Author: societyforwomen

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The Origins of SWMS

This is the first part in a series of reflections from the Society for Women in Marine Science (SWMS) 2020 Steering Committee (SC) to increase the transparency of our internal discussions with our members and to interrogate how SWMS can ensure that anti-racist values are core to our newly-formed non-profit organization. We encourage feedback from SWMS members, advisors, and the marine science community on the ideas presented here and topics for future reflections. Feedback can be submitted as named or anonymous using this Google Doc, an email to swms.general.contact@gmail.com, a message on the SWMS Slack (#feedback-and-development channel), or a message to any SC member. 

Part I: The HERstory of SWMS and Current Growth

The Society for Women in Marine Science (SWMS) was founded by a diverse group of early-career women from male-dominated and predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Read more about the founders in this blog post. The founders each held a variety of individual identities that coalesced around the shared identity of being a woman in marine science. The creation of SWMS was motivated by the need for a network and formal resource platform for women in marine science. We would like to acknowledge our founders and their roles at the time SWMS was founded: Dr. Alexis Yelton, a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Dr. Katya Moniz, a graduate student at MIT; Dr. Bethanie Edwards, a graduate student in the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) Joint Program; and Dr. Sophie Chu, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. These four women originally formed SWMS to organize a symposium for women in science, with the possibility of creating a network to help increase retention of women in academia. In 2014, they ran the first SWMS Symposium as a day-long event at WHOI. The event was primarily supported by funding from the broader impacts section of Dr. Alexis Yelton’s NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship. Since then, SWMS Symposia continue to be flagship events for the organization with one (and sometimes two) each year! As of December 2020 with the virtual SWMS Symposium organized by the University of Rhode Island (URI) SWMS Chapter, we will have held eight different SWMS Symposia reaching hundreds of attendees, supported by many university and corporate sponsors.

SWMS continues to grow in ways previously unimagined. In 2018, SWMS leadership was formalized through a Steering Committee of graduate students from MIT-WHOI and URI. The majority of the 2018-2020 SWMS Steering Committee is white-presenting cis women who are based at PWIs, which limits the breadth of perspectives and voices represented in and by SWMS. Additionally, we recognize that not all identities are evident from appearance, so we’ve shared our individual identities and journeys in marine science in some previous SWMS newsletters and blog posts. This Spring 2021, we will hold the first elections for the Steering Committee. We hope that these elections will be an opportunity to diversify and expand the representation of leaders on the Steering Committee. 

SWMS has attained legal standing as a non-profit organization with a Board of Directors using donations from a successful GoFundMe campaign. SWMS now runs with a modest budget, with currently a little over US$3,000 in the bank. To date, we have established over 20 SWMS Chapters around the globe, gained over 1800 individuals on our email list, drafted a research manuscript examining symposia surveys, and held events at international ocean conferences. In addition to these quantifiable accomplishments, we are especially encouraged by feedback from members that they found a new and positive sense of community within marine science through SWMS.

We recognize that our values and actions can mobilize our community in many ways, running the risk of upholding elements of the status quo, including white supremacy, anti-blackness, and colonialism. Instead, we commit to strive for justice in ways that center all marginalized groups within marine science. We are actively interrogating who has power, whose voice is being heard, and how we are all using the SWMS platform.

Similar to its start, SWMS has continued to be a grassroots organization that relies on volunteer leaders to run the group through the Steering Committee, Symposium Planning Committees, and Chapter Leads. SWMS leaders are graduate students and early-career professionals within five years of obtaining their last degree, which is central to our goal of providing leadership and career development opportunities to women to improve retention and success in marine science fields. As we become more formalized, we want to maintain the grassroots aspect in a way that advances intersectional feminism in marine science and promotes leadership by a large and diverse network of early-career marine scientists. With the growth of SWMS from 2014 to 2020, our sphere of influence is increasing, with a platform both within the US and internationally. Steering Committee leaders speak several times a year on international panels at scientific conferences and virtually. SWMS Chapters include high school focused groups like the chapter within Black Girls Dive Foundation, university-affiliated groups, regional chapters on the East and West coasts of the U.S., and international chapters in Brazil and Nigeria. SWMS Chapters are increasingly receiving funding and recognition for their community and scientific work with a growing number of SWMS events. SWMS is active on social media through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and has a community Slack channel. We recognize that our values and actions can mobilize our community in many ways, running the risk of upholding elements of the status quo, including white supremacy, anti-blackness, and colonialism. Instead, we commit to strive for justice in ways that center all marginalized groups within marine science. We are actively interrogating who has power, whose voice is being heard, and how we are all using the SWMS platform.

