Women in STEM: 2019

March is Women's History Month, a time to celebrate the contributions women have made to society. Sigma Xi will participate by celebrating women's contributions to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). We asked Sigma Xi members to share the challenges they see for women working in, or studying, science, technology, engineering, or math and what can be done to overcome these challenges. 

Andrea Armani

Current position

Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California (UCS)

Please describe your job.

I am a professor of chemical engineering and materials science at USC. I lead a research group of enthusiastic undergraduate and graduate student researchers and postdoctoral scholars who are inventing new nanotechnologies to improve healthcare. I also teach classes, give research lectures and seminars, organize outreach events for the greater Los Angeles community, and oversee a core USC facility for nanoscience.

What challenges do you see for women working in, or studying, science, technology, engineering, or math?

Depending on the career stage, the challenges are very different. However, in many ways, a universal challenge is the lack of female engineers in leadership positions who can act as mentors and can serve as role models. Additionally, as a result of this imbalance, the few female scientists in leadership positions carry a disproportionate burden of outreach as compared to their male counterparts.

What do you think could be done to help overcome those challenges?

I encourage all of my students to identify researchers who are good mentors and to proactively contact them for advice. However, as a scientific community, we need to do better. We should leverage new technologies to build mentoring networks and more effectively utilize existing mentoring resources. We also need to recognize that demonstrating scientific leadership goes beyond scientific discovery. When evaluating scientific leadership for inclusion in the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, a researcher’s contributions both in and out of the lab should be considered. In many ways, there are many possible opportunities for positive change, if the scientific community can work together.

Beth A. Cunningham

Please describe your job.

My position is to oversee the day-to-day operations of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and to work in partnership with the AAPT Board of Directors in setting the strategic direction of the organization. AAPT is a professional membership association of physics educators dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching. AAPT has about 6,500 members worldwide that are educators who teach all levels, K–12 through graduate education. In addition to overseeing AAPT’s membership, programs, conferences, and finances, I am responsible for several special grant-funded projects including one to produce more highly quality K–12 physics teachers and another to increase the participation of women in the physics teaching profession, especially in higher education.

What challenges do you see for women working in, or studying, science, technology, engineering, or math?

Women, particularly women from underrepresented groups, face a number of challenges including implicit bias, stereotype threat, microaggressions, and, in some cases, explicit bias. These types of experiences can make women feel excluded and discourage them from considering or continuing in STEM careers. Physics may be considered an objective science but yet physics has a culture that has encouraged participation by only the “best and brightest” which has often meant white males. The challenge for many areas of STEM is how to change the culture to be more inclusive.

What do you think could be done to help overcome those challenges?

There are a number of ways to overcome these challenges including: finding spaces where women can talk about their challenges and develop solutions together; training allies, especially male allies, to support women when they experience biases and harassment; providing opportunities for all  STEM professionals to learn more about the challenges women face in the workplace and the ways that women can be supported; providing mentors and sponsors to help women progress in their careers; and developing women and family-friendly policies in academia and the workplace. Professional societies have a key role in helping the community make changes since our members look to us for leadership. I’m currently working on a project that will challenge physics and astronomy departments in higher education in the U.S. to reflect on their policies and practices and develop action plans to make the cultural changes that are needed to retain the full range of talent. I’m excited to see the next generation of discoveries in physics and astronomy that will happen because of the new ideas, theories, and experiments that are generated out of a diverse group of physicists and astronomers.

Marcetta Darensbourg 

Current position

Distinguished professor and Davidson Chair in Science, Department of Chemistry, Texas A&M University; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Please describe your job.

As a professor I “profess.” I teach in lectures and direct a research group of eight to ten graduate students and two or three undergraduates. Teaching undergraduate chemistry majors predominantly keeps me grounded in fundamentals. Mentoring the graduate students keeps me informed on frontier research as well as creating frontier research. As a member of an international community of scientists who work in my field of interest, I contribute with our research, organizing and attending conferences, reviewing papers and proposals; in these ways I also advertise the research component of my university.

