pipeline. So if we look
at higher education and This number is coming from two
(29:19):
thousand three, so it's a little bit dated. But women
earn of physics bachelor's degrees and forty percent of astronomy
bachelor's degree. So you see there about astronomy bachelor's degree,
so hey, we're earning almost half of them. Well done. Also,
I can do simple math um. Now, when it comes
(29:40):
to the faculty and stand alone astronomy departments, women make
up only four percent of faculty members versus ten percent
in physics departments, so you might there too have issues
going on with the whole visibility factor. You don't see
many women at the front of the classroom in physics
and astronomy. Yeah, but there is good news and bad
(30:02):
news when it comes to women teaching and higher education.
Women are being hired into the professorial ranks at better
than their availability rate, but the proportion of women in
temporary faculty positions and like assistant professor positions is even higher.
So there's still a little bit of echoes of pickerings
women where well, it's great that they're getting into this field.
(30:25):
Many of them are still filling the lower positions, but M. I. T. S.
Claude Cannas are has found that women were tenured actually
at a slightly higher rate than men, and that the
clock stopping so to speak, to have or adopted child
actually did not affect women's likelihood of being tenured. That
is so surprised. That is so surprising because whenever it
(30:46):
comes to women in academia in general, it's usually that
whole tenure track of having to not only teach, but
also do the research and get published and just all
of the hours involved in that that requires to get
ten years is often cited as the you know, primary
reason for that that drop off in women. UM. But
(31:07):
when it comes to some gender imparity in physics and astronomy,
the US is not alone in this. Most countries, in fact,
award less than a quarter of their first level university
physics degrees to women, and most grant less than of
their physics PhDs to women. But there is a PhD
that we need to mention. Astrophysicist Meg Garry, who has
(31:31):
been one leading the charge in terms of calling for
more recognition of issues affecting women in STEM. How do
we close the leaky pipeline? Obviously providing visibility as a
female astrophysicist, UM, she has echoed what knasar Is said
in terms of there's a lot of research showing that
(31:52):
pipeline and underrepresentation issues aren't necessarily about complications from having
a family, or even conscious discriminatory actions, or obviously anything
to do with innate ability. So Urie has pondered and
written about a lot what is the issue, what's going on?
And something that comes up a lot for her is
(32:12):
unconscious gender bias. Yeah, and she points to several studies
that have shown that work associated with a woman's name
isn't as highly rated as that associated with a man's name.
She also mentions that in letters of recommendation, women are
more likely to get words like reliable, while a man
will be deemed brilliant, and also the fact that women
(32:35):
and men don't necessarily respond to mentors coaching styles the same.
She also points out that the way that we're socialized
could have a lot to do with it, as I
mean as women, not just as like people or astronomers
or whoever. She instructs women to own your ambition. She writes,
it really scares me the way young women dial back
their aspirations because they're anticipating that they'll have to make compromises.
(32:58):
Believe me, the young men aren't doing that. Okay, So
when's the last time we heard that? Kristen from Cheryl
Sandberg and lean in Yeah, it sounds very lean in e.
She talks a lot about women needing to work at
something they love and something that they can publish high
impact papers about so they can really make their mark
(33:19):
in that community because it is a small and prestigious community,
and also developed connections with other women in science. There's
a lot of networking going on intentionally among women in
these STEM fields and it's not just an issue though.
When it comes to representation of people in STEM, it's
not just women. There's also a lot of attention that's
(33:40):
been paid recently to ethnic minorities as well as LGBT
representation um because, for instance, from nineteen seventy six to
two thousand three, only thirty five African American women in fifties,
seven Hispanic women earned physics PhDs. From nineteen seventy six
to two thousand three, and just seven African American women
(34:03):
and twelve Hispanic women earned astronomy PhDs. And honestly, all
of the women that we have highlighted up to this
point Caroline have been white. We should acknowledge that right
and speaking about boosting the representation of many types of
people in astronomy and having a greater amount of diversity.
Vanderbilt University is hosting the inaugural Inclusive Astronomy Meeting in
(34:25):
June of this year, and their mission statement says that
Inclusive Astronomy will serve as a welcoming, strategic venue to
advocate and provide resources for the inclusion in the astronomy
community of people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex,
queer or questioning people, people with disabilities, women, and anyone
(34:46):
who holds more than one of these identities. Yeah, and
on top of that, we should mention that the American
Astronomical Society has a working group on lgbt i Q
equality to raise awareness and fight discriminations. So it does
sound like there is progress being made in terms of representation,
(35:08):
of paying attention to these issues, of trying to level
the playing field. Um, so that bickerings women can finally
be a past era of astronomy. And I feel like
a good place for us to close out this conversation,
Caroline would be a couple of living Lady astronomers out there,
because there is one thing that jumped out to me
(35:30):
in thinking about astronomy and astrophysics today when it comes
to women. There are no Lady carl Sagan's or Neil
de grass Tyson's, and yet there are these women doing
incredible work. I think that we need a woman astronomer
rock star at the level of Neil de grass Tyson,
whom I love nothing against Neil de grass Tyson at all, um,
(35:54):
But who are who are a couple of potential Neil
de grass Tyson's. I mean, we've mentioned Meg Jury all
ready and all of the incredible work she's doing in
terms of writing about basically diversity she's in astronomy. But
one big name we should mentioned too is Sydney C. Wolf.
She was the first woman to serve as director of
a major U S observatory and to have led the
(36:14):
construction of six premier telescopes. She served as the director
of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Arizona from seven
to two thousand and she helped develop world class observatory
facilities in both Arizona and Chile, and so she served
as also the American Astronomical Society president in nine, not
(36:35):
bad for a group that felt it needed an entire
committee to examine women's role in the organization. She's the
founding editor also of the Astronomy Education Review, and her
research on stellar atmospheres and the evolution, formation, and composition
of stars is internationally recognized and Caroline. Since we started
off the podcast talking about comets, a good place to
(36:59):
bring the podcast full circle is Caroline Shoemaker for a
couple of reasons. First of all, Shoemaker holds the record
for the most common discoveries get ready for this, folks.
She's found more than eight hundred asteroids and thirty two comments.
And with her husband Jean, she received the Written House
Medal in and the Scientists of the Year Award in
(37:23):
and NASA awarded her the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in
and her story is fascinating because she didn't get into
astronomy on a professional level until she was fifty one. First,
she was a stay at home mom and she always
was interested in her husband, Jean's work, and he often
(37:46):
looped her into field observations and work that he was doing.
But it wasn't until after that phase of being a
full time mom that she's then transitioned into being this
incredible astronomer. And she worked with her husband Jean until
he was killed in a tragic car accident at a
California observatory. So no matter what age you are, if
(38:11):
you're listening to this podcast, it's not too late if
you're interested in astronomy. And I love this story though,
because I mean it really to me sums up so
much of women's history with astronomy because she's kind of
it goes back to the buttons and breakfasts this year
that we were talking about in Part one of that
(38:32):
concern of well, if women get too involved in astronomy,
then who's going to take care of the home? Well,
Carolin Schuebaker was like, I'll just do all of it. Yeah,
well yeah, And it also perfectly illustrates our our themes,
one of our themes from the first episode, which is
that so many women throughout history have gotten into stem fields,
stem jobs, stem hobbies and pathtimes thanks to the influence
(38:56):
of a father or a husband or whatever. And so
here you have a very modern woman, Carol and Shoemaker,
who is getting not only involved in astronomy but completely
pursuing it passionately as a career and making all these
discoveries in the wake of her husband's death. Yeah, So
with that, I hope that there's some astronomers listening. We
(39:16):
would love to hear from you, or people who are
just amateur stargazers, or any folks involved in STEM. We
want to know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com. Oh, and if you have any suggestions
for the lady equivalence of Vanil de Grass, Teyson and
Carl Sagan. Really curious to know who your nominations would
(39:39):
be for Lady Astronomer rock stars Mom Stubb at house
stuffworks dot com. Again is our email address. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. Al Right, I have a letter here
from Steven following up on our history of Underpant's episode. Uh.
(40:01):
Steven says, I found it interesting how you mentioned that
women's equivalent for men's clothing, we're not only made more
feminine through frills or lace, but also through terms like
lady alls instead of overalls. As a guy, I've noticed
the same phenomenon with men's equivalent for what are considered
traditionally feminine things, such as guyliner for eyeliner, man purse
for any bag a guy carries, and man's scaping for
(40:24):
his hair trimming choices. I carry a messenger bag is
my everyday carry all, and I prefer to just call
it my bag or confront the occasional jokes directly and
just call it my purse. It's amazing just how uncomfortable
people can get when you start stepping over the perceived
gender lines, and how far they'll push to keep everyone
pinned into gender roles and expectations. Me I'll keep proudly
(40:45):
flaunting my purse and wearing eyeliner wherever I go. Thanks
for all the work you put into the podcast, and
thank you Stephen for writing in Well. I've got a
letter here from Olga also about our history of Women's
Underwear episode and the subject line is women's underwear in
nineteenth century Serbia. So here we go, Algar Rights. I'm
(41:07):
a cultural anthropology student in Serbia and we had a
Serbian material culture class in which we discussed clothing, among
other things, nineteenth century peasant clothing in the Balkan region
is influenced by both Western fashion, which came through the
city folk, and Eastern fashion because most of these countries
were part of the Ottoman Empire for a long time,
which I find endlessly fascinating. As a result of this
(41:30):
kind of cultural collision, there were some mixed feelings about
the transition to underwear. Turkish women traditionally wore pants, under
skirts that were split in the front, and vests instead
of constricting corsets. Serbian peasants also wore vest instead. Of course,
it's no underwear of any kind except sometimes as chamis
and sheer white skirts that fell just below the knee,
(41:53):
And because that didn't cover anything at all, most parts
of the country covered it with another article of clothing,
mostly aprons, and peasant clothing was highly symbolic, so if
you wove a certain color through your woolen apron while
you were making it, you could express all sorts of
personal feelings and social status is like a certain color
might indicate marital status. So anyway, when the city women
(42:15):
started wearing underwear, the country folks all is something that
only rich women, women in sports and prostitutes might wear.
And also since poor country women didn't get to rest
while they got their period, they would have to work
through it. Meanwhile, I'm down for the count for at
least two days when aunt flow comes along. And don't
even get me started on dealing with pregnancy in the
(42:35):
nineteenth century. Anyway, I love listening to you people talk
about cool things. Keep doing what you're doing, So thanks.
I'll go for that insight into nineteenth century serbian underwear.
And now I kind of wish that I had a
symbolic woolen apron. So if you have any costume history
or facts about astronomers, or anything else you'd like to
(42:57):
share with us, moms stubbt house. Stuffworks dot Com is
our email address and for links to all of our
social media as well as all of our blogs, videos,
and podcasts, including this one with all of our sources
so you can follow along. Head on over to stuff
mom Never Told You dot com for more on this
(43:17):
and thousands of other topics. Isn't how stuff Works dot
com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristin
and I'm Caroline, and welcome to part two of our
Stargazing Women's series about women in astronomy. And before we
dive in, Caroline, I had a moment of astronomical synchronicity
(00:29):
happened in the car yesterday. Can I tell you about it?
