Women Barefoot Engineers

Gulab Devi (45) of Harmara village in Rajasthan’s Ajmer district comes across as the quintessential rural woman from Rajasthan. Dressed in the traditional ghagra-choli (long skirt and blouse), Gulab is the sole bread-earner for her four children and her ailing husband who hasn’t had a job in the 24 years of their marriage. Gulab is completely illiterate. Ask her what she does for a living, and she’ll tell you she makes electronic circuits and charges for solar lighting panels. And before you start wondering whether you heard her wrong, she’ll tell you that she also installs and maintains hand pumps, water tanks and pipelines. Not only is she running her household comfortably with her salary from this work, she is also one of the most respected members of her community.
~ "Illiterate solar engineers who light up villages", The Tribune (India), 2-2-2003

Women from rural poor communities in Africa, Asia and South America have traveled to Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan, India to learn how to assemble, install, and maintain solar-powered lamps and electrical systems for their villages. Many of the program's participants are only semi-literate, and graduates receive no degree or certificate when they have completed the program. The idea is to provide the benefits of engineering to poor communities without the need of "engineers with papers".


Watching the video made me realize that I've internalized stereotypes of what a person wielding a soldering iron looks like. The women in traditional dress assembling electronics are a far cry from the nerdy-looking MAKE-reading, HP calculator-carrying engineers of my imagination.

(via Metafilter)

Tags: Barefoot College, solar engineering

Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day

As part of this week's National Engineers Week festivities, Thursday is the eighth annual "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day." There are related events in businesses and schools across the US (engineers willing to speak to classes or other groups are also listed on the site).

If there are no events in your area, you might point any interested girls to some of the online resources the National Engineers Week web site suggests:

• The Engineer Your Life web site is a look at engineering for high school girls, with profiles of women engineers, descriptions of different types of engineering jobs, and information about college engineering programs.
  
• Engineer Girl is similar to Engineer Your Life, but is targeted primarily to middle school girls.
• Engineer Girl is also running an essay contest (girls and boys from 3rd-12th grade) on the topic "Engineering Energy for the Future". First place is $500 and publication of the essay online. The deadline is March 1, so there's not much more time to enter.
• The Discover Engineering site is for middle school students - both boys and girls - has information and videos about "cool" engineering, profiles of engineers, and engineering-related games and activities.
• Changing Our World: True Stories of Women Engineers is "a colorful, 256-page celebration of the contributions of women engineers to every aspect of modern life. The book is a collaborative effort of many different individuals and organizations to address the long-standing under-representation of women in the engineering profession." You can purchase a hard cover copy, or read the pdf version online for free.
  

Tags: Engineers Week, Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day

How It Works

This xkcd comic may be a bit too close to reality to be funny ...

Tags: stereotypes, mathematics

Female Academics Should Emulate Old Farts?

In the latest edition of Inside Higher Education, law professor Erik M. Jensen opines on the need for faculty to dress up to his (or actually his mother's) standards. His advice for women, under the heading "The Sex Question":

1. Avoid poufy sleeves.
2. Dress frumpily.
3. Act like an old fart.

Dress frumpily? I would think simply "professional" would be good enough, as long as your goal isn't to play down the fact you are female and/or young. Of course Jensen is also coming from the law school perspective, where perhaps it is reasonable to expect the faculty to follow the dress code of law firms. In the sciences, wearing a suit or dress is a sure sign that the wearer is doing administrative tasks, since it's simply not practical to do field or bench work in non-casual garb. But even women in law firms aren't expected to "dress frumpily."

Amusingly, Jensen asks and answers: "Are pants acceptable? Of course, in the right climate at the right time." It's hard for me to take seriously fashion recommendations from someone who thinks that pants on women are only occasionally appropriate.

