The United States economy relies on the productivity, entrepreneurship, and creativity of its people. To maintain its scientific and engineering leadership amid increasing economic and educational globalization, the United States must aggressively pursue the innovative capacity of all its people—women and men. However, women face barriers to success in every field of science and engineering; obstacles that deprive the country of an important source of talent. Without a transformation of academic institutions to tackle such barriers, the future vitality of the U.S. research base and economy are in jeopardy.
Beyond Bias and Barriers explains that eliminating gender bias in academia requires immediate overarching reform, including decisive action by university administrators, professional societies, federal funding agencies and foundations, government agencies, and Congress. If implemented and coordinated across public, private, and government sectors, the recommended actions will help to improve workplace environments for all employees while strengthening the foundations of America's competitiveness.
The purpose of this short paper is to summarize the contents of a poster paper given by the author at the 2004 AAS annual meeting in Denver. The first objective of that poster paper was to disclose the content of letters by Professor Mittag, of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, and by Dr. Harlow Shapley, the director of the Harvard College Observatory. To the knowledge of the author none of these letters were published before. The second objective of the poster paper was to suggest that the importance of Henrietta Leavitt’s discovery, the period-luminosity relation, has not been fully recognized by the public or fully appreciated by the astronomical community. Detailed description of the life and works of Henrietta Leavitt and the difficult conditions under which she, like most women of her time, had to work are topics of future publication.
The Ada Lovelace Day Education Pack is a series of resources for teachers and parents, focused on students aged 11-14, ie Key Stage 3 in the UK or US Grades 6-8. They are free to download, print, use and share.
Our aim is to help teachers tackle the gender stereotypes that hold both girls and boys back, and to particularly address girls’ relationship to and confidence with STEM subjects. You can read the contents on the individual pages, or you can download PDFs to print for the classroom.
The pack includes:
Notes for Teachers: A look at the key issues facing girls and an exploration of the permanent changes we can make to help encourage girls into STEM. PDF 487.9 kB
Teaching Scenario 1: The Ultrobot: Students are encouraged to explore questions around how gender is used as a marketing tool, how colour-coding toys (and other items) as ‘for boys’ or ‘for girls’ limits children’s opportunities. PDF 509.8 kB
Teaching Scenario 2: The Recruitment Fair: Students are asked to consider how language can influence their perceptions about which jobs are ‘for men’ or ‘for women’, and thus which jobs they can imagine themselves doing, and how job descriptions can be written to be more inclusive. PDF 515.8 kB
Teaching Scenario 3: The Charitable Trust: Students are encouraged to think about the ways in which STEM makes a positive difference to our lives, how there is a very broad spectrum of opportunities in STEM, and that STEM careers are not reserved just for the ‘super-geniuses’ or ‘brainiacs’. PDF 526.3 kB
Useful Resources: A list of online resources for teachers and parents. PDF 790.1 kB
The Amazingly Enormous Careers Poster: How many different careers become available to graduates of STEM degrees? This poster drives home the point that STEM opens doors.
Ada Lovelace poster: Who was Ada Lovelace? What were her greatest achievements?
Many thanks to ARM for supporting the development of this resources pack.
Under-representation of women at higher levels of faculty in the biomedical sciences has long been noted.1 However, whereas differences in representation in academic sciences are clear, less is known about disparities in important indicators of research success that might partly account for such differences, such as success in obtaining funding.2, 3 and 4For instance, the equity of amounts awarded to male and female awardees has not been assessed.
We used publicly available data from grants awarded from Oct 1, 2000, to Sept 30, 2008, by a major UK biomedical funding body, the Wellcome Trust, to assess grant funding amounts awarded to women versus men. Gender was assigned to each primary recipient on the basis of name, with consensus agreement by GB and NTVD (internet searches resolved disagreements). Data were available on 10 283 awards made to 7015 individuals. We compared monetary differences by gender using ANOVA, with adjustment for rank (predoctoral, doctoral, professorial).