We’re grateful for the trust and continued engagement from the marine science community, and we recognize that the exciting development of SWMS has pointed out unexpected challenges and shortcomings along the way. Particularly, we have aspects of diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality within SWMS which we can improve upon and build up. We want to ensure that the current underlying principles and values of SWMS are clear to our members. Also, we wish to listen to our members about what principles and values are important to them and how SWMS can better support those. We find this particularly important to establish prior to the 2021 Steering Committee elections, and we look forward to new leaders bringing fresh perspectives and voices to SWMS through these leadership positions. 

Current areas of SWMS which we are reflecting upon, considering action steps, and seeking feedback include: 

Governance and transparency:

We are evaluating the creation of “SWMS Guiding Principles” to clarify SWMS principles for Chapters and members, who are the real-time agents of action and representatives of SWMS. We seek input about conducting the 2021 Steering Committee elections and how to best recruit future SWMS leaders from diverse backgrounds. We likewise believe it is vital to increase the transparency of Steering Committee discussions and decisions. 

Membership:

We are working to define what it means to be a SWMS member. We also are focused on how to ensure SWMS members are represented in leadership and decision-making. This requires us to learn how to gather data on membership demographics. As we recruit members, we want to make sure that SWMS is an organization that actively supports leadership by diverse early-career marine scientists and whose members come from diverse backgrounds.

Events:

An important goal is to increase the participation of diverse speakers and attendees at SWMS Symposia Chapter events and within local chapters. We are seeking input on best practices to support Chapter-led SWMS symposia and events.

Organization name and mission statement:

We are reflecting on how the name “Society for Women in Marine Science” relates to inclusion, particularly in regards to who feels comfortable being a member and welcomed within the group. We are also evaluating the SWMS mission statement, and how it relates to the inclusion of historically marginalized groups within marine science.

These areas all are important, and we expect to gather even more topics to interrogate from your feedback. These require lengthy discussion and thought, so they will be covered in-depth in a series of reflections released over the coming months. We hope that anyone from across the marine science community will engage in this conversation with us — that you will comment on how SWMS can better uphold the values of inclusion and support for our members’ intersectional identities.

Signed, 

The SWMS Steering Committee

#SWMSteam in pink over a background of water, with a swordfish, Antarctica, and a sediment core
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Black Lives Matter

The Society for Women in Marine Science stands in solidarity with protestors and grass-roots organizers across the country who demand an end to police brutality, and that we dismantle white supremacy in order to build a society that is safe and equitable for Black people.

White supremacy and anti-Black violence prevents Black marine scientists from accessing the resources and power needed to fully participate in marine science.

Our mission is to support and uplift women who work in the field of marine science. In order to do this, we need to acknowledge that science is complicit in the culture of white supremacy that resulted in the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, among countless others. White supremacy and anti-Black violence prevents Black marine scientists from accessing the resources and power needed to fully participate in marine science. Institutionalized racism prevents marine science from doing work in the service of all people. Uplifting Black marine scientists’ important contributions is central to the SWMS mission. We are actively working to build a safe and just environment for present and future Black marine scientists.

Taking Action

We encourage all SWMS members to engage in anti-racism work, to pull down the systems of oppression, racism, and inequality that exist within ourselves, our workplaces, our communities, academia, and the world at large. We urge non-Black members to find ways to donate money, time, and other resources to causes including Black Lives Matter, Movement 4 Black Lives, Color of Change, bail fund networks, voter registration, and more. 

We also encourage our members to do the hard work closer to home, to listen and learn. There are so many resources available for this work, including Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s’ books and his anti-racist reading list, Black feminist thinkers such as Dr. Angela Davis, and hashtags like #BlackinSTEM and #BlackinNature to find new scientists to follow and collaborate with. 

ShutdownSTEM: June 10th, 2020

Finally, we support the #ShutdownSTEM and #ShutdownAcademia actions for this Wednesday, June 10. We ask non-Black SWMS members to disrupt business as usual, educate themselves, and make a plan for a lifelong commitment to meaningful anti-racist work. We will have a channel in our Slack workspace (open to all members) devoted to conversations about anti-racism work, which will be actively monitored and facilitated by members of the SWMS Steering Committee.

Sincerely,
The SWMS Steering Committee

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Update on our non-profit status

headshots of four board members

By Chrissy Hernandez, Steering Committee chair

We’re super excited to announce our progress on becoming a non-profit! First of all, we want to reiterate our deepest gratitude to all the folks who donated to our fundraiser, whether it was $2 or $200. Our base of members, family, and friends have made this transition possible. Of course, we have to note that if you’d like to support us further, you can send us funds via PayPal (not yet tax-deductible).

Since June 2019, we’ve been working with a lawyer to draft by-laws and make some decisions about the structure of SWMS, Inc. We’re ready to file the paperwork, and we’ll officially be a non-profit organization very soon!

Our Steering Committee will still be making decisions about the day-to-day management of SWMS. In the coming years, at least 4 of the Steering Committee positions will be Officers elected by a general vote of members: President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. You can read more about the current structure of our Steering Committee here, and recent Pod Posts introducing many of us!

