The Experts below are selected from a list of 321 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Elizabeth Moot O’hern - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Profiles of Pioneer Women Scientists: Katherine Esau
The Botanical Review, 1996Co-Authors: Elizabeth Moot O’hernAbstract:“Profiles of Pioneer Women Scientists: Katherine Esau” tells the story of a noted botanist, plant anatomist, and electron microscopist who was born in the Russian Ukraine (in 1898), forced to flee the Bolshevik Revolution with her family—her father a mayor of Ekaterinoslav under the Czar—to Germany, where she received a bachelor’s degree in agriculture, education she put to good use in America. Beginning in a sugarbeet field in Salinas, California, she progressed through the doctoral degree at the University of California at Davis (UC Davis) and there began her exceptional research on plant anatomy and plant viral diseases. Her textbook Plant Anatomy became known among college students as “Aunt Kitty’s Bible,” and all of her textbooks have gone into second, and some to third, editions. Transferring to the University of California at Santa Barbara (with its new Chancellor, V. I. Cheadle) only two years before retirement, she blossomed anew, producing some of her best work there and obtaining National Science Foundation support for a new electron microscope and other research funds through her 89th year. Katherine Esau started accruing awards and honors at a relatively early age (Faculty Research Lecturer at age 50, election to the National Academy of Sciences at 59) and has never stopped (the President’s Medal of Science at age 91, a UC Santa Barbara building named for her at age 93). It has been her good fortune to live to enjoy these honors. The short autobiography of her father, a truly enterprising engineer, is included here, as are the recollections of Celeste Turner Wright. Celeste, who arrived at UC Davis the same year as Katherine Esau, became an acclaimed poet, and chaired the English Department for many years. She has added a lively reminiscence of the days she and Katherine spent at UC Davis. The introduction to the book by one of Esau’s former graduate students, Ray Franklin Evert, himself a renowned plant pathologist, provides a heartfelt tribute to his greatly admired professor. “Profile von Pionier-Wissenschaftlerinnen: Katherine Esau” berichtet die Geschichte einer barühmten Botanikerin, Pflanzen-Anatom und Elektronenmicroscopikerin, die in der russischen Ukraine geboren wurde (in 1898), gezwungen wurde, mit ihrer Familie vor der Bolschewistischen Revolution nach Deutschland zu flüchten—ihr Vater war Bürger-meister von Ekaterinoslav unter dem Zaren—und dort ein Diplom der Landwirtschaft erwarb, eine Ausbildung, die sie in Amerika zu gutem Nutzen anbrachte. Von den Anfängen in einem Zuckerrübenfeld in Salinas, Kalifornien, führte ihr Werdegang zum Doktorgrad an der Universität von Kalifornien Davis (UC Davis) und dort begann ihre aussergewöhnliche Forschung auf dem Gebeit der Planzenanatomie und Pflanzenviruskrankheiten. Eines ihrer Lehrbücher Pflanzenanatomie wurde unter den Studenten bekannt als “Tante Kittys Bibel”; manche ihre Lehrbücher hatten zwei Auflagen. Zwei Jahre vor ihrer Pensionierung wechselte sie auf die Universität von Kalifornien Santa Barbara über (mit dem neuen Kanzler, V. I. Cheadle), wo sie erneut aufblühte und einige ihrer besten Werke produzierte. In ihrem 89sten Lebenjarh erheilt sie einen Beihilfe der Nationalen Stiftung der Wissenschafter (National Science Foundation) für ein neues Elektronenmicroscop sowie andere Forschungsgelder. Katherin Esau begann schon in verhältnismassig jungen Jahren Orden und Ehren zu sammeln (Forschungsdozentin im Alter von 50 Jahren) und hat nie damit aufgehört (die Medaille der Wissenschaften des Präsidenten erhielt sie mit 91 Jahren und ein Gebäude an der UC Santa Barbara wurde nach ihr benannt, als sie 93 Jahre alt war). Sie hatte das grosse Glück, diese Ehrungen noch zu Lebzeiten zu gemessen. Die kurze Selbstbiographie ihres Vaters, ein wahrlich unternehmungslustiger Ingenieur, formt un Kapitel und die Erinnerungen von Celeste Turner Wright formt un Kapitel. Celeste, die im gleichen Jahr wie Katherine Esau an die UC Davis kam, wurde eine gepriesene Dichterin und war viele Jahre Leiterin der Englischen Fakultät. Sie hat eine lebendige Erinnerung an die Tage hinzugefügt, die sie und Katherine an der UC Davis verbrachten. Die Einführung zu dem Buch von einem früheren Studenten von Esau, Ray Franklin Evert, selbst ein bekannter Pflanzenpathologe, stellt eine tiefempfundene Hochachtung für seine von ihm äusserst verehrte Professorin dar.
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Profiles of Pioneer Women Scientists: Katherine Esau
The Botanical Review, 1996Co-Authors: Elizabeth Moot O’hernAbstract:“Profiles of Pioneer Women Scientists: Katherine Esau” tells the story of a noted botanist, plant anatomist, and electron microscopist who was born in the Russian Ukraine (in 1898), forced to flee the Bolshevik Revolution with her family—her father a mayor of Ekaterinoslav under the Czar—to Germany, where she received a bachelor’s degree in agriculture, education she put to good use in America. Beginning in a sugarbeet field in Salinas, California, she progressed through the doctoral degree at the University of California at Davis (UC Davis) and there began her exceptional research on plant anatomy and plant viral diseases. Her textbookPlant Anatomy became known among college students as “Aunt Kitty’s Bible,” and all of her textbooks have gone into second, and some to third, editions. Transferring to the University of California at Santa Barbara (with its new Chancellor, V. I. Cheadle) only two years before retirement, she blossomed anew, producing some of her best work there and obtaining National Science Foundation support for a new electron microscope and other research funds through her 89th year.
Francesca Altieri - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions: a historical trend
Advances in Geosciences, 2020Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Anny Chantal Levasseur-regourd, Matthew Taylor, Olivier Witasse, Francesca AltieriAbstract:We analyzed the participation of Women Scientists in 10 ESA (European Space Agency) Solar System missions over a period of 38 years. Being part of a spacecraft mission science team can be considered a proxy to measure the "success" in the field. Participation of Women in PI (Princi-pal Investigators) teams varied between 4 % and 25 %, with several missions with no Women as PI. The percentage of female Scientists as Co-I (Co-Investigators) is always less than 16 %. This number is lower than the percentage of Women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA's Member State (24 %), which can give us an indication of the percentage of Women in the field. We encountered many difficulties to gather the data for this study. The list of team members were not always easily accessible. An additional difficulty was to determine the percentage of female Scientists in planetary science in Europe. We would like to encourage the planetary community as a whole, as well as international organizations, universities and societies to continuously gather statistics over many years. Detailed statistics are only the first step to closely monitor the development of achievement gaps and initiate measures to tackle potential causes of inequity, leading to gender inequalities in STEM careers.
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Participation of Women Scientists in ESA Solar System missions: an historical trend
2020Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Anny Chantal Levasseur-regourd, Olivier Witasse, Julie Rathbun, Matt Taylor, Francesca AltieriAbstract:We analyzed the participation of Women Scientists in 10 ESA (European Space Agency) Solar System missions over a period of 38 years [1]. Being part of a spacecraft mission science team can be considered a proxy to measure the "success" in the field. Although the number of female Scientists in the field has been constantly increasing in Europe, we did not observe a similar increase in their participation in ESA Solar System missions. Participation of Women in PI (Principal Investigators) teams varied between 4 and 25%, with several missions with no Women as PI. The percentage of female Scientists as Co-I (Co-Investigators) is always less than 16%. This number is lower than the percentage of Women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA Member States (24%). We compared our results with NASA statistics. Participation of Women in NASA spacecraft science teams varies from none to just over 30% [2]. The percentage has been increasing. However, this increase is more similar to a step function than a linear increase, with the pre-2000 average at 5.7% and post-2000 at 15.8%. This is well below the percentage of Women in the field in the US, which has grown from 20% to 30% over the same time range. The ESA data are consistent with the NASA data, including the jump around the year 2000. One of the main difficulties we encountered was to find the list of team members. An additional difficulty was to determine the percentage of female Scientists in planetary science in Europe. We would like to encourage the planetary community as a whole, as well as international organizations, universities and societies to continuously gather statistics over many years. Detailed statistics are only the first step to closely monitor the development of achievement gaps and initiate measures to tackle potential causes of inequity, leading to gender inequalities in STEM careers.
