Meeting Minutes - Feb 8th - Outreach

General Summary 8 Feb 2012 Meeting:
At this meeting we discussed our involvement in outreach activities, heard from Judy Scotchmoor about the UCMP outreach and education program, and heard about the upcoming Expanding Your Horizons conference at UC Berkeley on March 3rd.  (http://www.expandingyourhorizons.org/conferences/EYHBERKELEY/)

(Much more after the break!)

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Miss Representation screening, March 17th @1pm

There will be a local screening of the documentary Miss Representation hosted by the I.M.P.A.C.T. Alliance on March 17th at 1pm in 2050 VLSB.

Written and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Miss Representation exposes how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America.  The film challenges the media's limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls, which make it difficult for women to achieve leadership positions and for the average woman to feel powerful herself.

Miss Representationincludes stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, entertainers, activists and academics like Condoleezza Rice, Lisa Ling, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Rosario Dawson, Jackson Katz, Jean Kilbourne, and Gloria Steinem.  The film offers startling facts and statistics that will leave audiences shaken and armed with a new perspective. 

You can see a trailer for the film here.

Tickets are available here.

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Motherhood and the Leaky Pipeline

Several new articles have come out this February on the leaky pipeline problem and the impacts of motherhood on women in science and engineering. 

Deborah Kaminski and Cheryl Geisler examined the effects of gender on faculty retention using a survival analysis in a Science publication (CHE summary here). They found that in STEM fields overall, gender did not affect faculty retention or promotion rates during the first 10 years of employment.  However, when they examined specific disciplines, they found that that in mathematics, women remain in academic positions for significantly less time than men. Although Kaminiski and Geisler believe that their conclusions indicate that STEM departments are headed toward gender parity, they also point out that due to the inertia caused by long faculty careers, it will take decades for the number of female faculty to reflect the number of women in the hiring pool and it may take as long as 100 years before women commonly represent 50% of the faculty in STEM departments.

In an article in American Scientist this month, Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci provide an in depth review of the role of motherhood (or, in some cases, the desire for it) in causing the leaky pipeline. The article is complex and well-worth a read, but argues that of the most-often cited causes of the leaky pipeline (ability differences, career and lifestyle differences, sex discrimination), career preferences and lifestyle differences, especially the desire to have children, are the most important reasons that women leave the academic career trajectory at higher rates than men.

Citations

Kaminski D and Geisler C. 2012. Survival Analysis of Faculty Retention in Science and Engineering by Gender. Science. 335: 864.

Williams WM and Ceci SJ. 2012. When Scientists Choose Motherhood. American Scientist. http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2012/2/when-scientists-choose-motherhood/1. Accessed 2/22/2012.

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Expanding Your Horizons Conference - March 3rd

For the first time, UC Berkeley is hosting the Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) conference!  From the EYH website (link):

"Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) is a conference for girls in middle school from Berkeley and surrounding areas. This day-long event will include hands-on activities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). At the conference, girls will get a chance to meet STEM role models and learn more about careers in those fields. Our ultimate goal is to motivate girls to become innovative and creative thinkers ready to meet 21st Century challenges."

The conference is on March 3rd, 2012 and starts at 8:30am.  If you're a student, professor or professional interested in volunteering at the conference or helping prepare beforehand, email: berkeleyEYH2012 [at] gmail [dot] com. 

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