Introducing our Board of Directors

A wonderful bonus of being a non-profit corporation is that we will have input and oversight from a Board of Directors. We’ve identified the first SWMS Board of Directors! The Board of Directors currently consists of four longtime SWMS supporters who bring a wealth of expertise and passion to SWMS, and the SWMS President. This group will meet one to two times per year to discuss the mission and funding for SWMS. As these initial Directors end their terms in the coming years, new Directors will be elected by a general vote of members.

Without further ado, we are so excited to announce our inaugural Board of Directors (in alphabetical order by last name):

  • Dr. Bethanie Edwards (UC Berkeley)
  • Dr. Yuki Honjo (McLane Research Labs, Inc.)
  • Dr. Rick Murray (WHOI)
  • Dr. Heidi Sosik (WHOI)

This group spans a range of career stages, but they’ve all been instrumental in supporting SWMS. The board also has a broad range of expertise, including academic research, business development, public and private funding of science, and best practices for broadening participation in science.

We’re so excited to see where the next couple of years take us!

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Pod Post: a letter from Alexa Sterling

Alexa Sterling
Alexa Sterling

Hi, I’m Alexa Sterling, the Research Coordinator on the SWMS Steering Committee and PhD student at the University of Rhode Island (URI). I’m an officer on the current Steering Committee, and I’m excited to share how I became involved with SWMS – from attending my first SWMS Symposium alone, to starting the URI SWMS Chapter, and now serving on the SWMS Steering Committee. And most importantly, how this group has provided the support, friendship, and inspiration to “just keep SWMSing” to the PhD finish line.

In the first year of grad school, I was forwarded the 2015 SWMS Symposium event announcement with the message “great group, great event.” New to grad school, I didn’t want to miss out on meeting SWMS and learning more about them. But being new to the area meant I didn’t know many people to join me/carpool/be my lunch buddy. So I worked up the courage, signed up last minute, couldn’t figure out how to pay registration, drove to the meeting alone, and sat down in the auditorium nervous but excited. In these early days of science Twitter, I used #SWMS15 to break the ice (@AquaticSterling, give me a 👋). I left that day excited about new connections and inspired by senior women in the field. 

I had to bring this SWMS community to my institution, so I found other graduate students who felt the same way and sent listserv emails to survey interest from students and faculty. I received over 50 responses from individuals interested in SWMS at URI, and the first SWMS Chapter was established with a lot of help from students, post-docs, faculty, and staff at URI. We even held our own SWMS Symposium with over 120 attendees just two years later! 

I knew I felt an impact from SWMS – I’m more confident speaking my mind, I go to conferences and see SWMS friends, I actively set work boundaries for balance, and I feel inspired to continue on this path in marine science that I know women before me helped clear. I wanted to quantify these impacts, and critically examine how to improve and increase positive impacts. I thought of advice I received at my first SWMS Symposium: “sometimes make opportunities” and that’s how I joined the Steering Committee as Research Coordinator – through a position I helped create. So, we assembled a great research team to create and assess surveys for before and after SWMS Symposiums. You may have even taken one of these – thank you!!  We now have responses from three different SWMS Symposiums in three different states. Stay tuned, we’re excited to share the results of these with you!

Alexa

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Pod Post: a letter from Jessica Dabrowski

Jessica Dabrowski

Note: as of Fall 2020, Jessica has transitioned off the Steering Committee – we’re grateful for her service to SWMS!

Hey there! I’m Jessica Dabrowski (she/her), the Mentorship Chair on the SWMS Steering Committee.

I first got involved with SWMS when I attended the URI Symposium in the spring of 2018. At this meeting, I attended a breakout session on mentorship, which led to the idea of building a mentorship network because many women saw a lack of appropriate mentors in their professional settings. I then dove into making this a reality with the rest of the Steering Committee and rolled out the program at the 2018 Fall Symposium at WHOI. Less than one year later, I could not be prouder of how far the Mentorship Program has come. I would truly appreciate more feedback to continue to develop the program. My dream is to give every person in marine science access to mentors they need to flourish in their careers, relationships, emotional and mental health, and into their best selves.

My position as Mentorship Chair started around the same time that I began addressing my own mental health. In my teenage years, I faced many challenges including growing up with an alcoholic parent and my best friend passing away. During college, my grandmother, godmother, and father passed away in the span of 3 years. I denied that I was struggling, taking only enough days off to attend the funerals, and returned to funneling my energy into my classes and research, distracting myself from grief. My grades were up, so I must have been fine. I jumped right into graduate school, deciding against a gap year since I thought that going for my PhD was the best way to put myself first, not realizing that I continued to let my mental health suffer.