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Historical trend of participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions
2019Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Francesca Altieri, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Anny Chantal Levasseur-regourd, Ann Carine Vandaele, Pierre DrossartAbstract:A recent study by [1] analyzed the participation of Women in US planetary science missions. Their analysis shows Women Scientists to be consistently under-represented in NASA’s robotic planetary spacecraft missions. Here, we present a preliminary study of the participation of Women Scientists in ESA (European Space Agency) solar system missions and discuss how this trend changed over time. We followed the same methodology described in [2,3], for consistency with their study. We therefore con- sidered only the original team Scientists from European institutions: engineers, members of project management, students and postdocs were not included. For each team, we searched team web pages, published articles and when possible, we directly contacted the Principal Investigators and also project Scientists. In order to determine gender we relied on personal knowledge, first name or photographs. We counted the science team members of 10 ESA solar system missions over a period of 38 years and de- termined the percentage of Women on each team. As preliminary result, we found that the participation of Women in PI teams varied between 4 and 23%, with several missions with no Women as PI. The percentage of Women as Co-I is always less than 18%, although these numbers need still some refinement as the listings of team members of some missions are still partially incomplete. As a first, unexpected result, we do not observe a steady rise in Women’s participation over the years. We will compare these numbers to the percentage of Women in the field during the missions’ selection year. To this aim, we will use statistics derived by the International Astronomical Union, as well as national research centers. References: [1] Rathbun, Julie A.: Participation of Women in spacecraft science teams, Nature Astronomy, Volume 1, id. 0148 (2017). [2] Rathbun, Julie A.; Dones, Luke; Gay, Pamela; Cohen, Barbara; Horst, Sarah; Lakdawalla, Emily; Spickard, James; Milazzo, Moses; Sayanagi, Kunio M.; Schug, Joanna: Historical trends of participation of Women in robotic spacecraft missions, American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #47, 2015. [3] Rathbun, Julie A.; Castillo-Rogez, Julie; Diniega, Serina; Hurley, Dana; New, Michael; Pappalardo, Robert T.; Prockter, Louise; Sayanagi, Kunio M.; Schug, Joanna; Turtle, Elizabeth P.; Vasavada, Ashwin R.: Historical Trends of Participation of Women Scientists in Robotic Spacecraft Mission Science Teams: Effect of Participating Scientist Programs, American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #48„ 2016.
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Participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions: an historical trend
2018Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Ann Carine Vandaele, Francesca Altieri, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Pierre DrossartAbstract:We will present the participation of Women Scientists in ESA (European Space Agency) solar system missions and discuss how this trend changed over time.
Arianna Piccialli - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions: a historical trend
Advances in Geosciences, 2020Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Anny Chantal Levasseur-regourd, Matthew Taylor, Olivier Witasse, Francesca AltieriAbstract:We analyzed the participation of Women Scientists in 10 ESA (European Space Agency) Solar System missions over a period of 38 years. Being part of a spacecraft mission science team can be considered a proxy to measure the "success" in the field. Participation of Women in PI (Princi-pal Investigators) teams varied between 4 % and 25 %, with several missions with no Women as PI. The percentage of female Scientists as Co-I (Co-Investigators) is always less than 16 %. This number is lower than the percentage of Women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA's Member State (24 %), which can give us an indication of the percentage of Women in the field. We encountered many difficulties to gather the data for this study. The list of team members were not always easily accessible. An additional difficulty was to determine the percentage of female Scientists in planetary science in Europe. We would like to encourage the planetary community as a whole, as well as international organizations, universities and societies to continuously gather statistics over many years. Detailed statistics are only the first step to closely monitor the development of achievement gaps and initiate measures to tackle potential causes of inequity, leading to gender inequalities in STEM careers.
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Participation of Women Scientists in ESA Solar System missions: an historical trend
2020Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Anny Chantal Levasseur-regourd, Olivier Witasse, Julie Rathbun, Matt Taylor, Francesca AltieriAbstract:We analyzed the participation of Women Scientists in 10 ESA (European Space Agency) Solar System missions over a period of 38 years [1]. Being part of a spacecraft mission science team can be considered a proxy to measure the "success" in the field. Although the number of female Scientists in the field has been constantly increasing in Europe, we did not observe a similar increase in their participation in ESA Solar System missions. Participation of Women in PI (Principal Investigators) teams varied between 4 and 25%, with several missions with no Women as PI. The percentage of female Scientists as Co-I (Co-Investigators) is always less than 16%. This number is lower than the percentage of Women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA Member States (24%). We compared our results with NASA statistics. Participation of Women in NASA spacecraft science teams varies from none to just over 30% [2]. The percentage has been increasing. However, this increase is more similar to a step function than a linear increase, with the pre-2000 average at 5.7% and post-2000 at 15.8%. This is well below the percentage of Women in the field in the US, which has grown from 20% to 30% over the same time range. The ESA data are consistent with the NASA data, including the jump around the year 2000. One of the main difficulties we encountered was to find the list of team members. An additional difficulty was to determine the percentage of female Scientists in planetary science in Europe. We would like to encourage the planetary community as a whole, as well as international organizations, universities and societies to continuously gather statistics over many years. Detailed statistics are only the first step to closely monitor the development of achievement gaps and initiate measures to tackle potential causes of inequity, leading to gender inequalities in STEM careers.
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Historical trend of Women Scientists in Solar system missions: comparisons for ESA and NASA missions
2020Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. RathbunAbstract:We will present a comparison of the participation of Women Scientists in ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA solar system missions and discuss how this trend changed over time. We counted the science team members of 10 ESA solar system missions over a period of 38 years and 26 NASA robotic planetary missions during a period of 41 years in order to determine the percentage of Women on each team.
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Historical trend of participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions
2019Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Francesca Altieri, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Anny Chantal Levasseur-regourd, Ann Carine Vandaele, Pierre DrossartAbstract:A recent study by [1] analyzed the participation of Women in US planetary science missions. Their analysis shows Women Scientists to be consistently under-represented in NASA’s robotic planetary spacecraft missions. Here, we present a preliminary study of the participation of Women Scientists in ESA (European Space Agency) solar system missions and discuss how this trend changed over time. We followed the same methodology described in [2,3], for consistency with their study. We therefore con- sidered only the original team Scientists from European institutions: engineers, members of project management, students and postdocs were not included. For each team, we searched team web pages, published articles and when possible, we directly contacted the Principal Investigators and also project Scientists. In order to determine gender we relied on personal knowledge, first name or photographs. We counted the science team members of 10 ESA solar system missions over a period of 38 years and de- termined the percentage of Women on each team. As preliminary result, we found that the participation of Women in PI teams varied between 4 and 23%, with several missions with no Women as PI. The percentage of Women as Co-I is always less than 18%, although these numbers need still some refinement as the listings of team members of some missions are still partially incomplete. As a first, unexpected result, we do not observe a steady rise in Women’s participation over the years. We will compare these numbers to the percentage of Women in the field during the missions’ selection year. To this aim, we will use statistics derived by the International Astronomical Union, as well as national research centers. References: [1] Rathbun, Julie A.: Participation of Women in spacecraft science teams, Nature Astronomy, Volume 1, id. 0148 (2017). [2] Rathbun, Julie A.; Dones, Luke; Gay, Pamela; Cohen, Barbara; Horst, Sarah; Lakdawalla, Emily; Spickard, James; Milazzo, Moses; Sayanagi, Kunio M.; Schug, Joanna: Historical trends of participation of Women in robotic spacecraft missions, American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #47, 2015. [3] Rathbun, Julie A.; Castillo-Rogez, Julie; Diniega, Serina; Hurley, Dana; New, Michael; Pappalardo, Robert T.; Prockter, Louise; Sayanagi, Kunio M.; Schug, Joanna; Turtle, Elizabeth P.; Vasavada, Ashwin R.: Historical Trends of Participation of Women Scientists in Robotic Spacecraft Mission Science Teams: Effect of Participating Scientist Programs, American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #48„ 2016.
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Participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions: an historical trend
2018Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Ann Carine Vandaele, Francesca Altieri, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Pierre DrossartAbstract:We will present the participation of Women Scientists in ESA (European Space Agency) solar system missions and discuss how this trend changed over time.
Julie A. Rathbun - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions: a historical trend
Advances in Geosciences, 2020Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Anny Chantal Levasseur-regourd, Matthew Taylor, Olivier Witasse, Francesca AltieriAbstract:We analyzed the participation of Women Scientists in 10 ESA (European Space Agency) Solar System missions over a period of 38 years. Being part of a spacecraft mission science team can be considered a proxy to measure the "success" in the field. Participation of Women in PI (Princi-pal Investigators) teams varied between 4 % and 25 %, with several missions with no Women as PI. The percentage of female Scientists as Co-I (Co-Investigators) is always less than 16 %. This number is lower than the percentage of Women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA's Member State (24 %), which can give us an indication of the percentage of Women in the field. We encountered many difficulties to gather the data for this study. The list of team members were not always easily accessible. An additional difficulty was to determine the percentage of female Scientists in planetary science in Europe. We would like to encourage the planetary community as a whole, as well as international organizations, universities and societies to continuously gather statistics over many years. Detailed statistics are only the first step to closely monitor the development of achievement gaps and initiate measures to tackle potential causes of inequity, leading to gender inequalities in STEM careers.
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Historical trend of Women Scientists in Solar system missions: comparisons for ESA and NASA missions
2020Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. RathbunAbstract:We will present a comparison of the participation of Women Scientists in ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA solar system missions and discuss how this trend changed over time. We counted the science team members of 10 ESA solar system missions over a period of 38 years and 26 NASA robotic planetary missions during a period of 41 years in order to determine the percentage of Women on each team.
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Historical trend of participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions
2019Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Francesca Altieri, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Anny Chantal Levasseur-regourd, Ann Carine Vandaele, Pierre DrossartAbstract:A recent study by [1] analyzed the participation of Women in US planetary science missions. Their analysis shows Women Scientists to be consistently under-represented in NASA’s robotic planetary spacecraft missions. Here, we present a preliminary study of the participation of Women Scientists in ESA (European Space Agency) solar system missions and discuss how this trend changed over time. We followed the same methodology described in [2,3], for consistency with their study. We therefore con- sidered only the original team Scientists from European institutions: engineers, members of project management, students and postdocs were not included. For each team, we searched team web pages, published articles and when possible, we directly contacted the Principal Investigators and also project Scientists. In order to determine gender we relied on personal knowledge, first name or photographs. We counted the science team members of 10 ESA solar system missions over a period of 38 years and de- termined the percentage of Women on each team. As preliminary result, we found that the participation of Women in PI teams varied between 4 and 23%, with several missions with no Women as PI. The percentage of Women as Co-I is always less than 18%, although these numbers need still some refinement as the listings of team members of some missions are still partially incomplete. As a first, unexpected result, we do not observe a steady rise in Women’s participation over the years. We will compare these numbers to the percentage of Women in the field during the missions’ selection year. To this aim, we will use statistics derived by the International Astronomical Union, as well as national research centers. References: [1] Rathbun, Julie A.: Participation of Women in spacecraft science teams, Nature Astronomy, Volume 1, id. 0148 (2017). [2] Rathbun, Julie A.; Dones, Luke; Gay, Pamela; Cohen, Barbara; Horst, Sarah; Lakdawalla, Emily; Spickard, James; Milazzo, Moses; Sayanagi, Kunio M.; Schug, Joanna: Historical trends of participation of Women in robotic spacecraft missions, American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #47, 2015. [3] Rathbun, Julie A.; Castillo-Rogez, Julie; Diniega, Serina; Hurley, Dana; New, Michael; Pappalardo, Robert T.; Prockter, Louise; Sayanagi, Kunio M.; Schug, Joanna; Turtle, Elizabeth P.; Vasavada, Ashwin R.: Historical Trends of Participation of Women Scientists in Robotic Spacecraft Mission Science Teams: Effect of Participating Scientist Programs, American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #48„ 2016.
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Participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions: an historical trend
2018Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Ann Carine Vandaele, Francesca Altieri, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Pierre DrossartAbstract:We will present the participation of Women Scientists in ESA (European Space Agency) solar system missions and discuss how this trend changed over time.
Alessandra Rotundi - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions: a historical trend
Advances in Geosciences, 2020Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Anny Chantal Levasseur-regourd, Matthew Taylor, Olivier Witasse, Francesca AltieriAbstract:We analyzed the participation of Women Scientists in 10 ESA (European Space Agency) Solar System missions over a period of 38 years. Being part of a spacecraft mission science team can be considered a proxy to measure the "success" in the field. Participation of Women in PI (Princi-pal Investigators) teams varied between 4 % and 25 %, with several missions with no Women as PI. The percentage of female Scientists as Co-I (Co-Investigators) is always less than 16 %. This number is lower than the percentage of Women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA's Member State (24 %), which can give us an indication of the percentage of Women in the field. We encountered many difficulties to gather the data for this study. The list of team members were not always easily accessible. An additional difficulty was to determine the percentage of female Scientists in planetary science in Europe. We would like to encourage the planetary community as a whole, as well as international organizations, universities and societies to continuously gather statistics over many years. Detailed statistics are only the first step to closely monitor the development of achievement gaps and initiate measures to tackle potential causes of inequity, leading to gender inequalities in STEM careers.