What challenges do you see for women working in science, technology, engineering, or math?

While many things regarding work/family balance issues have really changed over the 50 years of my professorship—others have not. When to have children and how to manage career and all afterward remains a major concern. However, much has changed in the general awareness of how important family is to the health of our enterprise; how important it is to have a “life” outside of the lab or lecture hall; how important it is to support personal decisions; how important it is to have a support network. I owe so much to the women and men who fought for this awareness. Personal challenges persist, including getting recognition for ones ideas, not worrying if we appear to be overly aggressive when trying to speak as loudly as our male counterparts.

What do you think could be done to help overcome those challenges?

We are on the right track. Increasing numbers of women in the STEM jobs makes the field more attractive both within and for recruiting. Support groups and programs in universities and in national conferences that address challenges are frequently also attended by young men. Our challenges are not unique. We must persist and simply carry on.

Jordan B. Harrod

Current position

PhD student in the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology; host of everydAI on YouTube

Please describe what you are working on at school and how that ties in to your career goals.

As a PhD student, my interests lie at the intersection of machine learning, electrical engineering, and neuroscience. I am currently rotating with Dr. Ed Boyden and Dr. Emery Brown with the goal of developing a closed-loop non-invasive neuromodulation system for a variety of clinical applications. Outside of the lab, I host a YouTube channel called everydAI which aims to educate the public on how we interact with artificial intelligence in our everyday lives, am involved in science writing organizations at Harvard and MIT, and engage in science policy advocacy.

At the moment, my career goals are leaning towards industry and entrepreneurship, as I would be interested in commercializing the products of my PhD. I’ve found that both the academic projects that I am working on and the mentorship of my advisors have supported these goals. However, I also plan to continue working on science communication and science policy throughout my career, which I am developing a skill set for through my extracurricular work.

What challenges do you see for women working in, or studying, science, technology, engineering, or math?

The field of biomedical engineering is actually fairly diverse in terms of gender (compared to other fields), but there are certainly still hurdles that women working in STEM fields face today. One of the bigger ones that I’ve noticed is that while STEM fields have made efforts to remove external educational and social barriers specific to women, they have also retained internal social structures that can be damaging to women, specifically as it pertains to the #MeTooSTEM movement. This is not to say that science should not be judged on merit, but to say that scientists who have sexually harassed their female peers and students should not be praised for their scientific work without equally acknowledging and addressing their wrongdoings. In addition, these social structures encourage superiors to suppress the voices of researchers, often women, who are trying to reform these systems by bringing those wrongdoings to light.

What do you think could be done to help overcome those challenges?

I think that continuing to highlight these wrongdoings will help the STEM community make strides towards overcomes these challenges, but I also think that the STEM community will have to consciously shift internal social structures to acknowledge that scientists are not exclusively defined by their science, but also by their impact on their communities.

Jarita C. Holbrook

Current position

Associate professor of physics at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa; filmmaker; astrophysicist; cultural astronomer

Please describe your job(s).

I am an associate professor of physics and astronomy. My research is interdisciplinary drawing from the social sciences under the umbrella field of cultural astronomy. I created and run the Astronomy & Society group at UWC. Right now I have three postgraduate students. We are trying to get articles out, get grant money, and they are working towards graduation. Data collection involves interviewing people connected to astronomy in folk settings, indigenous settings, or academic settings; also, I have a survey project that collects data online. A normal workday isn’t wildly exciting, I am sitting or standing in front of a computer editing articles, analyzing data, editing video, and preparing for my next excursion. I have a full travel schedule traveling internationally just about every month to give a lecture, attend conferences, or to screen one of my films. Also, I travel as part of my family science travel series, Science Tourist. As a filmmaker and videographer, I must maintain social media accounts that I tend to on the sixth day of the week, these are @astroholbrook (Twitter and Instagram) and @science_tourist/@thesciencetourist (on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook). My job, which combines my knowledge of astronomy, my knowledge of astrophysicists, and the social sciences, is wonderfully suited to me.

What challenges do you see for women working in, or studying, science, technology, engineering, or math?

The challenge has to do with trying to change STEM culture to a culture that can recognize talent even when it doesn’t reflect the dominant culture. Many scientists think that they can assess a person’s intellectual ability in as short a time as five minutes of conversation! They then move forward with that limited judgment as if it is both valid and as if the judged person cannot learn, grow, and change. Also, I feel that scientists take advantage of the good will of young women who want to be helpful but dangerously assume that everyone is working to aid their success. The projects that will lead to publications, travel to conferences, and career advancement are patronizingly withheld from young women under the rubric of “they aren’t ready, yet.” Young women trust their advisor’s judgment until they don’t. Then they go through a cycle of disbelief, hurt, anger, evolving to rage and wanting to exit their discipline, because it isn’t just their advisor that has betrayed them, the other faculty are complicit. Being a good advisor means hitting that sweet spot of intellectually pushing your students without setting them up to fail, but always keeping them abreast of where you want to see them in the future: as colleagues.

What do you think could be done to help overcome those challenges?

Many ways to change the culture have been proposed and some of these have worked in many disciplines but not in all of STEM. Leadership is important, the leaders set the priorities and they need to prioritize STEM diversity that is truly inclusive including how to keep non-traditional students in STEM. This means students with families, students with differing physical able-ness, and of course students that bring ethnic and cultural diversity. These students require more resources in order to stay in STEM, and we need to make sure those resources are available.

As an aside, in South Africa, we are not just focused on transforming STEM, but are in conversations about identifying structural change to decolonize academia.

Ellen Ochoa

Current position

Vice Chair of the National Science Board. She was an astronaut, the first Hispanic woman in space, and the 11^th director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC).

Please describe your career and what you are doing now.

I started out as a research engineer in optics, after getting interested in research from some summer positions. While I was in graduate school, the space shuttle flew for the first time and then started to demonstrate its many capabilities including supporting a variety of research. So I applied to the astronaut corps while working at Sandia National Labs and later NASA Ames Research Center. I was fortunate to be selected and then flew on four missions—two studied ozone depletion and two were part of the assembly of the International Space Station (ISS). I then had a number of management and leadership positions, culminating in 5.5 years as the director of Johnson Space Center, where our talented team was focused on operating ISS, teaming with companies developing crew vehicles to get to and from low earth orbit, developing a new spacecraft for beyond low earth orbit, and much more. After an amazing 30 years at NASA, I now pursue a variety of activities, including serving as vice chair of the National Science Board, which both sets policy for the National Science Foundation and also provides advice to the Administration and Congress on the science and engineering enterprise in the U.S.

What challenges do you see for women working in, or studying, science, technology, engineering, or math?

While the representation in these fields is much better than when I started out, women in most STEM fields still don’t see a lot of other women, and that’s especially the case in computer science, electrical engineering, and physics. Often, women don’t have the same opportunities as men, such as participating in training and development programs, leading teams, or being prepared for and selected for promotions. However, many organizations are now much more aware of unconscious bias and have changed some of their processes to help address it.

What do you think could be done to help overcome those challenges?