In February 2018, I heard my wake-up call. Although I was making good progress in my research and classes, I was having weekly panic attacks, anxious days, sleepless nights, and saw my familial and romantic relationships fall apart. I felt utterly alone. I sought out a therapist, who I still see regularly, and am grateful to say that I am now the happiest I have ever been. On our first day, she recommended trying meditation, but I thought, “How could I have time to pause for 10 minutes a day when I am so busy?”

After giving it a try, I could already feel the cracks beginning to heal, and after 18 months, I’m far from where I started and things are only looking up. I like to think of my new mental health habits as my brain’s daily cup of coffee, energizing it for the rest of the day. Meditation is now one of my favorite parts of my routine, along with writing down to-do lists (on paper instead of continuously thinking about them), journaling about things I’m grateful for, acknowledging the tiniest of successes, and rewarding myself for keeping up with good habits. I better manage my stress, have amazing relationships with my loved ones, and feel more joy on a daily basis. I am truly experiencing life with a happy, clear mind instead of fumbling around in the fog, wondering what is on the other side.

With gratitude,

Jessica

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Pod Post: A letter from Chrissy Hernandez

The Pod Post is a series of letters from the SWMS Steering Committee, sent out in our newsletter. You can sign up for our mailing list here. Pod = group of whales/seals/dolphins, post = letter!

Hi! I’m Chrissy Hernandez, and I am the Chair of the SWMS Steering Committee (SWMS-SC). That means that I convene and facilitate our online SWMS-SC meetings, keep us moving toward our long-term goals, and support the rest of the SWMS-SC in their specific positions (chapter engagement, mentorship program, research, communications). I’ve also helped to plan 3 fall symposiums at WHOI! We’ve realized that our lack of formal financial systems are holding us back from pursuing some of our larger goals. I’m working to figure out how we can move towards treating SWMS like a non-profit organization. This includes thinking about the income and expenses that SWMS might have over the next few years, and how to keep our financial system simple. SWMS is currently run by early career women, and we think it’s important to our mission that it stays that way. In the long run, formalizing our organization will allow us to broaden our reach and better serve our community.

On a more personal note, I’d like to share a bit more about who I am. I identify as a white Hispanic queer cisgender woman. Throughout my life, and particularly during graduate school, I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression. I love reading — I’ve already read 14 books in 2019! I’m a vegetarian and I really enjoy cooking for my friends. My PhD work focuses on larval fish, and ultimately I’d like to contribute scientifically to fisheries management and conservation. I currently live with my boyfriend, who is also a PhD student. Our favorite things to do together are bike rides and backpacking vacations.

I was born in Miami, FL, and grew up in the suburbs in northern New Jersey. My father is first-generation American; his mother came to the USA from Cuba shortly before he was born. My abuela (grandmother) still lives in Miami and doesn’t speak English. My father did his PhD when I was a kid, and my parents split up shortly after he graduated. Both of my parents are professors — my dad teaches history of Christianity at a seminary school, and my mom teaches math at a community college. I also have a younger brother who is doing his undergrad degree in philosophy at Rutgers University. I’m super proud of him and also grateful for the way he pushes me to think about the world differently.

Anyway, these are some of my influences, both in my scientific work and in SWMS. When we talk within and across identity groups, we build strength and resilience into our communities. I find community-building to be extremely rewarding, both in my graduate program, and through SWMS. And I think that a sense of community — both the feeling of being connected to others that are like us and the feeling of being valued for what makes each of us different — is what we are all looking for as SWMS members.

Until next time,

Chrissy

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Book Review: The Breath of a Whale

By Jenny Howard

The first time I saw a whale, it was a sunny summer day off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts — the whale spotting capital of New England. Rocking gently with the boat, my eyes glued to binoculars, it took a long minute before I was confident the spray I saw was, in fact, a whale’s spout. When a whale breached a few minutes later, the other tourists on the whale-watching tour buzzed with excitement, and the tour operators exuded a palpable relief.

The naturalist Leigh Calvez also saw her first humpback whale off the coast of Gloucester, and adroitly captures the admiration and curiosity these giants can provoke in her new book, The Breath of a Whale. Part scientific exploration and part emotional narrative, Calvez weaves scientific research with her own personal journey from her days as a naturalist and science writer.

The tail of a whale appears out of the distance from the water.

The book focuses on six species of whales — humpback whales, blue whales, gray whales, beaked whales, false killer whales, and orcas. She explores the habits and history of each species, including their complicated relationship with humans. Gray whales, as Calvez explains, were completely eliminated from the east coast, and nearly exterminated in the Pacific. Although commercial killing of whales was officially halted by the majority of countries in 1982, the practice continues—Norway and Iceland continue to allow commercial whaling, and Japan catches whales under the guise of scientific whaling. Indigenous communities in four countries, including the United States, also still hunt whales to support their families. (This type of subsistence whaling maintains indigenous cultures but specifies a catch limit, updated every six years, by the International Whaling Commission.)