Because I got so excited because we were doing this
podcast today. So I'm listening to NPR per usual and
an announcement comes on talking about this comment called the
love Joy comment that was passing over Atlanta, where Caroline
and I are located. And I got really excited, not
(00:53):
so much about the comment, but because they interviewed a woman,
a strong themer at our local fern Bank Observatory, all
about this comment. And I was like, Oh, this is
a woman. She the podcast has come alive. It's a
woman astronomer. They exist, and she's so excited about the
(01:15):
stars and here this whole time, I thought when the
podcast came alive, it would be on ice. No, not
that's later. Okay, that's a that's one that's a project
still in the works. You and I have to get
our our ice dancing. Yes, yes, um, but yeah, I
really nerded out in my car by myself. There was
no one to tell, so I just kind of yelped aloud.
(01:38):
Yes I was doing the same thing. But in my
bathroom getting ready to come to week, you heard the
same announcement I did. It's like it's as if we
both listened to NPR. Yeah, it's like we're both total
nerds who knew Um. When we left off in part one,
we had gotten up into this factory system of astronomical observations.
(02:03):
Women like Maria Mitchell were starting to make inroads in
terms of women in astronomy. You had observatory set up
at some women's colleges like Vasser, but we were still
kind of pushed off to this side in a lot
of ways. Right, A lot of the women who were
in astronomy in this era were definitely in the more
clerical positions. And it wasn't because hey, women are so smart,
(02:25):
we love women. Put them in the clerical positions so
they'll they'll make amazing discoveries. The popular opinion was more like,
we don't trust women to use their delicate lady brains,
so let's put them in these clerical positions so they
can pour over astro photography data for hours on end.
But the great thing is that even in these positions
(02:47):
of you know, supposed lesser power or lesser ability, they
still managed to make some pretty amazing discoveries. And one
of the biggest names in this whole factory like setting
of astronomy was Charles Pickering at the Harvard Observatory. So,
thanks to photographic technology that was developing at the time,
(03:07):
they were able to see more than ever before. But
they needed to analyze all of these snapshots of the
sky that they were getting and it was very, very
tedious work. Yeah, and so Pickering had this guy as
his assistant and I don't know what the guy was doing.
I don't know if he's fallen asleep on the job,
but either way, he's just letting Pickering down. And so
(03:29):
Pickering was like, screw you, dude, you're not doing your job.
I need somebody who's actually competent. And who did he
consider to be competent around him. Well, that would be
Wilhelmina Fleming, his maid. She's a single mother who Pickering
brings on as his astronomy assistant because he's like, I
know you, you hang out around me a lot, and
(03:50):
you're pretty competent, and so he passes along all of
this astro photography analysis to Fleming, who ends up working
at Harvard for more than thirty four years thanks to
her skill at computing and copying, and she was the
first woman to have a formal appointment there. And during
Pickering's time at Harvard, which lasted from eighteen seventy seven
(04:12):
to nineteen nineteen, more than eighty women worked for him
in mostly clerical capacities, doing computing and cataloging work, and
they are referred to often as Pickering's women, or alternatively
as Pickering's harem. Yeah, that's just great, that's so great. Yeah,
lots of lots of respect, so much respect. But they
(04:33):
were doing important work despite the stupid name. They provided
data that ended up forming the empirical basis for larger
astronomical theory. But of course they were earning just twenty
five to fifty cents an hour, half of what a
man would have been paid in the same position. Yeah,
and the Hard Observatory is an interesting case study in
(04:56):
how women contributed more data, particularly on variable stars, which
your stars that change in brightness than their counterparts did.
And it's largely due to this system that they had
set up of all working together and sharing information and collaborating.
And I've got to give a shout out now to Cosmos,
(05:18):
the show hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, which in the
episode Sisters of the Sun, he takes the time to
focus on the women in the Harvard Observatory who were
laying the foundation for all of these incredible astronomical discoveries
to come, because without Pickering's women, we would know so
(05:41):
much less about the stars in the sky. Absolutely, and
Dorritt Hofflett from Yale University, who herself was a giant
name in astronomy, wrote about variable stars in particular, and
she talked about how from the eighteen eighties, so Pickering time,
to the nineteen fifties, women contributed way more data on
these types of stars. Variable stars are the kind that
(06:03):
change brightness than their male counterparts did. By n nine,
in fact, women including Willamina Fleming, had discovered more than
of the more than fourteen thousand named variable stars then known.
But we should back up first for a minute. Yeah,
we need to hop back to six. When a woman
(06:24):
named Annie Jump. Cannon transfers from Wellesley, where she helped
conduct experiments on X rays, to Radcliffe College in order
to make her way into Pickering's observatory. And what she
did was simplify Pickering in Willamina Fleming's system for classifying
stars and the work that Cannon does. The simplest way
(06:46):
to explain it is that she, I mean, she almost
set up like a Dewey decimal system for the stars.
She figured out how to categorize and label all of them.
I mean, then this is still the system that we
used today, right, And in ninety two, this this definitely
did not go unnoticed because in nineteen two, the International
(07:08):
Astronomical Union ended up adopting her method of categorizing stars,
which was based on their temperatures, as the official classification system.
So that's no small potatoes, and she received a whole
lot of accolades going forward. In five she was the
first woman to be awarded an honorary doctorate from the
University of Oxford, and in nineteen thirty three, after becoming
(07:30):
the first woman officer in the American Astronomical Society, she
established their Annie Jump Canon Award, which is given to
a North American Female astronomer four distinguished contributions to the field,
and we will have more to say about that award
and how it changed later in this nineteen seventies. But
in nineteen thirty eight, Harvard appointed Canon the William C.