At the Inverse Square Blog, Thomas Levenson points out that this isn't just about professionalism:

It’s not just the usual conservative faux nostalgia for a better, more golden age. This is an attempt to defend a particular vision of academic privilege from hoi polloi — and not just any polloi at that. If you read the dreary passages of his essay one thing becomes clear pretty quickly. The professoriat that needs to dress well shares a certain property — their Y chromosome.

To be sure, Jensen has noticed the presence of the odd strangely Y-less person who has somehow gained access to the Faculty Club. But those few misgendered anomalies are not, in his peculiar vision, required to dress well.

Rather, they must dress to emphasize their desexed condition, the better to preserve the fantasy of the way things ought to be.

It's not just dressing in a sexless fashion that's problematic; it's the advice to "act like an old fart". Not only are the "old farts" unlikely to have young children, they are likely to have a wife that takes care of all their household duties. It's the attitudes perpetuated by the old farts that makes academic life so difficult for women, particularly those with children.

Jensen actually didn't come up with this list himself. He approvingly cribbed this advice from Emily Toth's 1997 book, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia. It appears, though, that his reading comprehension was apparently lacking, because Toth replies in the comments:

As the author-channeler of Ms. Mentor, I do bristle at the characterization of her fashion advice as merely “frumpy, old farty, not poufy.”

In fact, her advice in _Ms. Mentor’s Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia_, in her monthly _Chronicle of Higher Education column_ (http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/09/2007091101c/careers.html and her forthcoming _Ms. Mentor’s New and Ever More Impeccable Advice for Women and Men in Academia_ (U. of Penn, late 2008) is far more nuanced, clever and chic in its own fusty way.

As she says in a recent column:

In recent generations, real-life scholars have moved closer to mainstream fashion norms. For job interviews, almost everyone wears black, beige, brown, or blue. Women usually wear pantsuits, or dresses with jackets; men usually wear jackets and ties (and pants). But away from the job market, fashion eccentricities tumble out: piercings, tattoos, depraved haircuts, voluminous or tiny clothes, and squirrel ears.

She recommends against standing out too far by having too many tattoos, piercings or too much visible cleavage, which sounds more reasonable than Jensen's characterization of her advice. That being said I do believe it is more difficult for women than men to figure out the boundaries of appropriate dress - not too young, not too old, not too sexy, not too formal, and apparently, not too feminine.

Tags: women in science, dress code

Lisa Randall and stereotypes

Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randall was on the Colbert Report to plug her new book, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions.

Professor Randall stands out in the world of physics: not only is she a female professor at Harvard, she is also attractive, good on camera and well dressed*. While she breaks the stereotypes that pretty women aren't smart, and that female scientists are unattractive, the press often seems more interested in her physique than her physics. If you read the comments on that linked post, some people are making the point that it isn't insulting to say an attractive woman is attractive. While I agree in the abstract, the reality is that women are judged by their appearance - both positively and negatively - more often than men. The focus on Randall's looks and clothes makes those seem at least as important as her science. In a field that women are in the minority, I think that's a problem.

* OK, that sounded like a dis of other physicists, but really most of us, physicists or not - outside of the entertainment industry, anyway - aren't that well put-together, and physicists aren't really known for being snappy dressers. Of course I may be wrong on this, since I don't personally know any physicists.

Tags: Lisa Randall, Warped Passages, stereotypes

Women Astronomers: Reaching For the Stars - An Interview with Mabel Armstrong

Women Astronomers: Reaching for the Stars is a recently released young adult book that looks at female astronomers from Hypatia to Wendy Freedman. It's the first book in a planned series on "Discovering Women in Science". Author Mabel Armstrong personally experienced the difficulty of being a woman with an interest in pursuing a career in science. From her biography:

Ignoring teachers and counselors who discouraged her interest in science, Mabel majored in chemistry in college where she was often the only girl in a 200-student lecture room. When interviewed by a major petroleum company after graduation, she was told, “Women are not allowed in the laboratories, they work in the library doing patent searches.? An international food products company said, “You have just the training we’re looking for, but we know women marry and leave. So we don’t hire women.”

