Initiatives to tackle the gender gap in astronomy

Introduction

Systematic collections of gender disaggregated data (e.g., [1]) are fundamental tools as they allow for longitudinal studies, thus effectively monitoring a variety of key parameters and in turn offering potential solutions. These have helped solving some issues – for instance, the gender balance among first year college/PhD students in some STEM fields has notably improved over the last decade – thanks to sensibilisation and training campaigns of the youngest generations, their parents and their teachers. Shifting the focus to the academic environment, several colleges and universities have established gender equality plans and have been pro-active in setting up and participating to dedicated programmes aimed at improving the gender balance among their faculties (e.g., [2]). Even if we are far away from claiming any major victory here, this multi-facet approach has started to show some encouraging results that can now support further actions.

The gender gap in astronomy

There is no doubt that a gender gap exists also in astronomy, but quantifying the exact implication of such generic statement remains a challenging task, because data are scattered and far from being complete. It has proven more useful to poll smaller communities (even within the same country) with smaller scale initiatives, despite these, when combined, lack the desired uniformity. But any data that is collected will be instructive and can provide hints to specific areas where gender imbalance issues are the most severe.

Unfortunately, a world-wide directory of all professional astronomers in the world does not exist. The International Astronomical Union could be in principle the entity coming the closest to this, with its 82 national members, but these 84 national delegations are far from being complete and are very different. For instance, while the American Astronomical Society has about 7700 members (source: https://aas.org/about-aas), only about half of them are registered in the IAU. The same is true also for many other countries and only very rarely the opposite is seen (e.g. Italy, where the number of IAU Italian astronomers almost doubles the number of members of the Italian Society of Astronomy). Furthermore, the number of members per country ranges from one single member to more than 2500. Clearly, with small numbers, gender statistics do not tell much.

As of February 1, 2021, the IAU counts almost 11800 members, of which 20.7 % are women, marking a +8 % during the past 20 years, a small, but steady progress. This is, however, the overall fraction of female astronomers registered in the union and it is instructive to look also at the women percentage broken down in age bins where one sees that the numbers are significantly improved in the younger cohorts of astronomers (cf. Figure 1), a feature commonly seen also in national societies (e.g., [3]).

Figure 1:

Female vs. male fractions among IAU individual members, divided in age bins (Data source: http://www.iau.org/administration/membership/individual/distribution/).

At its XXV General Assembly in Sydney (2003), the IAU took a clear position in recognising the gender imbalance affecting the field of astronomy as an issue and thus established a Working Group on Women in Astronomy, reporting directly to the IAU Executive Committee. This consolidation came after two major events helped raising the awareness on these important aspects for our community. The union had been acknowledging the existence of gender inequalities in the astronomical community since the mid-late 80s, when they organised a well-attended (more than 200 participants) special session on the topic of “Women Worldwide in Astronomy” during its XX General Assembly (August 1988). Few years later, in 1992, a meeting on “Women in Astronomy” was organised at the Space Telescope Science Institute, the outcome of which was the release of the “Baltimore Charter for Women in Astronomy”, a reference document with important recommendations and call to action, endorsed and signed by over 150 astronomers.

Since 2003, the IAU Working Group on Women in Astronomy has initiated several projects (e.g., monitoring of gender disaggregated statistics from IAU symposia and conferences, the Gender Gap Project) and organised several events, at the union annual Regional Meetings and especially at its General Assemblies, taking place every three years. The past 20 years have seen a crescendo of activities spread across the entire two weeks of the IAU GA meetings, from discussion forums about the challenges faced by female astronomers, to unconscious bias, impostor syndrome and other core themes like students’ supervision, with speed-mentoring sessions often organised for the youngest astronomers. These events represent a major and positive change from the one single Women’s Lunch event of one decade ago and have attracted increasingly diverse audiences, demonstrating that many of us share the same interest in these topics.

But we need data, in order to understand where the major hurdles lie. The results of one major longitudinal investigation of the professional situation in the field of astronomy in the United States has been recently published by [4]. It shows that the number of women earning astronomy doctoral degrees has increased significantly, reaching the 40 % level, and thus marking a +12 % increase compared to 10 years earlier. This success rate also matches the female percentage among first year doctoral students and among new faculty hires, indicating that the pipeline between doctoral studies and first faculty position is probably not the main culprit for the gender gap. In fact, there is a strong age effect, with the largest gender discrepancies being observed at the senior professorial levels. This is certainly the result of several decades of men being preferentially hired (because of lack of choice among the applicants and/or because of unconscious/gender biases), but it does not mean that we have solved our issues. There is of course hope that the 40 % levels observed today among the junior faculties will continue to hold (with minimal leaks) in the career progression of these women, but in order to ensure this, the monitoring must continue to characterise all career steps.