Bond Professor of Astronomy. So she is definitely one of
(07:54):
the huge names in astronomy, specifically as someone who came
out of Lemmings, you know, group of women. I won't
say Harem, I just said Harim. Yeah, we need a
better name rather than I don't even like pickerings women.
Does that even sound so possessive? So maybe we should
rename them, I mean Sisters of the Sun, which is
(08:16):
what Neil deGrasse Tyson called them, or whoever wrote his scripts.
I thought was pretty good. And at the end of
that episode side note, Caroline, he's drinking some wine with
this older woman. I think he's in Italy or something,
and he looks into the camera and raises his wine
glass and toast the Sisters of the Sun. And that's
well he should. It's an amazing moment. But anyway, there's
(08:38):
another woman that we need to mention. He was working
alongside Annie Jump Cannon at this time. She actually joined
the Harvard Observatory in just a year prior to Annie
Jump Cannon. And this is Henrietta Swan Levitt. And what
she did was figure out a way to men sure
(09:00):
the distance of stars really really really far away. It's
something called the Seafia variable period luminosity relationship. Of course, yeah,
I mean which obviously, um so it's often referred to
as the distance key. And this made possible all subsequent
discoveries in astronomy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries because
(09:23):
they could finally get dimensions to these farther away kinds
of stars. So not only do we have Cannon who
is labeling and categorizing all these stars, now we have
lovet coming along to offer some distance in there. And
then when we get to we have Cecilia Paine, who
(09:44):
then offers us this breakthrough information on the composition of
the stars. Right. And so what's interesting about Cecilia pain
is that you know, she makes these amazing contributions, but
there's a little bit of self doubt in there. But
first let's established why she's so awesome. Cecilia Paine is
the first person to receive a PhD from the Harvard
(10:04):
Astronomy Department, and her thesis rocks the astrophysics world because
she demonstrated that the Sun was made almost exclusively from
hydrogen and helium, thus its makeup was way different from
the Earth, because leading up to the scientists had thought
that the Earth and the Sun were basically composed similarly.
(10:25):
But you know, Kristen, you and I have talked about
the imposter syndrome on the podcast before. To protect her reputation,
Paine inserted a clause at the beginning of her thesis
stating that the results were quote probably not real, just
in case somebody laughed at her or said this is ridiculous.
She was like, oh, hey, I'm just gonna put this
here about what the Sun is made of. But who knows,
(10:47):
maybe it's wrong. Well, I mean, she had already gotten
flak from professors. I forget, there's a specific guy at
Harvard who had looked at her work and was really
skeptical just because it was such a revolutionary idea. And
imagine too that your Cecilia Paine. And she came to
the United States from Britain specifically because in Britain at
(11:11):
the time, she couldn't go to college, she couldn't study
alongside men. So I mean imposter syndrome on top of
impostor syndrome for this woman who is studying theoretical and
anatomical physics and blowing people's minds at a time when
in the place that she's from, she wasn't even allowed
to go to school, right, and her work ended up
(11:33):
laying the foundation for our understanding of stars compositions in general,
not just the sun, and a Guardian article referred to
it as the astrophysical equivalent of Darwin's origin of the species,
so clearly laying some amazing groundwork for astronomy. So did
a similar pattern of allowing more women into the fold
happened during World War Two for women in astronomy as well. Yeah,
(11:57):
I mean it definitely did. World War two shook up society,
as we know and have talked about many times on
the podcast. STEM jobs were definitely no exception because as
we've seen from the last episode on Astronomy and as
we're talking about now, educational and professional opportunities were definitely
expanding as more women's colleges were opening their doors to
(12:18):
researchers and helping women get a foot in the door
um not to mention the the social change as far
as ideas about women not being physically or mentally fit
to work outside the home or in scientific fields were
starting to fall away, and the notion about married women
needing to stay home was also falling away. Of course,
it's not totally though, because that's still kind of as around.
(12:41):
But during the war, during World War two, there were
fewer male grad students around, and so there was a
relative increase in the number of female astronomers in the
nineteen In particular in the United States, the National Science
Foundation estimated that bachelor's degrees in physics reach the high
of up from fourteen percent in nineteen forty. And the
(13:04):
reason that we're pointing out physics and in particulars that
most astronomy grad students do have a physics degree. And
thanks to the technological research happening during World War One
that's fueled by military pursuits, astronomy is still an evolving
field because you get the emergence of radio astronomy, which
happened during the war thanks to radar research, and so
(13:27):
you have this combinations of new fields and branches within
the field and also fewer men. So in Australia. Ruby
Payne Scott became one of the first radio astronomers and
was the first woman radio astronomer, and she was also
an author on numerous early papers and became a scientific
leader until after the war. Right, Yeah, when the men
(13:53):
start coming home from the war and women's overall numbers
not only in the workforce in general, but also in
astronomy and other stem fields. When men's numbers increase, in
women's numbers decrease. After the war, pain Scott still managed
to make huge contributions to the understanding of solar radio
bursts and the development of radio astronomical techniques and instruments.
(14:18):
So that's great, right, Like she manages to hold on
when so many women were shoved out of the workforce
when men came home. It didn't last long because even
though I literally just mentioned a second ago that the
idea that women needed to stay home and be wives
and mothers and oh you better not higher wives and mothers,
because women in the workforce are obviously like aberrations of
(14:40):
the norm. Ruby pain Scott was doing great. She had
to hide the fact though, that she was getting married,
and when she got pregnant she ended up having to
resign from the field. And of course this follows the
fact that she was also suspected of being a comy
and was definitely an outspoken feminist about getting other women
(15:00):
involved in astronomy and stem fields, and so people were like, wait,
so you're a comi feminist, outspoken scientific lady, and now
you're getting married and having a child. Get out of here.