She ended up teaching chemistry for 25 years.

Ms. Armstrong kindly agreed to answer some questions about Women Astronomers and her personal experiences in chemistry.

What made you decide to start a series of books on women scientists?

MA: Despite my struggles with people and the system, I love the science. It is such a rewarding career, I wanted more women to consider opting for the sciences. In a book series, I wanted to show readers - particularly middle-school girls - that women have been doing history from pre-history on. They have just fallen off the radar screen. I thought if I could show readers how exciting and satisfying science careers can be, and that the women profiled all loved what they did and are doing, that readers would think, "Gee, I could do that, too."

• Are there any women scientists in who inspired you when you were a young woman becoming interested in science?

MA: With the exception of Marie Curie, I didn't know the names of any women scientists. I think if I had known that history was full of women who studied science, often on their own, I might have made some different decisions.

• It says in your biography that despite people who discouraged you, you studied chemistry in college where you were often the only woman in the classroom. Did you ever consider majoring in biology instead, since there are usually a higher percentage of women in bioscience courses than physical science courses?

MA: I enjoyed the chemistry much more than the life sciences. I realize now that may have been because my high school chemistry teacher was much more inspiring than the life sciences one. But it may also be that chemistry seemed more ordered and predictable than biology. I wasn't squeamish about dissections. I just liked chemistry better. I also realize, just now, that the smartest kids took chemistry. Hmmmmm. Maybe that attracted me. You may not want to say that.

[I'm pretty sure the smartest kids at my school studied chemistry and biology, but I may be a wee bit biased.]

• Your biography also mentions that you had difficulty finding a job in industry after graduating, because companies were reluctant to hire a woman. Do you mind sharing when you graduated? Did the negative attitudes towards women in industry influence your decision to go into teaching?

MA: I went into teaching because I got married and ended up moving to Oregon. I got married because that's what women did in the 60s. There were no jobs for chemists, male or female, in Eugene, Oregon in the 60s.

• How did your teaching experience influence the way Reaching for the Stars was written?

MA: My teaching experience caused me to write the book. When I began teaching, women in my classes were denied admission to veterinary schools. A few years later, they were only denied admission to 'large-animal veterinary' programs. Finally, they were accepted to all programs. Many science professional schools followed that same path - not admitting women until the mid to late 70s. That means there are few women in senior teaching levels.
I found that my students often internalized their rejection. They 'just weren't good enough.' I want to show them that the women are out there, they just haven't made it through the pipeline yet. And that wanting to do science doesn't make you weird, or unfeminine.

• Your target audience is high school students. Is there a reason why you selected that age group, instead of younger girls or college students?

MA: I'm actually hopeful that my main reader will be a 12-year old girl. That would be early enough for her to make the necessary decisions about keeping on with her math and science classes so she's well prepared by the time she graduates high school.

• Your background is in chemistry, so I'm interested in why you chose to write your first book about astronomers instead of chemists. Do you have a special interest in astronomy, or was this a marketing decision?

MA: I think one of the errors western science made during the Renaissance was the rigid separation of the sciences. All sorts of discoveries are now pushing them closer to each other. But that produces problems for me in trying to figure out how to package each book in the series I want to do. So, astronomy seemed a logical start, both alphabetically, and because it is pretty cleanly defined. And it lets me avoid the packaging issue. Turns out, it was an inspired choice because it is so wonderfully graphic - and lots of the graphics are available from NASA. I also think it is one of the more exciting sciences right now, and the media are give good coverage to discoveries. I think the TV science fiction series also spur interest in astronomy.

• WomenAstronomers.com is a companion site to the book that has information both about women in astronomy and astronomy in general. What made you decide to have a companion web site? Is the target audience also high school students?

MA: The web site, WomenAstronomers.com was actually conceived of as primarily a marketing tool. People seem to want more information about authors these days. And it gives me a chance to make available things like press information.

