President’s note
With Victoria in the midst of another lock-down, all of us at WOMEESA send our best wishes to members in Australia and across other areas of Australasia that are affected by the pandemic. We hope that you are keeping safe and well.
This last month saw the budget announcement in Australia with anxious anticipation of increased support and initiatives for women, particularly after the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women, but as this great analysis by Annabel Crabb shows, there was a lot left wanting. However, one thing the budget did bring was a new $200 million strategy to improve and ensure the health of Australian soils along with a great accompanying article in The Conversation from Vanessa Wong of Monash University, President of Soil Science Australia.
WOMEESA have reached over 2000 Twitter followers this month! It’s great to see our voice reaching widely. In addition to our online seminars and writing sessions, we’re setting up bimonthly, local informal networking events from June (Melbourne on 22 June and Sydney and Adelaide on 23 June) so keep an eye out on social media (and check the bottom of this newsletter) for additional details. Also let us know if you’d like to organise a local event near you. Hope you enjoy this month’s newsletter!
Heather Handley
WOMEESA News
WOMEESA gender equity paper REACH
Last year a WOMEESA collaboration led to the publication of an analysis of the current status of gender equity in geosciences in Australasia in the EGU Journal Advances in Geosciences.
“In Australasia, gender is still on the agenda in geosciences” provides a compilation of publicly available information on gender in academic institutions in Australasia and success in Australian (Australian Research Council, ARC) and New Zealand (Royal Society of NZ, Marsden Fund) funding schemes.
It also presented available information on gender balance in professional society membership (Geological Society of Australia, GSA, and Australian Institute of Geoscientists, AIG), committee structure (GSA) and award recipients (GSA and the Geoscience Society of New Zealand, GSNZ).
The Women in Earth and Environmental Sciences Australasia (WOMEESA) network was used as a case study to explore the value and role of women-focused networks in driving and supporting gender equity in geoscience.
The study also recommends additional steps forward towards achieving gender equity in geosciences.
We recently took a look at the metrics available to see the paper’s reach and impact.
To date, there have been 1,563 cumulative online article views and pdf downloads with 41% of views from the USA, 29% of views from Australia, followed by France, Germany and then New Zealand. The paper has been cited in three other publications so far. It’s great to see so much interest in this research outside of Australasia and if you haven’t already taken a look then please check it out here.
Online Seminar Series
On the first Wednesday of 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. All are welcome even 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 May seminar was presented by Dr Lorna Strachan about her career journey and being an invisible woman in geoscience. The question time and twitter conversations showed that her experiences are not unique and that many other women in geoscience have experienced harassment and discrimination. Counter to what is often purported, the days of bias against women in science are clearly not behind us. We need to keep this conversation going to make real change.
Don’t miss the next WOMEESA Seminar:
Wednesday 2 June 2021, 2pm AEST (Canberra, Syd, Mel, Bris time)
Dr. Rachelle Kernen, The University of Adelaide
Twitter: @salt_sed_belle
“Creating and Promoting Gender Equity and Diversity in Professional Geological Societies”
Wednesday 7 July 2021, 2pm AEST (Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne time)
Dr. Teagan Blaikie, CSIRO
“Aeromagnetic interpretation of the Tanami Region and northwest Aileron Province”
Wednesday 4 August, 2pm AEST (Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne time)
Dr. Jacqueline Halpin, University of Tasmania
Shut Up And Write #SUAW
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 25 June, 12 pm (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane time) the zoom link will be emailed out to members.
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
Marissa Betts received the Voisey Medal and Heather Handley was presented with the GSA Beryl Nashar Medal at a NSW GSA event on 13 May.
Huge congratulations to Marina Costelloe on her recent promotion to Mineral Systems Branch Head at Geoscience Australia
Sara Morón was announced as a 2021-2022 Fullbright Fellow and will be decoding the dynamic evolution of the Mississippi River! Congrats!
Some fantastic news that Hannah Power has joined the Editorial Board of @theAGU's #JGROceans.