The world was not ready for Ruby Payne Scott. Now
it sounds like well, and when it comes so to
that whole marriage factor, this is a pattern that you're
(15:22):
gonna see throughout the next few decades in terms of
UM observatories and research facilities having these anti nepotism rules,
which essentially meant that if your husband is working in
a lab, then his your the wife is not going
to be allowed to work in the lab because that's
(15:43):
what they considered nepotism, which actually hampered a lot of
women's careers because, I mean, it makes sense that you know,
you're an astrophysicist, you meet another astroid physicist, you fall
in love, you know, stars, and you're literally the stars aligne.
So there, you know, that's that's that's sort of a
(16:06):
downer of a rule for a number of these astronomers
astronomers working. But of course, when it comes to this
anti nepotism rule, it's the wife who has to go home,
not the husband typically, which leads us to second wave feminism. Yes.
According to the National Science Foundation, though, uh, from nine
to nineteen seventy, the proportion of women earning bachelor's degrees
(16:29):
in physics states still at about four to six percent,
So not a ton of women studying physics. Yeah, but
when you move into the sixties and seventies, the numbers
start to increase. In nineteen seventy two, for instance, if
we're talking about bachelor's degrees, women earn seventeen percent of
bachelor's degrees in astronomy. And during that period of the
(16:50):
sixties to the seventies, while the number of female PhDs rose,
the percentage of women in the American Astronomical Society, for instance,
dropped to just eight percent buying nineteen seventy three. So
the numbers are sort of all over the place. And
during this time, the job prospects are still terrible for
married women. There was a lot of fear about women
(17:10):
taking time off to have children. Oh yeah, the workplace
issues for working moms in astronomy echoes so many of
the workplace issues we still hear about today for working moms,
that whole sneering at part time work of trying to
balance family and this really intensive research because understandably, astronomy
is like say, being a lawyer, is a field that
(17:34):
requires and you're expected to pour so many hours. It's
not a forty hour week kind of gig. And with that,
there are still echoes of the Pickering's women or Pickering's
harem era going on. Um. Which leads us to the
story of Joscelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars. F y,
(17:56):
I pull stars are remnants of massive stars after they've exploded.
And I think that before Burnell figured that out, we
thought that they were aliens. Really, yeah, the little green men.
Really yep. I had no idea. I'm learning so much
from you, Kristen. Well, I'm just I just learned a
lot from the Neil de Grass type. So well, there
(18:19):
we go. Um, and this is coming from natural geographic
But in nineteen sixty seven, Burnell, as you said, discovered
pulsars while she was in grad school four radio astronomy. Hey,
Ruby Paine Scott at Cambridge in England, and Burnell was just,
you know, no big deal, studying three miles worth of
(18:39):
paper from a radio telescope that she helped build when
she made this discovery, and hooray it resulted in a
Nobel prize. That's wonderful, right, Yeah, but the Nobel Prize
went to her male supervisor and another male astronomer. Yeah.
So Burnell, the way that she explains it is the
picture people had at the time of the way the
(19:00):
science was done was that there was a senior man,
and it was always a man who had under him
a whole load of minions, junior staff who weren't expected
to think, who were only expected to do as he said.
So how did I mean that sounds exactly like pickerings women. Yeah.
And I heard an interview with Burrell on the BBC
from not that long ago and they played a clip
(19:22):
of the male supervisor who had received the Nobel Prize
and he stood by it. He essentially said, well, you
just have to understand that there's a difference between the
captain of the ship and the crew. So when you know,
if there's a successful voyage, who's really to think? And
so I mean this guy clearly fancies himself a captain
(19:44):
of of a pleasure group. Do you think he wears
like a jaunty captain's hat. Yes, I knew, and Belle
Burnell when she was asked by the BBC reporter for
her response to that, she was essentially like, that's where
he stands. If I got if I continue to get
mad about this every day, then I would not be
(20:04):
able to do any work. But she made so clear
how challenging it was constantly to be a woman in
this field, even before the whole balancing of family and career.
When she first walked into like an auditorium sized classroom
in college, all of the men in the room started
(20:25):
stamping their feet and whooping because that was just tradition,
because she was, you know, the only woman in the room,
and so of course she was going to get heckled.
And so that's what was happening when she was in
graduate school. And then she gets the Nobel Prize just
snatched out from under her. And a National Geographic points
(20:46):
out that even though yes, this woman discovered pool stars
should have been given a Nobel Prize, etcetera, many of
the positions she was offered in her career were focused
on teaching or administrative and management duties because that was
still seen as more women appropriate work. Yeah, and she
does point out that it was extremely hard combining family
and career, which is something that women today obviously still
(21:09):
struggle with. Times have not changed that much, But as
of Burnell was a visiting astronomy professor at the University
of Oxford. She recently chaired a working group for the
Royal Society of Edinburgh and she was tasked with finding
a strategy to boost the number of women in stem
fields in Scotland. And there was one more think here
only that jumped out to me. In that BBC interview
(21:33):
we mentioned that the impostor syndrome and Cecilia Paine's work
in the nineteen twenties. Bell Burnell specifically called out the
impostor syndrome as well, and she even asked the report
She was like, if you ever heard of this thing
called the impostor syndrome. Yeah, It's essentially been something I've
had to fight every single day of my career. That
(21:53):
sense of oh, well, no, I'm going to be found
out at some point because I surely I don't belong here.
