She Is An Astronomer: the conference in London

As a ‘woman in astronomy’ I’ve been moderating the SIAA forum for a while, together with my colleagues Alice and Paula and the three of us were invited by Helen Walker – chair of this project – to join the conference recently held in London.
 

“Celebrating success and seeking solutions” was the theme of this two-day meeting, held at the Royal Astronomical Society. A lovely building in the centre of London – which was beautifully sunny. As usual, I arrived in the morning and after my good friend Graham took me for tea, I found Alice already handing out cards to attendees. Unfortunately Paula’s flight (from Portugal) was cancelled and so were the ones from a few others. But there were still enough speakers and participants to make this gathering worthwhile.
 

Outside the building. Picture: Hanny van Arkel.
 

Promoting gender equality is one of the United Nations Millennium Goals. Statistics actually show that fifty percent of all people in the world are female. So why do ‘we’ only represent a small part when it comes to professions in science? Jocelyn Bell Burnell opened the conference with an excellently presented lecture about inspiring women and facts to think about. Lots has been said about how women should change things like their attitude towards ‘science’, but one conclusion could be that science needs to move towards women just as much. Another fascinating case she pointed out was that studies show girls who’ve been to girls only schools, apparently turn out to be more “successful” in their careers. Though I’d be interested to know how exactly “successful” is defined here and why this is the case…
 

There were also professional (female) astronomers speaking about their career paths, people showing what happened around SIAA in their countries and Alice told the group about this very cool project: Galaxy Zoo. Another talk that appealed to me particularly was the one from Ruth Wilson, about ‘running the women in astronomy blog’. My website was already on her list at the ‘UK Recourse Centre for women in Science, Engineering and Technology’ website and afterwards we briefly spoke about whether keeping a blog is a good way of communicating, with people being able to leave comments. My own experience is that readers often seem to prefer e-mail by the way.
 

In the lectures room. Picture: Hanny van Arkel.
  

Jan West, of MentorSET, spoke about the importance of having a mentor (and explained how that works in the science world). As a teacher myself, I fully agreed with her statements of how a relationship between a mentor and mentee can build up self-confidence and is valuable for both parties. Doing outreach work is very important of course and naturally you need social skills to do that. (At this point I started wondering how the girls only schools would contribute to these talents by the way). Pedro Russo’s talk was also a very inspiring one. It was about the IYA2009 legacy and showed amazing pictures of colourful astronomy projects – big and small – all over the world. It turns out, the project reached 97,5 million people through nearly 25,000 activities across the globe! How cool to be part of that!
 

In between these very informative lectures, we had some nice tea breaks, great lunches, a tour through the wonderful library and moments to chat with all these interesting people. It was great seeing ‘Q’ again. And Gemma, the one other Dutch girl. And it was lovely to finally meet Emily. Thanks for inviting me Helen! I feel very fortunate to have experienced this and I’ve learned a lot from it. To be honest, at the start of the project, I wasn’t all that sure why we needed to be worried about the lack of women in astronomy. I mean, we don’t really try to get more men into being teachers at nursery schools here either… However, if the reasons for women not choosing a career in science has to do with things like sexual harassment or because there’s a lack of role models in school, that’s a different case. And one conclusion was that we don’t know all the problems and we don’t know all the answers. All the more reasons to keep talking about it! Though we’ve closed down the forum, the SIAA website will stay alive!
 

Going into London, with Buckingham Palace at the horizon. Picture: Hanny van Arkel.
  

And although that was a serious and important conclusion, I walked away into the city feeling I had a great time too! I saw Edd again and met up for dinner with Tommy as well. And with the conference ending a bit earlier than originally planned, I also viewed Buckingham palace like a tourist, from the Eye. I’ve finally travelled to London enough times for the crew of the ferry to recognise me by the way! And I’m sure I’ll be back again soon.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites