President’s note
WOMEESA local meet up in Canberra for International Women’s Day 2022
It was wonderful this month to see so many of our members at our International Women’s Day event with the Geological Society of Australia and at our in-person local meet-ups. We are very thankful for our brilliant panel of speakers who shared their experiences and insights in our panel discussion: Caroline Tiddy, Steph McLennan, Tanvi Oza, Sabin Zahirovic and Christina Magill. International Women’s Day is a great opportunity to shine a light on women in science and to advocate for change. However, the burden of this day often falls to women, which can be stressful and demanding. Increasingly, women who in former years have been racing from event to event on this day, are taking IWD off, in an initiative called #IWD4ME. This is such a brilliant initiative and ultimately spreads the load of outreach more evenly, as organisations look beyond their usual contacts for inspiring women to talk on this important day.
Many Earth and Environmental scientists in our community have had a busy month with new research and associated media about polar heatwaves, new Great Barrier Reef bleaching events, floods in Eastern Australia, and ice sheet collapse in Antarctica. Clear, effective science communication has never been more important, especially in Australia where a Federal election looms and people are starting to think about what issues they’ll vote on.
Speaking of politics, I was initially delighted to hear that the Australian government announced in the budget a new paid parental leave scheme that gives households 20 weeks leave and allows them to choose which parent takes it. But I was then dismayed to learn that there will be no incentives for men to take leave and that the parent that takes the leave will be paid minimum wage. This guarantees that most households will choose the lower income earner to take the leave, and you can probably guess who that is in most heterosexual couples... Analysis suggests this will probably turn out to be a step backwards for gender equity in families, since prior to this policy there was two weeks leave that could only be taken by the non-birth parent.
I talk about the importance of equality in parental leave in an article published this month in the Geological Society of Australia’s TAG magazine. The article is about why we lose women in geoscience and discusses what the data say about why women leave (or get pushed out!). If you’re interested in reading it, there is a copy here.
— Melanie Finch
WOMEESA News
Online Seminar Series
Each month we host a seminar via zoom from a WOMEESA member. Our seminar series aims to increase the visibility of women in science and provide inspiring role models. Attendance is open to everyone, including non-members.
Details of upcoming seminars on posted the seminar webpage here, and past seminars are posted on our YouTube channel here. We’re also compiling a list of talks by women in earth and environmental sciences in the region which you can find on the seminars webpage.
The March WOMEESA seminar was presented by Marji Puotinen from the Australian Institute of Marine Science. You can watch it here.
Don’t miss the next WOMEESA Seminar:
Wednesday 13 April 2022, 2pm AEDT (Sydney time)
Dr Caroline Eakin, The Australian National University
“A seismologist down-under: investigating mantle deformation beneath Australia”
See our website for more information and register for the zoom link here
WOMEESA #SUAW session
On the last Friday of the month we hold an online Shut Up and Write #SUAW session via zoom. We get together and talk briefly about what we want to achieve in the session, then write for about 50 minutes.
It’s a great opportunity to connect with other members and get some uninterrupted writing done. Even if you don’t have anything to write, you can just come along and say hi.
Next event will be Friday 29 April, 12 pm (Sydney time) the zoom link will be emailed out to members the day before.
(py)GPlates short course
Dr Sabin Zahirovic from the University of Sydney is hosting a free (py)GPlates short course in May. GPlates is a program for creating plate tectonic reconstructions and it is free to download. You can register for the workshop here. Sabin is a great supporter of WOMEESA and the broader geoscience community, we are so happy to be supporting this generous initiative.
WOMEESA South Australian Chapter events
The SA team have been busy planning some local events. To keep up to date with SA chapter activities follow them on LinkedIn.
Here are all the links to register for their upcoming events:
April 14th Virtual Trivia: https://lnkd.in/g6BmA3zv
May 13th F2F: https://lnkd.in/dxj6h_9a
June 16th Virtual Trivia: https://lnkd.in/gzUAMs8S
July 15th F2F: https://lnkd.in/dCXYmBv9
August 11th Virtual Trivia: https://lnkd.in/gtUZwMxt
WOMEESA postgraduate news
From our WOMEESA committee postgraduate rep, Alanis Olesch-Byrne:
Welcome back to the postgraduate section of the WOMEESA newsletter! First of all, I would like to say thank you to all of you who have emailed me over the past month! Its great to see so many women supporting other women or supporting yourselves.
This month we are congratulating Neethu Madhukumar, a final year PhD student at James Cook University. Neethu is working on developing smart technologies (artificial neural networks) for better environmental solutions/applications and her current research determines how much farmers should irrigate on a given day. Her work has been published in the IEEE IoT and in the follow up of this work she has featured on ABC Radio, 7News, many IT magazines and SBS for International Women’s Day! You can check out Neethus JCU media release here. Congratulations Neethu and good luck in your final year!