But obviously those feelings of not belonging have nothing to
do with her actual intelligence and prowess, but the environment,
the hostile environment she's been working in now for decades.
And then as we moved through the nineteen seventies, there
are a couple more developments in the field of astronomy
(22:16):
that had a lot to do with women. Um in
nineteen seventy one asked her physicist Margaret Bourbage declined the
Cannon Prize. Now we mentioned the Cannon Prize earlier. It
was supposed to go to, you know, incredible female astronomers
who've made great strides and made great contributions to the field.
But Bourbage said that the prize was discriminatory because it
(22:37):
was available only to women. And the direct result of
this was that the American Astronomical Society established basically a
Lady Committee that recommended the prize become a research award
for which women in early stages of their careers could apply.
The reasoning being that women faced numerous disadvantages early on
(22:58):
in their education, in their grad school career and getting
a career going off the ground, and so yeah, basically,
the reasoning was like, if we give it to women
who were still in school, then that's not as discriminatory.
And so in nineteen seventy two they recommended that the
a S set up a group to review the status
of women in astronomy, And in nineteen seventy three, that
(23:18):
new committee, the Working Group on the Status of Women
in Astronomy, released a report where they found that the
percent of women in the a a S was the
lowest ever in its history, that women were underrepresentative officers
and other people in this group, and that the United
States was seventh, and the percentage of female members of
the International Astronomy Union. So basically, basically this group is like, hey,
(23:42):
women aren't in enough places in astronomy. Yeah. And as
a result of all this information that they're finding out
the data that they're collecting about women in the field,
in nineteen seventy nine, that Working Group on Women finally
became a standing committee and as a result of their work,
(24:03):
members developed what was called the Baltimore Charter, which had
the goal of promoting a culture that would help both
men and women realize their full potential in stem careers.
So the question that is what is that full potential
look like for astronomers. Today, we'll talk about that when
we come right back from a quick break and now
(24:26):
back to the show. So, Caroline, what does being an
astronomer entailed today? I mean, is it? Have we learned
everything there is to know about the stars? I mean,
certainly not. You know, as we mentioned in our first
episode on women in Astronomy, some major discoveries were still
being made in the nineteen nineties, back when that Women's
(24:50):
Committee was developing charters to encourage people in the field
of astronomy. We still have so much to discover. But
the field of astronomy itself is RelA totally small, and
this is coming from numbers from the Bureau of Labor
and Statistics. There are only about six thousand professional astronomers
in North America, and it's super competitive because there are
(25:10):
a hundred and fifty North American job openings per year
and there are one hundred and twenty five pH d
grads per year, so a lot of people vying for
not that many jobs. Yeah, and if you do get
a job, though, it pays pretty well to be an astronomer.
In twelve, the median pay was one hundred and six
thousand dollars per year or per hour. If you're you know,
(25:35):
wanted to keep track of it that way, And the
kinds of things obviously that you'd be studying include planets, stars, galaxies,
and other celestial bodies. And there's all sorts of equipment
that's involved as well, including ground based equipment like radio
and optical telescopes, as well as space based equipment such
as the Hubble space telescope, which a lot of listeners
have probably heard of. And you generally are either making
(25:58):
observations are working on theory. So what are some of
the modern observations that astronomers today have been making, Caroline, Well,
it's not so much that astronomers are looking through a
telescope and sweeping the sky, as the ladies in our
first episode did very often, but rather use computers and
(26:19):
super sophisticated telescopes that can detect radiation other than visible lights,
such as gamma rays or radio waves, and rather than
making direct observations by sweeping the sky with a telescope,
theoretical astronomers typically use data from observational astronomers to develop theories.
And we should also mention too that telescope technology has
(26:41):
also spawned numerous medical applications, so there are day to
day repercussions of the work that astronomers are doing, and
typically they're employed at colleges, universities, and professional schools. UM.
They're also involved in research and development in the physical
engineer in life sciences. And of course if you are
(27:03):
in aspiring astronomer astrophysicists, you can get a job with
the federal government. You can work BANASA or the Department
of Defense. Right, only of astronomers and astrophysicists end up
in those cushy, high paying federal government jobs like NASA.
Most of them are at colleges and stuff. But alright,
(27:26):
so now that we've laid out what astronomers are doing today,
that they're using big supercomputeras what does it look like
out there for ladies today in astronomy. Well, astronomy is
usually highlighted as a stem field that is friendlier to women,
which seems ironic considering you know, the Jostle and Bell
(27:47):
Burnell stories and the other ones that we've shared. Um.
But by and large it does tend to attract more
women than other stem fields. But it's still suffers similar
leaky pipe line issues as we see all over stems.
So when it comes to the pipeline issue. It's usually
the same old tale of women starting out they're interested
(28:10):
in physics, are taking the courses and their bachelor's degrees,
but they don't make it to the PhD level. And
then if they make it a PhD level, there's a
drop off after that as well. Right, And a lot
of these numbers, though, can be deceiving. It really depends
on what phase of a woman's science career or astronomy
career you're looking at. Because we mentioned that uh, physics
(28:34):
and physics bachelor's degrees were important to talk about because
typically that can lead then to astronomy um. And so
when you look back at middle school and high school,
girls make up half of physics students, but that number
definitely drops way off in high school and definitely in
higher education. But you also have to keep in mind
that most high school students or a lot of high
(28:57):
school students have to take the like physics or chemistry
or whatever, and so it's just important to keep in
mind that, well, yes, there is a pipeline issue. Sometimes
you just have to remember that certain things are inflating
numbers and parts of the pipeline. So if we look
at higher education and This number is coming from two
(29:19):
thousand three, so it's a little bit dated. But women
earn of physics bachelor's degrees and forty percent of astronomy
bachelor's degree. So you see there about astronomy bachelor's degree,
so hey, we're earning almost half of them. Well done. Also,
I can do simple math um. Now, when it comes
(29:40):
to the faculty and stand alone astronomy departments, women make
up only four percent of faculty members versus ten percent
in physics departments, so you might there too have issues
going on with the whole visibility factor. You don't see
many women at the front of the classroom in physics
and astronomy. Yeah, but there is good news and bad
(30:02):
news when it comes to women teaching and higher education.