I also wanted to be able to update information on the young women astronomers I've highlighted as Rising Stars in the book, as well as providing information about ways to get involved with amateur astronomy groups around the world.

Finally, I hoped some of the site might actually function as a resource for science teachers. Haven't gotten that part worked out very well yet.

• What is the next book that is planned in the "Discovering Women in Science" series?

MA: The next book, which I'm currently working on, is on chemists.

• Your biography also mentions you enjoy science fiction. Me too! Were (or are) there any particular science fiction authors or books that inspired or excited you?

MA: One of my favorite writers is (was?) John Brunner. I love his extrapolations and his political bent, which matches mine. I like Sherri Tepper and Ursula Le Guin. I'm not much on fantasy, but I do like Judith Tarr. Hmmm do we see a pattern here? To finish the pattern, have you seen Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue and The Judas Rose?

[Yes, definitely a pattern there. I haven't read any of Elgin's novels, but Native Tongue is on my much-too-long "want to read" list.]

Thanks to Mabel for an interesting interview!

For more information, check out The Woman Astronomer.

Tags: women in science, Women Astronomers, Mabel Armstrong

B is for Beauty

University of Liverpool particle physicist Tara Shears and physics teacher and science writer Alom Shaha have created Labreporter.com, a new site for communicating science to the public through video. Not surprisingly, most of the videos posted so far focus on particle physics.

"B is For Beauty" features Dr. Shears and a few of her colleagues at the University of Liverpool talking about matter, antimatter and the Large Hadron Collider . From the description:

Thanks to Star Trek and Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, most of us are familiar with the notion of antimatter – a “mirror-version” of the matter that makes up the world around us. Many science fiction writers have used the fact that matter and anti-matter explode whe ways of powering super-fast space ships or blowing things up. There’s usually an abundant supply of anti-matter in these stories but in the real world, it can only be created in particle accelerators and then only in absolutely minute amounts. Hopefully the [Large Hadron Collider] will provide enough of it to allow scientists like Tara a chance to try and better understand the differences between the two types of matter.

Tara explains “particle physics deals with what the universe is made of and how things behave to make the universe look the way it does. One of the great mysteries that remains is why the universe went from being made of equal quantities of matter and antimatter to being one made entirely of matter”. The key to answering this question is to look at the tiny differences between matter and antimatter particles. The “beauty” quark is particularly good for probing this question because b-quarks and anti-b-quarks behave “more differently” than other particles and their antimatter counterparts.

Shears' passion for particle physics comes through loud and clear. She also narrates "Hunting for the Higgs", "The Matter with Antimatter", "Sizing Things Up" and "The Mystery of the Missing Mass" (that sounds like it would make a great title for a detective novel).

More information about the video and the LHC.

(via Confessions of a Science Librarian)

Tags: antimatter, particle physics, Tara Shears, Labreporter, video

Added to the Blogroll

I've added a bunch of blogs to the blogroll over on the right-hand column in the past week or so, due to some wild surfing and links in the last scientiae carnival.

Not added to the blogroll, but a neat blog nonetheless, is Endless Forms Most Beautiful, the blog for Elissa Hoffman's AP Biology class at Appleton East High School in Appleton, WI. She and her students will be blogging about biology, but she is also looking for guest bloggers who "have an area of expertise, research- or career-wise, that pertains to biology" and are willing to discuss the post (in the comments) with the students.

Data Not Shown is a new science blog by UK postdoc Karen James (aka nunatak). James is also one half of the bloggers at The HMS Beagle Project, with the following mission:

We aim to celebrate Charles Darwin's 200th birthday by building a sailing replica of HMS Beagle and recreating the Voyage of the Beagle with an international crew of researchers, aspiring scientists and science communicators. The voyage will apply the techniques of 21st century science to Darwin's journey, inspiring a new generation of scientists and promoting the public understanding of evolution and wider science.

