Sexual harassment in STEM: 'It's tragic for society
Female astronomers speak out about a culture of pervasive sexual harassment in academia, especially in the sciences and other STEM fields.

"Conversations became increasingly sexual and they eventually progressed to physical touching, like skin on skin on my neck."

"He would actually come up to where I was staying at the observatory at 11 p.m. at night, and knock on the door and wait on my porch as I would hide under my bed with all of the lights off."

"It became clear that he actually wanted a sexual relationship. ... He got very drunk and physically separated me from the group."

These are the experiences of three women who spoke to CNN about a culture of pervasive sexual harassment in academia, especially in the sciences. They were harassed by different men, throughout different parts of their education and careers.

"We see it in anthropology, we see it in philosophy, we see it in physics, we see it in the humanities, we see it in the social sciences. We see it in engineering in particular. Astronomy just happened to be, sort of, first" to get attention, said Alessondra Springmann, a rocket scientist at the University of Arizona who studies asteroids and comets.

A peer-reviewed study of harassment and assault experiences in the scientific field found that 71% of the women surveyed were sexually harassed while conducting fieldwork and 25% were sexually assaulted. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Can we stop this and reboot the system?

Story via CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/30/us/astronomy-sexual-harassment/index.html

Study:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0102172

#science   #womeninSTEM   #harassment  

23 August is reserved to Sarah Frances Whiting
Today is the birthday of physicist Sarah Frances Whiting, who was born in Wyoming, New York, in 1846. She earned her bachelor's degree at age 17 from Ingham University, one of the first women's colleges in the US. She became a teacher in Brooklyn until 1876, when she was hired as a physics professor at a new university for women, Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

For her first few years at Wellesley she also sat in on physics lab classes at MIT. Whiting used that knowledge to organize the first physics lab classes for women students, and only the second for undergraduates in the US. Whiting kept up on the latest physics developments, attending lectures and spending sabbaticals visiting Lord Kelvin, J.J. Thomson, and other leading scientists of the day.

She was probably the first to take x-ray photographs in the US. In 1898 a 12-inch telescope that Whiting had used during her years in Brooklyn went up for sale; she convinced a Wellesley trustee to buy it and build the Whitin Observatory. Whiting's students included Annie Jump Cannon, who went on to become a pioneer in classifying stars.

"Sarah Whiting died on September 12, 1927 at the age of 81," physicist Frieda A. Stahl wrote in a short biography of Whiting. "Her sister Elizabeth was her sole survivor and legal heir. American women physicists are her professional heirs."

Reference:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1927PA.....35..539C

Bio:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sarah-Frances-Whiting

#womeninstem   #history   #amazingwomen   #science  

July 14th is reserved to Florence Bascom
Today is the birthday of Florence Bascom, who was born on this date in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in 1845. Bascom was the second woman in the US to earn a PhD in geology and the first woman to earn a PhD from Johns Hopkins University. She was a professor first at Rockford College, then the Ohio State University, and finally at Bryn Mawr College, where she founded the school's geology department.

In 1896 she was the first woman appointed to the US Geological Survey. Her work was well-known for her innovations in the use of petrography—the analysis of rocks by closely studying their mineral and textural characteristics.

Reference:
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/florence-bascom
https://www2.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/florence-bascom-pioneer-geologist/

#history   #womeninstem   #science   #FlorenceBascom  

In 1963 Valentina Tereshkova orbited Earth 48 times!
On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to be launched into the space after being selected from more than 400 aspirants. It is said that one of the reasons for her selection was her parachute jumping and skydiving skills.

She made her first flight as a pilot in Vostok 6. The word Chaika was used to call her in the space which, later, was used as the name of an asteroid in the honour of Tereshkova.

After her flight, she graduated as a cosmonaut engineer from Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. She earned a doctorate degree in engineering in 1977.

Bio:
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/whos_who_level2/tereshkova.html

#womeninstem   #amazingwomen   #space   #science  

Henrietta Swan Leavitt, a 19th century astronomer whose ground-breaking insights allowed us to measure the universe will be honored by President Obama tonight (9pm EST) in his final guest presenter slot to celebrate science fair week.

You can watch the broadcast at: 
http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/science-channel-presents/news/dnews-videos/ 

Article:
http://news.discovery.com/space/history-of-space/obama-to-shine-light-on-unsung-hero-of-astronomy-160415.htm

Bio:
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Henrietta-Swan-Leavitt

#womeninSTEM   #HenriettaSwanLeavitt   #amazingwomen  

Margaret Sanger
In 1916 women’s-rights activist and nurse Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States. The Brownsville, Brooklyn center was closed soon after its opening; New York City police officers raided the clinic on the grounds of the 1873 Comstock law, which made it illegal to disseminate contraceptive information. However, the state appelate court’s decision in her case gave her grounds to establish a birth control distribution system of doctor-staffed clinics, paving the way for new opportunities, including the creation of Planned Parenthood.

Reference:
http://anb.org/articles/15/15-00598.html

Image credit: Margaret Sanger. Photograph by Underwood & Underwood. 1922. Library of Congress.

#womeninstem   #margaretsanger   #history  

January 23 is reserved to Elizabeth Blackwell
On this day 1849, Mrs Elizabeth Blackwell becomes 1st woman physician in US.

Elizabeth Blackwell was born February 3, 1821, near Bristol, England. She moved with her family to the United States when she was 11. Despite opposition from both fellow students and the public, she became the first woman to graduate from medical school in the United States. She created a medical school for women in the late 1860s. She later returned to England and set up a private practice there.

Bio:
http://www.biography.com/people/elizabeth-blackwell-9214198#synopsis

#womeninSTEM   #historyofmedicine  

15th January is reserved to Sofia Kovalevskaya
On this date in 1850, Sofia Kovalevskaya was born in Moscow, Russian Empire. Despite her early aptitude with mathematics, women were not allowed to attend university in Russia, so she arranged a fictitious marriage to Vladimir Kovalevskij and emigrated to Germany.

In 1874 she became the first woman in Europe to earn a doctoral degree in mathematics. One of the papers she published at the time introduced a theorem that gave the conditions for solutions to a set of partial differential equations. In the 1880s she moved to Sweden and became the first woman to hold a professorial chair in northern Europe and one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor.

Bio:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Kovalevskaya.html

#womeninstem   #kovalevskaya   #history  

11th December is reserved to Annie Jump Cannon
Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) was an instrumental figure in world astronomy. She is credited with the co-creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, the first serious attempt to classify and organize stars based on their temperature.

She was the valedictorian at Wellesley College, one of the top universities for women in the U.S., and graduated with a degree in Physics. She started working at the Harvard College Observatory. Throughout her career which spanned more than four decades, she helped gain the respect and acceptance of the scientific community for women involved in the field.

Read & learn:
http://www.biography.com/people/annie-jump-cannon-9236960

Image via Wikipedia Commons

#womeninstem   #history   #science