Women are being hired into the professorial ranks at better
than their availability rate, but the proportion of women in
temporary faculty positions and like assistant professor positions is even higher.
So there's still a little bit of echoes of pickerings
women where well, it's great that they're getting into this field.
(30:25):
Many of them are still filling the lower positions, but M. I. T. S.
Claude Cannas are has found that women were tenured actually
at a slightly higher rate than men, and that the
clock stopping so to speak, to have or adopted child
actually did not affect women's likelihood of being tenured. That
is so surprised. That is so surprising because whenever it
(30:46):
comes to women in academia in general, it's usually that
whole tenure track of having to not only teach, but
also do the research and get published and just all
of the hours involved in that that requires to get
ten years is often cited as the you know, primary
reason for that that drop off in women. UM. But
(31:07):
when it comes to some gender imparity in physics and astronomy,
the US is not alone in this. Most countries, in fact,
award less than a quarter of their first level university
physics degrees to women, and most grant less than of
their physics PhDs to women. But there is a PhD
that we need to mention. Astrophysicist Meg Garry, who has
(31:31):
been one leading the charge in terms of calling for
more recognition of issues affecting women in STEM. How do
we close the leaky pipeline? Obviously providing visibility as a
female astrophysicist, UM, she has echoed what knasar Is said
in terms of there's a lot of research showing that
(31:52):
pipeline and underrepresentation issues aren't necessarily about complications from having
a family, or even conscious discriminatory actions, or obviously anything
to do with innate ability. So Urie has pondered and
written about a lot what is the issue, what's going on?
And something that comes up a lot for her is
(32:12):
unconscious gender bias. Yeah, and she points to several studies
that have shown that work associated with a woman's name
isn't as highly rated as that associated with a man's name.
She also mentions that in letters of recommendation, women are
more likely to get words like reliable, while a man
will be deemed brilliant, and also the fact that women
(32:35):
and men don't necessarily respond to mentors coaching styles the same.
She also points out that the way that we're socialized
could have a lot to do with it, as I
mean as women, not just as like people or astronomers
or whoever. She instructs women to own your ambition. She writes,
it really scares me the way young women dial back
their aspirations because they're anticipating that they'll have to make compromises.
(32:58):
Believe me, the young men aren't doing that. Okay, So
when's the last time we heard that? Kristen from Cheryl
Sandberg and lean in Yeah, it sounds very lean in e.
She talks a lot about women needing to work at
something they love and something that they can publish high
impact papers about so they can really make their mark
(33:19):
in that community because it is a small and prestigious community,
and also developed connections with other women in science. There's
a lot of networking going on intentionally among women in
these STEM fields and it's not just an issue though.
When it comes to representation of people in STEM, it's
not just women. There's also a lot of attention that's
(33:40):
been paid recently to ethnic minorities as well as LGBT
representation um because, for instance, from nineteen seventy six to
two thousand three, only thirty five African American women in fifties,
seven Hispanic women earned physics PhDs. From nineteen seventy six
to two thousand three, and just seven African American women
(34:03):
and twelve Hispanic women earned astronomy PhDs. And honestly, all
of the women that we have highlighted up to this
point Caroline have been white. We should acknowledge that right
and speaking about boosting the representation of many types of
people in astronomy and having a greater amount of diversity.
Vanderbilt University is hosting the inaugural Inclusive Astronomy Meeting in
(34:25):
June of this year, and their mission statement says that
Inclusive Astronomy will serve as a welcoming, strategic venue to
advocate and provide resources for the inclusion in the astronomy
community of people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex,
queer or questioning people, people with disabilities, women, and anyone
(34:46):
who holds more than one of these identities. Yeah, and
on top of that, we should mention that the American
Astronomical Society has a working group on lgbt i Q
equality to raise awareness and fight discriminations. So it does
sound like there is progress being made in terms of representation,
(35:08):
of paying attention to these issues, of trying to level
the playing field. Um, so that bickerings women can finally
be a past era of astronomy. And I feel like
a good place for us to close out this conversation,
Caroline would be a couple of living Lady astronomers out there,
because there is one thing that jumped out to me
(35:30):
in thinking about astronomy and astrophysics today when it comes
to women. There are no Lady carl Sagan's or Neil
de grass Tyson's, and yet there are these women doing
incredible work. I think that we need a woman astronomer
rock star at the level of Neil de grass Tyson,
whom I love nothing against Neil de grass Tyson at all, um,
(35:54):
But who are who are a couple of potential Neil
de grass Tyson's. I mean, we've mentioned Meg Jury all
ready and all of the incredible work she's doing in
terms of writing about basically diversity she's in astronomy. But
one big name we should mentioned too is Sydney C. Wolf.