Rebecca Hunt works at "Augustana College as a Paleontology Research Assistant and fossil preprator" and blogs at Dinochick Blog.

All in the Mind "life and beyond through the mind's eye", an ABC (that's Australian Broadcasting Company) Radio National Blog by science/health journalist Natasha Mitchell

Make No Bones is the blog of paleontology graduate student Sally Pine.

Bio/Rocks is the blog of Sarah, a graduate student in vertebrate paleontology at UC Berkeley.

Amanda, another student paleontologist blogs at Self-Designed Student

a geocentric view by "mollishka" a graduate student in astronomy (even if she isn't interested in the whole "women in science" discussion)

Theorema Egregium is Brazilian physicist post grad Christine Dantas' "place for personal studies on Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy"

I’m an astrophysicist turned into a software engineer turned into a condensed matter physicist. What I really would like to be: a mathematician, a philosopher, and a writer. But above everything, I am a mother.

Quantum Diaries followed "physicists from around the world as they live the World Year of Physics" - which was 2005. No, they haven't been updated since then, but they do provide a glimpse into the work of some international physicists.

• Sophie Trincaz-Duvoid (IN2P3, in French)
• Maaike Limper (NIKHEF, in Dutch and English)
• Debbie Harris (Fermilab, in English)
• Caolionn O'Connell (SLAC, in English)
• Ursula Bassler (IN2P3, in English)
• Sandra Leone (INFN, in Italian)
• Rosa Alba (INFN, in Italian)
• Claire Gray (Wits University, Jefferson Lab, in English)
• Sarah Phillips (Jefferson Lab, in English)
  

Qulog 2.0 is "Florine Meijer's weblog on science poems, mathematical crocheting and whatever else springs to mind." (in Dutch and English).

Astronomer and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville faculty member Dr. Pamela L. Gay blogs at Star Stryder.

Amanda blogs at A Chemist's Laboratory Notebook

Jes Sherman, aka Ψ*Ψ , blogs at Carbon-Based Curiosities. From her profile:

Ψ*Ψ is the one who inevitably does most of the device posts, not entirely by choice. She’s currently a synthetiker in one lab and an analytical chemist in another and also a ninja. Most of her time is spent making colorful aromatic things, cursing at heterocycles and trying to graduate with her sanity (mostly) intact.

Taitauwai is a Malaysian blogger who writes about Chemistry & Cooking

LouScientist blogs at A scientist's life. The description:

Diary of an ex-postdoctoral scientist, who used to work tirelessly in a lab somewhere. (I might be back in a lab sometime soon though)

Zero Divides is written by "a 24 year old female undergraduate student pursuing a degree in Mathematics"

Unbalanced Reaction is the "Experiences of a female science graduate student (soon-to-be Ph.D.) struggling to reach equilibrium"

ScienceMama is molecular biologist/geneticist trying to balance being a postdoc and a mom. She blogs at Mother of All Scientists.

Cherish Maunders is an electrical engineering graduate student who blogs at the excellently-named Faraday's Cage is where you put Schroedinger's Cat

Dr. Medusa is a science faculty member at a US research university who blogs about diversity in science, math, and engineering.

Young Stellar Objects is the blog of Hannah, an astronomer.

Finally, geologist and pie-lover Green Gabro now blogs at Science Blogs under her own name, Maria Brumm.

Tags: women in scienceblogs

Scientiae Carnival @ Fairer Science: Story Telling

The latest Scientiae Carnival* has been posted by Pat at the Fairer Science Weblog. This month's theme is "story telling", and, as usual there are some great posts.

Next month's carnival is a special Anniversary Edition at Rants of a Feminist Engineer. If you have a post to contribute, just follow the directions at the Scientiae Carnival blog.

* The Scientiae carnival covers "Stories of and from women in science, engineering, technology and math."

Tags: scientiae carnival, women in science