Meghan Miller was co-author on a great synthesis of the current challenges facing geoscience in Australia and offering some insightful solutions. Read about it here.
Women in Mining Alliance
Image source: Aamlorievi, CC BY-SA 4.0
The inaugural Global Women in Mining Summit was held at the start of March. Over two days 225 representatives from more than 70 WIM organisations took part in presentations and workshops aimed at collaborating on a global WIM agenda.
The summit also saw the launch of the International WIM Alliance, which aims to combine strength of the WIM organisations worldwide to enact real and lasting change in gender equity, working conditions and opportunities for women in the mining industry.
new sTEM equity report highlights the gender divide in STem persists
The STEM equity monitor is a national report on girl’s and women’s participation in STEM. The second edition was just released and there are some improvements since 2015, but generally it shows that substantial inequities persist.
These inequities start early, with teachers and parents of primary school children reporting that they feel that girls are less confident in STEM subjects that boys. Nevertheless, the report shows that the proportion of women entering STEM university degrees is up 2% from 2015 numbers, to 36%. Women graduating from these degrees now also get paid roughly the same amount as their male peers, which is also great news. However, women in VET courses and postgraduate degrees continue to earn less than their male counterparts after graduation.
In academia, the success rate on ARC grants is the same for men and women, but only 23% of chief investigators on applications were women. This is due in part to the low proportion of women in STEM research, which the report finds is currently at 28%. The report also finds that 10% of women and 5% of men took a career break for the arrival of a child, and afterwards women went on to earn less than the men who took a break.
For all the facts and figures, you can read the report here. Want to know what you can do to accelerate change? Last year WOMEESA published an article on gender equity in geoscience that identified some of the barriers to retaining women and what can be done to improve gender equity.
boys and their toys: lack of diversity leads to failures in australian water management
Image source: Lasthib, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Dr Anna Kosovac recently wrote an article for the Conversation about how huge failures in Australian water management may have been averted if a more considered, less ‘masculine’ approach was taken to big infrastructure decisions.
It is an important article that highlights the consequences of a lack of diversity. You can read it here. Failures in water management are long standing in Australia, where Indigenous Land Owners are rarely consulted about decisions that affect their communities, as highlighted in this article by Professor Sue Jackson and colleagues earlier in the year.
new article on racial diversity in geoscience
Figure source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00737-w
Dr Natasha Dowey and a team of UK geoscientists recently published a compelling article in Nature Geoscience about tackling the racial diversity crisis in geoscience.
By looking around your own department, you may already have the sense that the Earth and Environmental sciences have the worst racial diversity in the physical sciences, but the actual statistics are pretty shocking (see figure insert).
The article describes the barriers facing students from under-represented minorities and practical steps we can take to improve diversity. Although the article has a UK/northern hemisphere focus almost all of the advice can be applied to our setting. It would be great to see an article on racial diversity in Australasian geoscience, but at the moment the data doesn’t exist.
WOMEN’S AGENDA podcast
Have you subscribed to the Women’s Agenda newsletter yet? It’s a daily email that talks about what’s happening in Australia right now that affects women’s lives and work. It is written and run by a team of women journalists and it is excellent.
They have two podcasts that delve into key issues in more detail. The first is the Women’s Agenda Podcast, where a couple of the journos chat about the big news stories. It’s kind of like the ABC TV show Insiders, but 100% about issues that affect Aussie women.
Their other podcast is Leadership Lessons, where Kate Mills from the Women’s Agenda talks to brilliant women leaders, sharing their perspective on the critical decade ahead. We particularly loved the episode with former Elle editor Justine Cullen on career goals and parenting called ‘The game is rigged’ and the episode with Naby Maryam about her incredible pathway into, and then out of, academia, and what she knows now about creativity, burnout and the future of work.
seminar on statistics in earth science data
I think it is fair to say that a passion for statistics is not what drives most Earth Scientists. However, in a science that is often qualitative and descriptive, there is incredible power in being able to say a geological phenomena is definitely occurring and there’s no way its caused by chance or creative data interpretation.
