Female Astronomers & the Glass Ceiling

by Sally Pye EVEN THE COSMOS has a glass ceiling, according to information to be discussed at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week. Things are not as bad as they were a half century ago, when women were barred from using some of the biggest telescopes in their work. But a report on the status of women in astronomy found they sometimes get short shrift in the job market. "First, it is clear from the statistics gathered by various experts that discrimination based on gender is faced by women in astronomy and physics at all levels, from entering students to highly qualified professionals striking the glass ceiling," wrote Margaret Burbidge, a pioneer woman astronomer. Burbidge, an astronomer at the University of California, San Diego, was writing in the January edition of "Status," a publication of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy. The AAS is meeting this week in Atlanta and is taking up the question of women's status in the profession. About 15 percent of astronomers are women, with great variance from country to country. A survey presented in "Status" found that virtually all "youngish" astronomers -- those 10 years on either side of their doctoral date -- believed there was gender bias in the field of astronomy. Among young women astronomers, 94 percent said they were treated differently than their male counterparts, and the survey's author noted this difference was sometimes positive. But 66 percent of women in the survey said they expected their careers would be hindered because of their gender. About one-quarter of astronomy graduate students were women in 1999, and that percentage stayed about the same in the post-doctoral realm, but the percentage of women dropped in the higher-ranking areas of academia, up to full professor, according to a "Status" survey. In a section of "Status" set aside for anonymous comment on gender issues, participants gave anecdotes from their work lives:

• At a 1999 conference in Australia, a male speaker used the silhouette of a reclining nude woman on a graph, telling the audience he knew it might offend some, but he could not find a male figure to use.
• A French male astronomer opened his presentation with a picture of a topless female dancer in a grass skirt.
• An Italian male astronomer greeted a woman faculty member with a request to take his clothes to the dry cleaner; she refused.
• A male faculty member recommending a female candidate for a job emphasized "how tiny, sweet and charming the applicant is, and gives a specific example of how amusing and cute it is to watch the applicant in the laboratory wrestling with astronomic instrumentation larger than she."

Lynn Cominsky, a professor of physics and astronomy at Sonoma State University in California and an AAS press officer, found the selection process for certain jobs was so narrow that only a few candidates would even qualify. Of that small pool, only the top woman candidate would likely be hired, while second- and third-ranking men would probably get jobs, she said. Cominsky, who works in the esoteric field of X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy involving high-energy particle physics, also found that women tend to gravitate toward work with ground-based telescopes. In her specialty, Cominsky said, there were only three women among hundreds of men. "The higher the energy (the astronomy), the more like physics it is and the less like classical astronomy," she said. "There really are very few women as you get to the high-energy areas."