She was the first woman to serve as director of
a major U S observatory and to have led the
(36:14):
construction of six premier telescopes. She served as the director
of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Arizona from seven
to two thousand and she helped develop world class observatory
facilities in both Arizona and Chile, and so she served
as also the American Astronomical Society president in nine, not
(36:35):
bad for a group that felt it needed an entire
committee to examine women's role in the organization. She's the
founding editor also of the Astronomy Education Review, and her
research on stellar atmospheres and the evolution, formation, and composition
of stars is internationally recognized and Caroline. Since we started
off the podcast talking about comets, a good place to
(36:59):
bring the podcast full circle is Caroline Shoemaker for a
couple of reasons. First of all, Shoemaker holds the record
for the most common discoveries get ready for this, folks.
She's found more than eight hundred asteroids and thirty two comments.
And with her husband Jean, she received the Written House
Medal in and the Scientists of the Year Award in
(37:23):
and NASA awarded her the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in
and her story is fascinating because she didn't get into
astronomy on a professional level until she was fifty one. First,
she was a stay at home mom and she always
was interested in her husband, Jean's work, and he often
(37:46):
looped her into field observations and work that he was doing.
But it wasn't until after that phase of being a
full time mom that she's then transitioned into being this
incredible astronomer. And she worked with her husband Jean until
he was killed in a tragic car accident at a
California observatory. So no matter what age you are, if
(38:11):
you're listening to this podcast, it's not too late if
you're interested in astronomy. And I love this story though,
because I mean it really to me sums up so
much of women's history with astronomy because she's kind of
it goes back to the buttons and breakfasts this year
that we were talking about in Part one of that
(38:32):
concern of well, if women get too involved in astronomy,
then who's going to take care of the home? Well,
Carolin Schuebaker was like, I'll just do all of it. Yeah,
well yeah, And it also perfectly illustrates our our themes,
one of our themes from the first episode, which is
that so many women throughout history have gotten into stem fields,
stem jobs, stem hobbies and pathtimes thanks to the influence
(38:56):
of a father or a husband or whatever. And so
here you have a very modern woman, Carol and Shoemaker,
who is getting not only involved in astronomy but completely
pursuing it passionately as a career and making all these
discoveries in the wake of her husband's death. Yeah, So
with that, I hope that there's some astronomers listening. We
(39:16):
would love to hear from you, or people who are
just amateur stargazers, or any folks involved in STEM. We
want to know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com. Oh, and if you have any suggestions
for the lady equivalence of Vanil de Grass, Teyson and
Carl Sagan. Really curious to know who your nominations would
(39:39):
be for Lady Astronomer rock stars Mom Stubb at house
stuffworks dot com. Again is our email address. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. Al Right, I have a letter here
from Steven following up on our history of Underpant's episode. Uh.
(40:01):
Steven says, I found it interesting how you mentioned that
women's equivalent for men's clothing, we're not only made more
feminine through frills or lace, but also through terms like
lady alls instead of overalls. As a guy, I've noticed
the same phenomenon with men's equivalent for what are considered
traditionally feminine things, such as guyliner for eyeliner, man purse
for any bag a guy carries, and man's scaping for
(40:24):
his hair trimming choices. I carry a messenger bag is
my everyday carry all, and I prefer to just call
it my bag or confront the occasional jokes directly and
just call it my purse. It's amazing just how uncomfortable
people can get when you start stepping over the perceived
gender lines, and how far they'll push to keep everyone
pinned into gender roles and expectations. Me I'll keep proudly
(40:45):
flaunting my purse and wearing eyeliner wherever I go. Thanks
for all the work you put into the podcast, and
thank you Stephen for writing in Well. I've got a
letter here from Olga also about our history of Women's
Underwear episode and the subject line is women's underwear in
nineteenth century Serbia. So here we go, Algar Rights. I'm
(41:07):
a cultural anthropology student in Serbia and we had a
Serbian material culture class in which we discussed clothing, among
other things, nineteenth century peasant clothing in the Balkan region
is influenced by both Western fashion, which came through the
city folk, and Eastern fashion because most of these countries
were part of the Ottoman Empire for a long time,
which I find endlessly fascinating. As a result of this
(41:30):
kind of cultural collision, there were some mixed feelings about
the transition to underwear. Turkish women traditionally wore pants, under
skirts that were split in the front, and vests instead
of constricting corsets. Serbian peasants also wore vest instead. Of course,
it's no underwear of any kind except sometimes as chamis
and sheer white skirts that fell just below the knee,
(41:53):
And because that didn't cover anything at all, most parts
of the country covered it with another article of clothing,
mostly aprons, and peasant clothing was highly symbolic, so if
you wove a certain color through your woolen apron while
you were making it, you could express all sorts of
personal feelings and social status is like a certain color
might indicate marital status. So anyway, when the city women
(42:15):
started wearing underwear, the country folks all is something that
only rich women, women in sports and prostitutes might wear.
And also since poor country women didn't get to rest
while they got their period, they would have to work
through it. Meanwhile, I'm down for the count for at
least two days when aunt flow comes along. And don't
even get me started on dealing with pregnancy in the
(42:35):
nineteenth century. Anyway, I love listening to you people talk
about cool things. Keep doing what you're doing, So thanks.
I'll go for that insight into nineteenth century serbian underwear.
And now I kind of wish that I had a
symbolic woolen apron. So if you have any costume history
or facts about astronomers, or anything else you'd like to
(42:57):
share with us, moms stubbt house. Stuffworks dot Com is
our email address and for links to all of our
social media as well as all of our blogs, videos,
and podcasts, including this one with all of our sources
so you can follow along. Head on over to stuff
mom Never Told You dot com for more on this
(43:17):
and thousands of other topics. Isn't how stuff Works dot
com
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