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Participation of Women Scientists in ESA Solar System missions: an historical trend
2020Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Anny Chantal Levasseur-regourd, Olivier Witasse, Julie Rathbun, Matt Taylor, Francesca AltieriAbstract:We analyzed the participation of Women Scientists in 10 ESA (European Space Agency) Solar System missions over a period of 38 years [1]. Being part of a spacecraft mission science team can be considered a proxy to measure the "success" in the field. Although the number of female Scientists in the field has been constantly increasing in Europe, we did not observe a similar increase in their participation in ESA Solar System missions. Participation of Women in PI (Principal Investigators) teams varied between 4 and 25%, with several missions with no Women as PI. The percentage of female Scientists as Co-I (Co-Investigators) is always less than 16%. This number is lower than the percentage of Women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA Member States (24%). We compared our results with NASA statistics. Participation of Women in NASA spacecraft science teams varies from none to just over 30% [2]. The percentage has been increasing. However, this increase is more similar to a step function than a linear increase, with the pre-2000 average at 5.7% and post-2000 at 15.8%. This is well below the percentage of Women in the field in the US, which has grown from 20% to 30% over the same time range. The ESA data are consistent with the NASA data, including the jump around the year 2000. One of the main difficulties we encountered was to find the list of team members. An additional difficulty was to determine the percentage of female Scientists in planetary science in Europe. We would like to encourage the planetary community as a whole, as well as international organizations, universities and societies to continuously gather statistics over many years. Detailed statistics are only the first step to closely monitor the development of achievement gaps and initiate measures to tackle potential causes of inequity, leading to gender inequalities in STEM careers.
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Historical trend of participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions
2019Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Francesca Altieri, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Anny Chantal Levasseur-regourd, Ann Carine Vandaele, Pierre DrossartAbstract:A recent study by [1] analyzed the participation of Women in US planetary science missions. Their analysis shows Women Scientists to be consistently under-represented in NASA’s robotic planetary spacecraft missions. Here, we present a preliminary study of the participation of Women Scientists in ESA (European Space Agency) solar system missions and discuss how this trend changed over time. We followed the same methodology described in [2,3], for consistency with their study. We therefore con- sidered only the original team Scientists from European institutions: engineers, members of project management, students and postdocs were not included. For each team, we searched team web pages, published articles and when possible, we directly contacted the Principal Investigators and also project Scientists. In order to determine gender we relied on personal knowledge, first name or photographs. We counted the science team members of 10 ESA solar system missions over a period of 38 years and de- termined the percentage of Women on each team. As preliminary result, we found that the participation of Women in PI teams varied between 4 and 23%, with several missions with no Women as PI. The percentage of Women as Co-I is always less than 18%, although these numbers need still some refinement as the listings of team members of some missions are still partially incomplete. As a first, unexpected result, we do not observe a steady rise in Women’s participation over the years. We will compare these numbers to the percentage of Women in the field during the missions’ selection year. To this aim, we will use statistics derived by the International Astronomical Union, as well as national research centers. References: [1] Rathbun, Julie A.: Participation of Women in spacecraft science teams, Nature Astronomy, Volume 1, id. 0148 (2017). [2] Rathbun, Julie A.; Dones, Luke; Gay, Pamela; Cohen, Barbara; Horst, Sarah; Lakdawalla, Emily; Spickard, James; Milazzo, Moses; Sayanagi, Kunio M.; Schug, Joanna: Historical trends of participation of Women in robotic spacecraft missions, American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #47, 2015. [3] Rathbun, Julie A.; Castillo-Rogez, Julie; Diniega, Serina; Hurley, Dana; New, Michael; Pappalardo, Robert T.; Prockter, Louise; Sayanagi, Kunio M.; Schug, Joanna; Turtle, Elizabeth P.; Vasavada, Ashwin R.: Historical Trends of Participation of Women Scientists in Robotic Spacecraft Mission Science Teams: Effect of Participating Scientist Programs, American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #48„ 2016.
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Participation of Women Scientists in ESA solar system missions: an historical trend
2018Co-Authors: Arianna Piccialli, Julie A. Rathbun, Ann Carine Vandaele, Francesca Altieri, Anni Määttänen, Anna Milillo, Alessandra Rotundi, Miriam Rengel, Pierre DrossartAbstract:We will present the participation of Women Scientists in ESA (European Space Agency) solar system missions and discuss how this trend changed over time.