But if you want to read a hard-hitting book about past and current whaling, this isn’t it. Breath of a Whale barely skirts these topics. Instead, Calvez explores newer cetacean research and our evolving human connection with them. For example, she describes research on low-frequency active (LFA) sonar tests, which disturb wintering humpback whales off the coast of Hawaii. Calvez, then a young scientist monitoring whales, recalls noticing a distressed calf, separated from its mother by underwater noise pollution during military sonar tests. The mother-calf bond is critical, and Calvez observed a total disruption in normal behavior because of the sonar tests. She reported it, but her observations were dismissed. Her feeling of helplessness ultimately led her away from science. (Further studies since then have confirmed that the US Navy’s sonar can cause whale deaths, and otherwise disrupt whale behavior.)

Throughout the book, Calvez has keen descriptions of whales’ advanced social behavior. Free Willy-fame aside, the importance of the family pod in a whale’s life is difficult to overstate. Orcas in particular have strong familial ties, living in groups with their mothers and sisters. Orca social structures are complex, with some populations remaining in a small area—known as “residents”—and some migrating. This complicates research and conservation efforts. Off the coast of British Columbia in the Salish Sea, for instance, Calvez describes how the southern resident population is in decline, with no births for over three years, while the transient population has actually increased. That’s in part because the southern residents’ preferred food, Chinook salmon, has declined drastically. The human impacts, like industrial dumping, runoff, and leaching chemicals into the ocean, also contribute to the problem. (In fact, half of the world’s orcas could disappear because of pollution.)

Some of the most striking sections in the book stem from Calvez’ remarkable ability to humanize scientific research itself. Scientists attempting to study whales can spend days, months, and even years without catching a glimpse of their study species. Remarkably difficult to study, a single whale can travel thousands of miles a year, and spend a large portion of their time under water.  As a researcher studying how seabirds find food, I can appreciate the huge challenges these whale researchers face. I can walk up to a nest, pick up a bird, and attach a GPS in less than 10 minutes. Whales surface to breathe for sometimes only seconds, so scientists have to be poised and ready to attach a GPS to a whale’s back with a giant suction cup at a moment’s notice. Calvez explains how new techniques—like using GPS satellite loggers—are now helping scientists better understand whale movements, and recording the incredibly deep depths of their dives.

Though she does a good job explaining the nuts and bolts of cetacean research, equally interesting are the scenes where Calvez shows the connection between whale and human emotions. Just like elephants suffer from PTSD, Calvez argues that whales also experience distress and depression after traumatic events. Since gray whales can live as long as 70 years, she muses that gray whale calves born during the 1960s—when over 300 gray whales were killed off California—could still be alive and swimming with the trauma of those hunts. (Researchers now believe that Tilikum, the infamous Sea World orca that killed his trainer, exhibited symptoms of PTSD.)

A close up photo of a sperm whale emerging from the water.
JORGE VASCONEZ

Calvez, in fact, twines her own life story around that of Springer, an orphaned orca calf who appeared in the Puget Sound in early 2002. Springer became separated from her pod after her mother died in late 2001. (NOAA orchestrated an attempt to reunite the struggling calf with her family in summer 2002—a complicated operation that was ultimately a success.) Like Springer’s community came together to care for this orphan, Calvez chronicles how her own community cared for her when she fell into a coma on the very same day that an oil spill poisoned the Puget Sound in 2004.

Breath of a Whale isn’t trying to be comprehensive—and I found myself wanting more information, not only on the whale species she introduces, but also on the ones she doesn’t. Right whales, for example, a species of the North Atlantic that produced no offspring in 2017, didn’t even get a mention. As a scientist, the human tendency to anthropomorphize animals is discouraged, and Calvez’ passion for whales sometimes distracts from the important science she recounts. Trained to ask questions, I double-checked Calvez’s sources as I read the book—but the facts she divulges and the scientific papers she summarizes are all accurate, leaving me eager to learn more.

Even for a skeptic like me, the book’s main success is connecting Calvez’ audience to a magnificent creature that so many of us rarely, if ever, see.

This story originally appeared on Massive Science, an editorial partner site that publishes science stories written by scientists. Subscribe to their newsletter for even more science delivered straight to you.

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Male Allyship of Women in Science

MIT/WHOI Joint Program students pushing the Corwith Cramer off the dock during the orientation cruise.
MIT/WHOI Joint Program students pushing the Corwith Cramer off the dock during the 2018 summer orientation cruise. I’m second from the bottom. [Photo Credit: Stewart Jamieson]
By Henri Drake

Disclaimer: There are many high quality and comprehensive guides to allyship and I particularly encourage would-be allies to read those written by people from marginalized groups, such as this one. Nonetheless, I think it may be useful to other male scientists to read this information, as compiled by someone from their own group. Please feel free to contact me at hdrake@mit.edu or leave an anonymous comment.