As a matter of fact, the same AIP report looked also into other aspects and noticed that although one year after graduation things look very equal and satisfactory, a discrepancy starts to surface and widen by mid-career, when women are on average paid less, they have had less opportunities, less doctoral students supervision, less recognition. This is not a real surprise, as these are likely the years when families are built and grow, and point to the some of the well-known factors that, e.g., women are the most involved ones when it comes to caring responsibilities. Any slow-down in the professional life impacts the career progression of a woman and ends into longer career paths to reach the promotion to full professor. As long as the differences in life paths and expectations between men and women are properly taken into account, it will remain challenging to reach gender equity.

Another very ambitious and more global attempt to poll the largest possible astronomical community came from the IAU, when it combined efforts with several other professional unions in STEM fields^[1] and participated to a three years (2017–19) cross-disciplinary project, funded by the International Council of Science and co-led by IMU and IUPAC. The project, called the “Gender Gap in the Natural Sciences: how to measure it, how to close it?” [5], aimed at collecting and analysing data from across the world, at investigating gender patterns (if any) in scientific publications and at setting up a database of resources for a rather broad audience that included young children and their parents, teachers and other professionals, organizations, etc.

The data collection was implemented via a joint Global Survey of Scientists that was translated in seven languages and targeted professionals who are still active, who have left the field or who were educated in a STEM field. During a period of 8 months, the survey collected more than 32 000 responses, of which about 9 % came from astronomers or people who had been involved at a certain point in their lives with astronomy (education- or job-wise). Overall, the responses to the survey show very similar figures across STEM disciplines, confirming that a gender gap exists across all fields, all geographical areas and even countries with different human development indices (based on the United Nations Human Development Index). For the field of astronomy, the Joint Global Survey of Scientists has revealed that women have a clear perception that i. the progression of their career has been slower than the colleagues who graduated at their same time; ii. their gender has discriminated them in the evaluation of their achievements more than age (cf. Figure 2); iii. parenthood has had a significant impact on their careers (cf. Figure 3); iv. they have been harassed significantly more (a factor of 10) than their male colleagues, at school and/or at work. Leaving aside the fourth point, which deserves a careful and well-thought action plan, the first three items all refer to the same critical middle part of a scientist’s career and call for policy changes, both at the institutional and at the governmental levels. Some have already been made like updates in the parental leaves policies that encourage and support a more equal sharing between the partners for the caring/family responsibilities. Other initiatives are more geared towards a global improving and advancing of how scholarly research is assessed (e.g., [6]).

Figure 2:

Fraction of women and men who felt discriminated because of their gender, their age or never felt discriminated (because of their gender) in the assessment of their achievements. Data source: The Global Survey of Scientists (2020; the Gender Gap in Science Project, [5]).

Figure 3:

How parenthood has affected the careers of female and male respondents. Data source: same as in Figure 2.

National or geographical initiatives

We mentioned earlier that national or smaller-scale initiatives have a better chance to succeed in collecting data and they can be very effective and successful in launching new campaigns. They know their communities best (though this depends on their sizes, the smaller the better) and they can be in closer contact with them, and have usually established very effective networks. They are also key in keeping track of the demographics of their science communities. This section aims at describing some of these. Since the list cannot be exhaustive, it was mostly built following two main criteria: geographical diversity, to underline that work is underway in different corners of the planet, and its potential to be useful and effective, based on the author’s (biased) knowledge.

Let’s then start from astronomical societies. Depending on the size of the astronomical community in a given country, the corresponding professional society can be more or less structured, ranging from some sort of an informal gathering to a formal society with statutes, specific committees and governing boards or bodies.

One of the largest societies around the world is likely to be the American Astronomical Society, which was founded in 1899 and counts about 7700 astronomers. There are also other countries with large numbers of member astronomers but on a significantly smaller scale, like for instance India (about 1000 members in its Indian Astronomical Society), Australia and Germany (with about 800 members in their respective societies).

The existence of an astronomical society per se does not guarantee that important social themes like gender equity are discussed and put on their agenda. But, we do observe an increased number of initiatives, namely the creation within a given society of special committees or working groups dedicated to this theme. This is one of the very first steps towards raising awareness. Those societies which have recognised the existence of gender imbalance issues for longer are also likely to have already developed several initiatives that have helped them raising their voices and getting heard and issued recommendations.

The Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy [7], within the American Astronomical Society and which was founded back in 1979, has a long history of initiatives and has made several recommendations to the AAS Board of Trustees on practical measures that, if implemented, could improve the status of women in astronomy and encourage their entry into this field. They have probably been the most effective and strongest advocate for women in astronomy. Apart from the organization of dedicated meetings on the themes of gender equality and inclusive astronomy, they have run several investigations and have been very successful in summarising their findings in series of advices or official documents which can be immediately translated into an actions plan (from 2-body job searches to how to handle bullying/harassment in the workplace, from how men can engage to tips for work-life balance). The committee also has an official strategic plan (covering the 2020–2030 decade), that is formally approved by the AAS executives and the implementation and outcome of which will be evaluated at the end of its validity period.

Another promising initiative has been deployed by the IDEA (Inclusion-Diversity-Equity-Astronomy) Chapter within the Astronomical Society of Australia [8] in the form of an award scheme for institutes and organizations. The so-called Pleiades Award is similar to the Athena Swan awards programme: it includes three levels of accomplishments (bronze, silver, gold) which are awarded based on different parameters that need to be presented – no fixed number, a priori, but a gender equality, diversity and inclusion plan of actions with improved policies and improved numbers. Each award has two years validity, meaning that those who receive an award must continue to work towards improving their achievements (from bronze to silver to gold, for instance) or maintaining their level (should they, e.g., have already reached gold). Participation was not made mandatory hoping in a cascade effect, i.e. as soon as a critical mass is reached, also those who had not been so interested in participating at first, they will likely feel compelled to do something about it. The hope is that after several years of this exercise, senior management and policy makers will have got used to a different, more open and inclusive way of thinking and managing their resources.

Other astronomical societies with a long tradition, like the Astronomical Society of India which was founded in 1972, are also moving forward and have been able to formalise their equality efforts from the past decades into the approval for setting up an official committee focused on the theme of women equity in astronomy, which now brings this theme to the discussion table at every general assembly of the society and supports gender disaggregated data collection and analysis.

Significantly younger and at a cross-national level, the European Astronomical Society was founded in 1990, but only in the second half of the past decade, thanks to the initiative of a small group of members, the need for an official ethics statement and guidelines for best practices at international meetings concretised in an official report. Since 2016, a diversity and inclusion special session is regularly organised at the annual society meeting. Across Europe, there are many more initiatives and projects and the European Commission has had an important role in raising awareness and pushing gender equality into the agendas of the most important funding agencies. The European Southern Observatory and the European Space Agency, as the main inter-governmental organizations to further astronomical research from ground and space respectively, have also developed an action plans that aims at strengthening their equity, diversity and inclusion policies (cf. [9]).

Last but not least, likely the most recent addition to this incomplete list of initiatives is the founding of the African Network of Women in Astronomy, as part of the African Astronomical Society, a very important project that supports the networking of women in astronomy, especially from Africa but that relies also on the support and networking with female astronomers outside Africa.

Telescope time allocations, collaborations and conferences

There are other important areas where improvements on the gender balance in astronomy can be tackled in a systematic way. A large fraction of astronomers progresses in their research by being awarded telescope time. This is a very competitive process which is peer-review based and where, until a few years back, name (hence gender, in most cases) and affiliation information of the applicants’ were fully visible to the evaluators. In order to minimise any gender- and/or affiliation/nationality-related biases, dual anonymous reviews have been recently implemented, i.e. with the applicants’ identities obfuscated. The Space Telescope Science Institute was the first to deploy it in full scale [10], others are deploying it now. The post-review analysis for the HST TAC (Time Allocation Committee) has shown that the gap between female and male PIs has now reduced from 6 % to only 1 %. In Europe, the European Southern Observatory has made a trial run in 2020 in order for its community to get acquainted how to optimally write a proposal for a dual anonymous review process (which requires a slightly different writing style when it comes to citations and promoting own’s and previous work) and is now ready to deploy it fully at its next review process in Spring 2021. Moreover, ESO has worked also on other aspects of this peer-review process, achieving gender parity in its Observing Programme Committee (80 astronomers reviewing about 1000 observing proposals, twice a year) and has experimented with the Distributed Peer Review scheme [11], which although not meant specifically to address gender imbalance issues, it may help in minimising various sources of bias.

Another important area that does have an impact on the career progression of astronomers (and of scientists in general) is scientific conferences, a space where astronomers get together in order to share and discuss their most recent results. Up to one-two decades ago, the most visible roles (keynote and invited speakers) were mostly taken by men, in part because the gender gap was significant, in part because of some biases. By attending scientific meetings strongly dominated by the same gender, one risks to fall in the same loop for the organization of the next meeting because they will likely wish to invite the best speakers and researchers from the previous meeting they have attended. If this pool is significantly biased towards one gender, then one needs a significantly stronger will in order to break this vicious circle. Lately, improved guidelines on how to organize more diverse and inclusive meetings and the requirement for the organizers to collect gender disaggregated data and share them with their funding agencies start to yield improved figures.