We need to address both attracting and retaining women (as well as underrepresented minorities—women and men) to the STEM fields. Some of the actions that organizations and individuals have undertaken, which I have personal knowledge of particularly in my role as director of JSC, include:

• Getting the stories of women in the field more broadly disseminated (see, for example, the Women@NASA website, including through social media

• Targeting materials and programs for middle school girls, before they start to make choices in high school that limit their options

• Providing both mentors and sponsors in college, graduate school, and early in the professional career

• Ensuring that women are fairly represented in training and development programs

• Utilizing (diverse) panels for promotions and awards rather than a single individual

• Advertising both formal and informal opportunities in the work environment (e.g. leading or participating on an ad hoc team) so that women can express their interest, rather than having a supervisor just select someone, which is often the same person over and over

• Supporting Employees Resource Groups, which provide informal leadership opportunities, help an organization attract and retain women and other members of underrepresented groups, and increase employee engagement

• Implementing a strong harassment policy including multiple avenues for people to report issues

Kate Richardson

Current position

Top presenter in the Math and Computer Science category of the Undergraduate Division at Sigma Xi’s 2018 Student Research Conference; undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill.

Please describe what you are working on at school

I am double majoring in physics and computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Physics is the perfect major for me because I constantly ask the question “why?” to try to understand the most fundamental of the driving forces behind what we observe. I chose computer science as my second major because coding is the lingua franca of modern physics research. I plan to complete an honors thesis on the search for axion dark matter, which is a theorized particle that would solve two currently unexplained phenomena: the strong CP problem (the violation of charge conjugation parity symmetry in the strong interaction) and the need for matter outside of the standard model. I want to go on to earn a PhD in particle physics by studying dark matter and become a professor to continue contributing to dark matter research and the understanding of currently unexplained phenomena. Professors are not only researchers—they also mold the next generation of scientists. I have been lucky to have some of the most wonderful mentors, and I look forward to providing that for other early career scientists.

What challenges do you see for women working in, or studying, science, technology, engineering, or math?

Women face harassment and disregard from their superiors and peers that stops them from pursuing STEM. Additionally, not being able to have mentors that look like you is a deterrent in and of itself for young scientists. The underrepresentation of women in STEM fields is a harmful cycle: the lack of experienced professional women in STEM hurts young scientists of both sexes early in their careers, which contributes to the lack of female graduates. In 2017, only 18 percent of physics PhDs were awarded to women, according to the American Physical Society. In my experience, I have been underestimated in the classroom by both my peers and educators. This has inspired me to work to prove myself to anyone who doubts me. I have had multiple people tell me that I will not be able to complete my double major, which has strengthened my resolve to persevere when I face challenges.

What do you think could be done to help overcome those challenges?

I think that one of the biggest ways to support young scientists as they begin their careers is to foster a sense of community around them. For example, I am part of a scholarship program at UNC for underrepresented minorities in STEM, the Chancellor’s Science Scholars (CSS). CSS and the Women in Physics club have provided me support and advice through peer and staff mentors and friends with similar realities. I am constantly reminded of and try to live by the CSS motto: “If excellence is possible, then good is not enough.” Groups like this provide students with mentors and peers that share their experiences and want to support them. I think that there should be a push to start groups like this even earlier than college because I met one of my own most influential mentors in high school.

Sonya Smith

Current position

My job as a professor is to educate students through teaching and research. My favorite part of my job is to involve students in my research projects. It is such a joy to see them apply the principles they have learned in class to create new knowledge through research. I also consider it my responsibility to develop the next generation of women in STEM, particularly women of color.

What challenges do you see for women in science, technology, engineering, or math?

The main challenges for women working in STEM fields are the toxic climate and culture in which they often find themselves. There is much research on strategies to help women cope with, and navigate, hostile work climates: the so-called fix-the-women approaches. However, these types of approaches are not enough. Hostile climates and toxic cultures are much harder to address because it requires constant vigilance and a willingness to act on the part of administrators. Unfortunately, there is often retaliation against those who report problems rather than assistance. Until toxic climate/culture is remediated, it will not matter how many people we add to the pipeline. They will eventually leave.

What do you think could be done to help overcome those challenges?

This is very tough question because climate and culture results in part due to toxic behavior that has been normalized over time. However, in many cases, enforcing existing policies is a good start to remediating toxic climates and cultures. Paraphrasing from Martin Luther King, Jr.: It may be true that the policy enforcement cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.

More from the Women in STEM project

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