Why should we care if there are women in science?

There is no evidence of gender disparities in intrinsic aptitude of science and mathematics. Despite an intrinsic equality in scientific aptitude across genders, societal pressures and expectations cause girls’ perception that women can be scientists to plummet as they age. For example, 70% of girls at age 6 drew scientists as women compared to only 25% of girls at age 16. These results suggest that women are both intrinsically capable of and interested in being scientists but that societal forces push them away.

Besides the moral argument that women should have equal representation to men in science, including women in science also means better science. Inclusion of women in science increases the scientific talent pool and leads to a more competitive and competent scientific workforce. There is evidence that diverse groups are more creative and produce higher quality work than homogeneous groups. Under-representation of groups (by gender, sexuality, ethnicity, disability, geography, wealth, etc) in science also means biased science – and it demonstrably hurts public health. Medical and environmental sciences, for example, are famously sexist and racist in focusing on the problems afflicting white men.

As ocean science becomes increasingly tied to public health through human exploitation of the ocean, diversity and inclusion will become increasingly fundamental to doing good science. Dr. Sarah Myhre referred to this in a recent Ted talk:

If we don’t have the courage to stand up for our own humanity, how will we ever have the courage to stand up for the humanity of the people that science is meant to serve?

While inclusion efforts must exist for all under-represented groups, this blog focuses on strategies for the inclusion of women in science specifically, though many of the conclusions and strategies can be generalized.

What is allyship?

Writing for the Association for Women in Science, Aspen Russel provides the following definition of allyship:

Allies recognize unearned privileges in their personal lives and in the workplace. Allies act on inequalities by taking responsibility to end patterns of injustice. Allies do this through supporting others, using their position(s) of privilege to bring visibility and tangible change to the systemic issues that differentially impact individuals, groups, and communities. Effective allies recognize their own histories of oppression and use them as a tool to empathize with others without assuming shared experience or shared oppression. Being an ally is not an identity, it is a role.

How to be an effective ally

1. Listen to women

Efforts to improve inclusion of women in science must be centered around women. Men have no way of understanding  the barriers facing women in science nor of knowing effective strategies to overcome them without listening with purpose to the experiences of women. Being an effective listener involves three tasks: 1) actively listening to and processing what women say, 2) believing what women say, and 3) shutting up – except to confirm that you understand through rephrasing, clarifying questions, or other active listening techniques. Listening to lived experiences is not like listening to a scientific talk, when you consider flaws in the methodology or room for improvement – experiences are someone’s individual truth and thus inherently valuable. The simple act of listening to and acknowledging the barriers women face in science is validating and makes a community more supportive and inclusive. If your department’s women’s group (e.g., mine) has open meetings or your conference has a plenary talk about diversity and inclusion, I encourage you to attend, listen, and reflect.

Listening also includes reading, and the onus is on men to actively search out and read about the experiences and recommendations of women. A good start is to read the National Academies’ 2018 report on Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

2. Don’t harass women

Sexual harassment leads to a variety of negative consequences for victims, creates a hostile work environment, and slows the scientific productivity of harassed scientists. Many organizations now recognize the harmful effects of sexual harassment on science and include scientific harassment as a harm of scientific misconduct. One way to be part of the solution of sexual harassment is to stop personally being part of the problem. For this purpose, it is convenient to separate sexual harassment into A) unwanted sexual attention and touching, and B) gender discrimination, although the separation is not always clear.

A) Unwanted sexual attention and touching (Come-ons)

Unwanted sexual attention (and the less common sexual coercion) includes everything from insidious verbal remarks to physical sexual assault. It should not need to be said, but all of these are unacceptable behavior and illegal under federal civil rights law (Title IX). Sexual encounters between unequal parties (e.g., professor and student or teaching assistant and student) are always inappropriate due to the inherent hierarchical power structures in academia, even if superficially “consensual”. Comments about a women’s appearance or sexually-explicit jokes do not belong in the workplace. Allies should gauge their women colleagues’ comfort levels in response to such remarks and be prepared to step in as active bystanders (see Section 3).

B) Gender discrimination (Put-downs)

Gender discrimination includes sexist hostility and crude behavior, but also takes less obvious forms. For example: exhibiting implicit bias against women in writing recommendation letters, providing less financial and mentoring support for newly hired women than for identically-qualified men, and forcing women out of science due to pregnancy. Many men are not aware of gender discrimination happening around them or that they are personally guilty of it, which is another reason why listening to women is so important. Allyship means acknowledging your own mistakes – I’ve made many – and learning how to avoid making them in the future  – I’ve made concrete and conscious efforts to avoid some of them.