Dr Janice Scealy has devoted her career to applying statistics to Earth Science data, and she has lots of important messages for the paleomag and geochemistry communities in particular. She goes into her work in this seminar, hosted by RSES at ANU (don’t let the thumbnail scare you :) ). To see more seminars from women in Earth and Environmental science, check out the WOMEESA list. Do you know of one that’s not included? Shoot an email to our seminar convener melanie.finch@monash.edu.
Women Advancing River Research
https://www.cee.psu.edu/events/women-advancing-river-research.aspx
Opportunities
The Queensland Geological Survey are looking for a Principal Geoscientist. Find out more here. Closing date 7th June 2021.
James Cook University are seeking women applicants for the role of Lecturer, Geoscience to join the College of Science and Engineering on a full time and continuing basis (Academic Level B). See more here: Lecturer (Geoscience)
Nominations are open for the ASEG Awards and Honours and close on the 23 July 2021. We encourage you to nominate a WOMEESA and you can find more details here.
Applications for the CSIRO Mineral Resources Discovery Internship Program have opened for university students (3rd year undergraduate or postgraduate level). The program goes for three months and there are a range of exciting projects available. Find out more here.
Fulbright Postdoctoral fellowships, Fulbright Australia (06 July)
Regular and junior fellowships (Germany), Hanse-Wissenshaftskolleg (15 July)
The Phillip Law Postdoctoral Award for Physical Sciences, The Royal Society of Victoria (30 July)
E.S. Hills Medal, Geological Society of Australia (31 July)
Garry Davidson Award, Geological Society of Australia (31 July)
Early Career Researcher Grant, Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (31 July)
Other job opportunities: Research Scientist Hydrologist, Research Consultant Water Quality, Research Associate in Marine Heatwaves, Postdoctoral Fellow (Climate and Agricultural Systems), Environmental Scientist or Engineer, Environmental Scientist
AGU: Contribute to our #AGURocks, #DrawnToGeoscience or #RhymeYourResearch blog series
Do you perform music, create art or write poetry about science? Do you want to show off your talent while also pulling back the curtain to show your creative process? Then contribute to one (or all) of our #SciArt blog series! Learn more about the different series and submit your post today!
AGU: Submit your Postcards from the Field
Are you performing fieldwork this summer? Show us your field site! Submit to our Postcards from the Field blog roll on Tumblr and let us know what being in the field is like for you.
Have an opportunity you’d like to share then let us know!
Upcoming Events
The WOMEESA shut up and write June session
The next #SUAW is Friday 25 June at 12 pm AEST (Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne time), check your email for the zoom login details.
WOMEESA virtual seminar series
The June seminar in our monthly series will be by Dr. Rachelle Kernen from the University of Adelaide on June 2 at 2 pm (AEST, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney time). To find out more and register to attend head over to our website. WOMEESA seminars are on the first Wednesday of every month at 2 pm (Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney time). If you want to catch up on past WOMEESA seminars you can check them out on our YouTube channel.
WOMEESA local face-to-face bimonthly catch-ups
With the increased restrictions in May we postponed re-starting local bimonthly informal catch-ups until June. They are a great opportunity to connect with WOMEESA members in your local area.
The NSW meetup will at 7.00 pm on Wednesday 23 June. Registration details and venue (Sydney CBD) will be coming via email shortly. Email heather.handley@mq.edu.au for additional info.
The South Australian meetup will be held in Adelaide at 12.30 pm Wednesday 23 June Registration details and venue info will be coming via email shortly.
The Victorian meetup event will be at 12 pm on Tuesday 22 June at Long Street Coffee in Richmond. Please register here so we can book a table and contact Melanie.Finch@monash.edu if you have any questions or suggestions for meetup locations for future events.
Dorothy Hill Women in Earth Science Symposium 2021
Save the date: 3rd Dorothy Hill Women in Earth Science Symposium, 15-17th November 2021 starting with an ice-breaker on the late afternoon/evening of the 15th and then two full days of action packed in-person meeting. Find out more here.