American Scientist

White men have long held the lion’s share of jobs, power, and prestige in the sciences. In our own field, astrophysics, women in the United States have participated for more than a century, but not at observatories; mostly they have drawn star maps, constructed catalogs, and served as “computers,” crunching numbers provided by men working at the observatories. (Unfortunately, there are almost no records about minorities working in U.S.-based astronomy.) These positions were less prestigious, and the women were not given equal status; they were not even considered astronomers. In recent decades, astrophysics has undergone a transformation: Many ground-based and space-based observatories are now automated to routinely scan the universe, downloading data into widely accessible repositories, which allows astrophysicists to delegate data collection to specialists rather than collecting data themselves. Could this change affect representation? Through a series of in-depth interviews, our team, based at the University of California, Los Angeles, set out to learn about women’s and minorities’ participation in astrophysics.

In the 1970s women and minorities worked in the life and social sciences at the same rates as in the physical sciences, but by 2000 the number of women in the life and social sciences was approaching parity with the number of men in those fields, whereas in the physical sciences the percentage of workers who were women had changed relatively little. (Over that same period, universities struggled to achieve representative inclusion of underrepresented minorities across all fields.) There are few explanations for that very important disparity. Astrophysics is the physical science with the greatest increase in the number of women; however, it is not understood why astrophysics is more successful than other fields at attracting women. Additionally, great disparity is found in the internal ranks of astrophysics, where women hold only a small percentage of the senior positions and about 20 percent of the positions in the lower ranks.

Building Careers

We wondered whether the ease of collecting and accessing data has meant wider access to careers in astrophysics. We wanted to know how many women and members of underrepresented groups are now involved in big-data astrophysics, how they get involved, and how they build careers. In 2009 we began conducting oral history interviews with all of the U.S.-based women and underrepresented minorities who were engaged with big digital databases in astronomy; there are fewer than you might expect. So far, we have interviewed most of them. The 130 people we have spoken with at universities, research institutes, and conferences included 12 African Americans, 7 Asian Americans, 12 Hispanic Americans, 1 Native American, and 29 immigrants.

There is little research on the differences between being invited to share resources and having to apply.

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Given the history, we expected to see more women and minorities at the big-data repositories than elsewhere in astronomy and astrophysics. We also predicted that even now there would be more men than women designing, launching, and operating the ground-based and space-based big-data telescopes. Our interviews bore out some of those expectations and helped us tease out how women and minority astrophysicists enter into the field of big-data astrophysics, which positions they occupy, and whether they use lateral connections instead of patronage to navigate their careers. We think that as the use of big data becomes more and more prevalent in astrophysics, many women from computer science, engineering, and other quantitative fields will start to shift into astrophysics (as did many of the Chinese women included in our study).

Collaborations and Respect

As we learned in our interviews, how scientists join a project makes a difference. Being invited means having your expertise recognized, having your research valued, and having your status as a scientist broadly respected. Although some white men joined big-data collaborations by applying, most were invited to join by senior white men through mentor patronage relationships that traditionally bestow rewards, including respect. Some senior white women were invited to join collaborations, and others joined because of the positions they already held, such as department head. By contrast, we found that most women and minorities joined collaborations through their own initiative, by applying or asking to join. In the rare cases in which they were invited to join, peers at their same career stage had invited them, not the leadership. One minority astrophysicist who had had to apply, rather than being invited, said, “The goal of getting into the project is beyond the science. It is to get what you really want: respect.” Women and minority astrophysicists who joined without invitations described expending time and energy proving themselves. This cost creates an added burden on top of the everyday struggles associated with marginal status within astrophysics. Apart from our work, there has been little research on the differences between being invited to share resources and having to apply for access. Such research can help identify how respect is distributed and what sorts of strategic responses those who have been ignored have devised.

Lateral Networks

Unlike white men, who can often expect to move up the career hierarchy, women frequently find themselves stuck at the same level. In our interviews, we discovered clusters of women from China at two astronomy data centers who exemplify this point. They had undergraduate degrees from top universities in China and doctorates from leading U.S. universities. They also had webs of relationships through professors at their Chinese undergraduate institutions and other Chinese researchers whom they had met during graduate school. These connections helped them find data center jobs, although usually at lower pay than their American counterparts. The women we interviewed had worked on several projects funded by soft money. Often hired through the help of their connections, they moved laterally, from project to project, performing similar work with different data sets. Some of these women have had to move into public outreach positions that involve no active research and are not as well respected by fellow scientists.

The Chinese women, like the American women and minorities, were rarely invited by the leadership (the senior white men) to join the big-data astrophysics collaborations. They were not afforded resources, including respect, through the usual patronage infrastructures. The uninvited survived by using their strategic knowledge of where and how to apply, gleaned through their lateral webs of relationships. Their understanding of how to care for data is crucial for the operation of big-data astronomy, but the status of the work they do is not high.

Extending Patronage

An important theme in our data is that many women, immigrant, and underrepresented minority scientists still lack access to hierarchically controlled resources, especially respect. The strategic survival strategies for these scientists are lateral, either through lateral career moves or lateral webs of professional and personal relationships. However, they play pivotal roles in analyzing big data and completing these projects.

Multipronged approaches to attracting and retaining diverse scientists can benefit from our research. Women and minority astrophysicists should be supported by bringing them into the patronage system through making sure that a diversity of people are invited into big-data collaborations. The important science done in the data centers should be recognized and rewarded. Once women, immigrants, and underrepresented minority scientists move into the field, there should be ample career development resources, programs, mentoring, and coaching to retain them and help them grow in the field. And affinity groups of scientists with various backgrounds should be created to help data centers, universities, and research institutions better serve and retain scientists of diverse backgrounds.