Prevalence and characteristics of sexual harassment

According to a recent survey (N=324), 65% of female graduate students experience sexual harassment during graduate school (of which faculty/staff perpetrate one-third and students perpetrate two-thirds). Contrary to public perception, sexual harassment is not all about sex; gender discrimination accounts for the overwhelming majority of sexual harassment. Unwanted sexual advances are also more often verbal than physical. Gender discrimination represents 65% of these sexual harassment incidents, compared to 15% for unwanted sexual attention and 9% for unwanted touching. The survey also links sexual harassment to harm: sexual harassment by both faculty/staff and students is associated with decreased perceptions of safety and sexual harassment by faculty/staff in particular is associated with perceptions of institutional betrayal.

3. Be an active bystander

Being an ally involves not only acknowledging your own mistakes and their consequences, but also those of others in your privileged group. An ally is an active bystander, someone who witnesses harassment or discrimination and actively steps in to diffuse the situation and support the targeted party. Harassers should be directly confronted or called out so long as victims are not put in more danger by these actions. The priority of an active bystander is always to support the targeted party and ensure their safety rather than punish the perpetrator. This can be as simple as asking them if they are okay or if there’s anything you can do to help. Everyone should take an active bystander training course to learn specific strategies for both diffusing situations and supporting targeted parties.

Active bystanders constantly pay attention to social interactions around them and step in when someone is uncomfortable or in danger. For example, an active bystander might interrupt an aggressive conference questioner by suggesting to move on to another question “in the interest of time” or they might make up an excuse for a friend to leave a room to stop a potential sexual assault before it occurs.

Being an active bystander also means knowing the relevant resources so that you can adequately provide help. Every ally should at the very least be able to refer a victim to the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) and be able to provide the number 1-800-656-4673 for the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline. Another good resource is an Ombuds’ office, which is an independent, confidential, neutral party tasked with resolving disputes within an institution.

4. Support women-led inclusion efforts

Allyship is inherently a supportive role rather than a leadership role. Men should work jointly with women when shaping inclusion efforts. While women often emerge as natural leaders of such efforts, such leadership roles are often time-intensive and can act as further drag on the scientific productivity of women, which is counter-productive. This is where male allies can step in and share the burden of the behind-the-scenes, time-intensive, and unglamorous grunt work that underpins all inclusion efforts.

Allies should also acknowledge that inclusion work may in some cases be more effectively done by women. For example, the Mentoring Physical Oceanography Women to Increase Retention (MPOWIR) program tries to match mentees and mentors by gender in recognition of evidence that same-gender mentoring is both personally important to students and results in more effective mentoring. Male allies must walk the line of equitably contributing to inclusion efforts without imposing their male vision of what including women means.

5. Engage with and promote the science of women scientists

It is past time to break up the “Old Boys Club” that leads to men (both explicitly and implicitly) amplifying the science of other men in an endless cycle that excludes equally competent – or more competent – women. Not only is this unfair to women and hurts their career advancement, but it also means that both scientists and the public are missing out on the science of brilliant women. Too often are there high-profile studies that are authored, edited, reviewed, and commented on in the media exclusively by men.

Thankfully, women have done some of the hard work in addressing the last of these categories for us by compiling a list of women scientists across all fields who have volunteered for media comments (follow the link to sign yourself up). Some male allies have also set a precedent by making and, crucially, measuring efforts to diversify their sources. Over a two-year period, Ed Yong increased the proportion of women quoted in his articles at The Atlantic from 25% to 50% by making a conscious effort to correct his implicit bias towards quoting men. Similarly, Michael White has made a conscious effort to keep the proportion of women he assigns as reviewers at Nature and the proportion of women guests on his podcast near 50%. Recent twitter threads of scientists tallying their coauthor gender balance and recognizing room for improvement are similarly encouraging.

6. Exercise your power to implement policies that support women in science

Positions of power in science are overwhelmingly held by men. As of 2004, women represent less than 10% of STEM department heads. The responsibility of implementing policies to support women in science thus rests predominantly on men. Based on the findings of the National Academies’ report on Sexual Harassment of Women and their recommendations for government policies, I recommend the following concrete policies for leaders at academic institutions to implement:

A) Prioritize the reintegration of harassment victims over the rehabilitation of perpetrators

Institutions must abandon their habit of protecting male sexual harassers over their women victims. It is absurd that victims are often forced out of their institutions and science in general while their harassers keep their jobs or are simply allowed move to another institution. Men must work with women to implement policies at both the governmental and institutional levels that protect and reintegrate victims first and then punish harassers. More concretely, institutions should develop clear, accessible, and consistent policies on sexual harassment. Sexual harassment policies should include clear and appropriate consequences for perpetrators found to have violated sexual harassment policies and / or law. Consequences should escalate based on the frequency and severity of harassment and should not be potentially beneficial, such as being given paid leave or a reduced teaching load.