Last but not least, one area where astronomy has possibly still to learn and further develop is scientific collaborations. The last couple of decades have witnessed remarkable changes in how astronomical research is carried out, with a marked steering towards large collaborations and surveys type of science. Except in a few cases, astronomy has not reached yet the collaborations size characteristic of nuclear or high-energy physics, but large collaborations can include a few hundred researchers. So far, most of them have been solely driven by the scientific quest and goals. However, because of the important implications that this new modus operandi has on the young students and post-docs, it would be advisable to think about clear guidelines for equity, diversity and inclusion, in the respect of all. A few successful examples could suggest further actions. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey [12], an international collaboration of hundreds of scientists from more than 50 participating institutes, has established a Committee on Inclusion in SDSS (COINS) to assess not only the climate and demographics of this gigantic survey but also to address issues related to inclusion with the survey and in accessing the survey data. In Australia, the ASTRO-3D Centre of Excellence [13] project gathers a couple of hundred scientists (of which about 40 % are women) and for its 7-years funding lifetime has set up not only a Diversity and Inclusion Working Group but has also developed a detailed D&I action plan. It is of uttermost importance that projects and collaborations of this calibre do have a D&I plan to help along in the process.

Recent trends

In more recent times, a change of focus from gender equality towards diversity and inclusion is being observed. Diversity and inclusion are extremely important and broader themes that encompass different aspects of diversity (gender perspective being one of them) and that aim at establishing a respectful, collaborative and supportive workplace that values and includes diversity and provides equal access to all.

In this respect, back in 2015, astronomers teamed up with sociologists, policy makers and community leaders and convened the first Inclusive Astronomy meeting [14], the outcome of which was captured in the ‘Inclusive Astronomy Vision Statement’ that was then formally endorsed by the AAS Council. This event was then followed in 2019 by Inclusive Astronomy 2.0, which confirmed the strong interest of the community on these aspects of our profession.

In 2019, also the IAU organised its first and very successful Symposium (S358) dedicated to the broader topics of equity, diversity and inclusion in astronomy, that offered the participants to share initiatives and best practices from around the world and to forge new collaborations. The recommendations from IAU S358 “Astronomy for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion” have been collected in the official document “Springboard to Action” [15], which is now published on the IAU website. The report includes guidelines and recommendations for everybody, from national/member states and organizational/institutional levels down to the individual members. Everybody can make a difference and needs to engage for the betterment of astronomy.

One of the new collaborations that stem from this symposium has now materialized in the ESA-IAU-ESO-SKAO initiative to start a series of workshops dedicated to diversity and inclusion. In November 2020, a first pilot workshop on accessibility (SARA, Space science and Astronomy Research Accessibility) was held, which will now be followed by an international meeting.

The US National Academy of Science has recently launched the next Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey (Astro2020), which is meant to develop a comprehensive US research strategy and vision for the next decade. Within this important exercise, the presence of a Panel on State of the Profession and Societal Impacts is another example of the commitment of the astronomical community to a broader range of aspects. The Panel has been tasked to gather information on the health and demographics of the astronomy and astrophysics community and to make actionable suggestions on the topics of demographics, diversity and inclusion, workplace climate, workforce development, education, public outreach, and relevant areas of astronomy and public policy.

Outlook

I would like to finish this review by praising all the people who have so far engaged in making astronomy a more diverse, inclusive and equal field and all the initiatives, small and big, national or international, that have helped identifying and removing the hurdles. There remain many issues of inequality, but I want to think at a bright future under the motto “Every action counts.” Only the talking in the open about these issues and the many on-going and future projects are a clear sign of a healthy approach. Equity, diversity and inclusion are being finally recognised as fundamental trade-offs, without which astronomy cannot continue to strive.

Of course, we are not there yet. We must continue to monitor the status of women and all minorities in the field of astronomy, to report and publish those numbers and to engage on using those numbers to instruct our next steps, when it comes to changing policies and making improvements. Diversity and inclusion are broad themes that look at the intersectionality of different aspects, the gender gap being one of them. Future D&I action plans and corrective measures will certainly help tackling also the remaining gender inequality challenges, but it is important to continue to focus on specific aspects of the gender gap, because we have not solved the issue.

The more people become sensitive to the gender/discriminatory issues currently present in the astronomical field, the better for everybody. Astronomy is often the science that fascinates and stimulates the curiosity of children and young adults, who are astonished by the immensity of our universe. Astronomy must live by high standards in all its facets and nowadays society pretends a commitment not only to rigorous scientific investigations but also to more equal, diverse and inclusive professional environments, where the contribution of everybody can make the difference.