If you have a spare 10 mins please support fellow PhD student Jessica Blower in survey that she is conducting at Charles Darwin University, ‘Exploring HDR candidates’ experiences during their non-study time’. Please follow this link to participate https://cdu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6mtEUNu6ZRUhOrI
Member spotlights
Our member spotlights are helping increasing the visibility of women working in earth and environmental sciences in the region and share experiences. If you would like to feature on a member spotlight page or write an article for our blog page please get in touch with Jess (j.hillman@gns.cri.nz)
Take a look at the most recent spotlights here
Other WOMEESA news
the Earth Futures Festival Filmmaking workshops
The Earth Futures Festival is an international film and video festival that showcases the role of geoscience in our sustainable future. It will run in a hybrid format between August and October in 2022. This festival is for everyone - whether you’re new to film making or secretly the next Jane Campion. To help people closer to the former category, EFF are running workshops about filmmaking. The next workshop is on April 6, and you can register for free here.
Global geochemistry community survey
Coordinated by the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committees of the European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society, the Global Geochemistry Community Survey will take about 15 minutes of your time and is for geochemists both within and outside academia. If you have time, help them out and complete the survey here.
Women’s climate congress conversation
The women’s climate congress is hosting a conversation about how a movement for change on the urgent global issue of climate change can be developed by harnessing all voices, across differences. They will be talking to Helen Dalley-Fisher, the Convenor of the Equality Rights Alliance (ERA) and Sienna Aguilar, a gender equality advocate and researcher. The seminar is free and online on April 12 at 12pm (Sydney time), find out more and register here.
Fire and Ice: a new book from Natalie Starkey
Dr Natalie Starkey is a UK geologist, cosmochemist and scicomm superstar. Her new book is about volcanoes of the solar system, but the processes talked about go much further than that. The book describes volcanic processes close to home and compares them with the weird things that happens to volcanoes on other planets and moons, where the surface pressure is different and the magma is not rock-based(!). This is a brilliant read for geologists and the general public alike.
Heatwaves at the poles
The fact that the Oscars received far more air time than a record breaking heatwave in both Antarctica and the Arctic is both depressing and, by now, unsurprising. News out this month also revealed the collapse of the Conger ice sheet in east Antarctica and a new bleaching event for the Great Barrier Reef. Meanwhile, in the Australian courts, it has just been ruled that Australia’s environmental laws allow ministers to approve coal projects, even if they will harm the environment. This came to light when a group of young people took the government to court, claiming that the environment minister had a duty of care to protect Australian children from the effects of climate change. That doesn’t seem to have panned out the way they hoped, but the ruling does demonstrate that it is really the government that needs to take action to protect it’s people. Despite increased prevalence of floods, fires and extreme weather, Australians are still waiting for real action.
Climate change affects Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people disproportionately, since it changes and limits access to Country, traditional food sources and practices. Indigenous people also have a unique insight into environmental change since their culture is uniquely attuned to the environment and their knowledge spans tens of thousands of years. As yet, their voices have not been included in national and international conversations about climate change. Perhaps it is also time to learn from the incredible achievements of Mirarr Traditional Owners Yvonne Margarula and Jacqui Katona who, through an extraordinary campaign in the late 1990s, managed to prevent mining on their beautiful land. They have some excellent advice for those who are using people power to fight for real action on climate change, outlined in this article.
Editorial opportunity: Coastal geomorphology and/or groundwater
Michael Nones is responsible for the Hydrology Section of the journal Acta Geophysica. He is looking for an Associate Editor with expertise in coastal geomorphology and/or groundwater. If you are interested please send a CV and a short (max 1 page) motivation letter directly to Michael by April 15 (not a compulsory deadline). His email is mnones@igf.edu.pl.
Opportunities
Jobs:
Open rank (level C to E) continuing position at ANU in analytical geochemistry/mass spectrometry (30 April)
Landscape scientist or geospatial modeller at CSIRO (April 10)
Director - geoscience energy and maritime at The Pacific Community in Suva, Fiji (April 13)
PhD opportunities:
Fully funded PhD projects in geoscience at JCU, Townsville with a range of topics available, from geochemistry through to structural geology. Some of these projects are supervised by WOMEESA members, Helen McCoy-West (helen.mccoywest@jcu.edu.au) and Melanie Finch (melanie.finch@jcu.edu.au), who you can contact to find out more about the department, the projects and living in a tropical paradise.
Earthquakes and regional tectonics of New Zealand at the University of Canterbury (May 15)
The Indigenous Knowledge Institute at the University of Melbourne is seeking applications from Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars who wish to undertake a PhD on a topic related to Indigenous knowledges. Applications close May 27 unless allocated earlier.
PhD at Queensland University of Technology on the geology of the early Earth and/or Mars (April 15)
Have an opportunity you’d like to share? Let us know: womeesa.network@gmail.com.
Newsletter Editor-in-Chief
Melanie Finch
Melanie is President of WOMEESA and a geoscience lecturer at JCU. Email her at womeesa.network@gmail.com if you have news or opportunities to include in the next newsletter.
Newsletter Contributors
Alanis Olesch-Byrne
Alanis is part of the WOMEESA committee and the postgraduate representative. She is a PhD student in structural and metamorphic geology at James Cook University and she writes the postgraduate student news section in each newsletter. You can email her with your news: alanis.oleschbyrne@my.jcu.edu.au