B) Incentivize diversity and inclusion work

Women in science spend countless hours working making science more diverse and inclusive, often without tangible reward. These efforts contribute to the growth and improvement of departments in a similar manner to mentoring and teaching, both of which are already rewarded. Institutions should incentivize this diversity and inclusion work by acknowledging it as a positive contribution in tenure packages and by creating awards specifically for diversity and inclusion efforts. For example, institutions can participate in the STEM Equity Achievement (SEA) Change program, which provides metrics to evaluate institutional efforts to increase diversity and inclusion.

C) Require face-to-face active bystander training

Evidence shows that online sexual harassment trainings not only do not work, they can actually backfire and lead to more workplace harassment. Instead, experts recommend face-to-face active bystander trainings.

7. Nominate, hire, appoint, and elect women in science

Finally, the only way to make lasting progress is to make science equitable at all levels. While women are now the majority of undergraduates and graduate students in science, they still lag significantly behind men among tenured faculty, note data is for all fields and probably even worse for STEM, but I had trouble finding recent numbers). Similarly, awards and leadership positions are increasingly skewed towards men as the prestige of the award and influence of the position increases. Men must join women in making conscious efforts to nominate women for awards, hire them for their departments, appoint them to prestigious panels and committees, and elect them to positions of power.

Concluding thoughts

Allyship means constantly exercising all of the above and more, while asking nothing in return besides the benefit of improving the experiences of women in science and the scientific process as a whole. It means supporting the women scientists around you and relishing in their success. It means having no tolerance for men who harass, belittle, or exclude women. I joined the SWMS symposium planning committee in order to both contribute to the actual planning of the symposium and to signal to other men that they should participate in, contribute to, and register for the SWMS symposium and similar efforts to include and support women in science.

At the end of the day, women just want to be able to do science and men need to stop holding them back and start helping.

I want future female deckhands, technicians, captains and other professionals to expect without hesitation that they, too, can embrace science and the sea.                 – Dr. Julia O’Hern

 

Acknowledgments: The content here relies heavily on the cited references, resources compiled by 500WomenScientists, Dr. Kathryn Clancy’s recent talk at WHOI on Sexual Harassment, and various trainings and discussions led by Women in Course 12 at MIT (WiXII). I thank members of the SWMS planning committee for extensive and constructive feedback.

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University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) Horn Point Laboratory launches a SWMS chapter

women standing in two rows, smiling and "sorority squatting".

By Melanie Jackson, Lexy McCarty, Hannah Morrissette, and Emily Brownlee

After learning about SWMS at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, OR and hearing from mid-Atlantic universities in Delaware and Virginia that a Maryland SWMS chapter would be a welcomed addition, we decided that our Horn Point Laboratory (HPL) community would benefit from a chapter. From a quick look at the HPL online directory, you may notice that the majority of the graduate students at HPL are women (~60%), whereas the majority of the faculty are men. This dichotomy between students and faculty motivates one of our primary goals, which is to help increase retention of women in higher levels of the marine sciences.

Although we are a relatively small laboratory, we were thrilled to receive interest from 28 people on campus. Other than graduate students, we have a large number of women on campus, such as faculty, research assistants, and employees of local nonprofits who partner with the laboratory. During our first meeting, we went around the room and addressed what everyone wanted to get out of SWMS. Some common themes included showcasing women at the community level, providing professional development and networking, interacting more with our faculty, and creating an open space for women’s issues. The discussion helped identify topics that we have since focused on during our past meetings, and that we plan to address in the future, such as unconscious bias training and tips on how to boost confidence levels.

Last week was our first large event, where we invited Shelby Byrd from University of Maryland Human Resources to give us a half-day crash course workshop on leadership and crucial conversation. During the workshop, we practiced introducing ourselves briefly using the three P’s (Professional, Passion, and Personal). Although we are comfortable delivering our science-related elevator pitches, this introduction format was challenging. It forced us to think about ourselves beyond the scope of science and gave us some exposure to a new introduction template we could utilize at different types of networking events.

The three P’s: Professional, Passion, and Personal

Next, we practiced and discussed conflict resolution tools that could help us manage hypothetical and/or real-life conflicts. This involved learning lots of different models, and their acronyms, that could be employed for various types of conflicts. One such model was Crucial Conversations: Work on me first, confront with safety, and move into action. Most importantly, and arguably everyone’s favorite, was the BEER model: Behavior, Emotion, Effect, Request.

Once we learned an arsenal of tools and models, we successfully practiced using the Crucial Conversation model in simulated conversations. After practicing with each other, we followed with a discussion on what we did well and how we could have handled the situation differently.

This training provided us with the confidence to deal with potentially tricky situations, as well as created a great bonding opportunity. Overall, the positive response that we’ve received from our HPL community encourages us to support each other.

 

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