36 Scientific American, April 2022 Photograph by Annie Marie Musselmanmentation of the tenets of affirmative action—
including, most radically, Urry says, that hiring
shortlists should include at least one woman.
But the biggest impact of that first conference,
Urry says, “was being in a room with 200 women
astronomers. Before that you’d meet three
women in the ladies’ room, so this was a huge and shocking thing.”
Demographic surveys of Urry’s world—women who got their
Ph.D.s roughly between 1985 and 2010—show that in the 1990s
women were just under 15 percent of the astronomy postdocs and
assistant and associate professors and around 5 percent of the
full professors. Given their low numbers, women in this environ-
ment still thought it best to blend in with the established culture.
“In Meg’s world,” says Nicolle Zellner, Ph.D. 2001, co-chair of the
AAS’s Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy and a
full professor at Albion College in Michigan, “women worked hard,
fit in and hoped to be rewarded.”
Over time the number of women slowly went up to almost
enough. In 1999 women were about 16 percent of the assistant
and associate professors of astronomy; in 2013 they were around
22 percent. In 1999 women were 7 percent of the full professors;
in 2013 they were 14 percent. These changes in numbers, Urry
says, drove changes in policy and practice.
Institutions and professional societies increasingly adopted the
Baltimore Charter’s ideas, including offering affordable child care
and parental leave, adapting tenure deadlines to family circum-
stances and publishing codes of conduct. Prizes began to allow self-
nomination, avoiding some of the bias of the nomination process.
Eventually women’s increased numbers and
reduced restrictions created widespread con-
ditions for what I think of as sparkle. Sparkle
is a fireworkslike quality, noticeable in talks
and conversations, that in earlier generations
of astronomers was most obvious in young
men: visible brilliance, intensity, easy confidence and a springy
joy. Quantifying sparkle is tricky. Most of its metrics—time on
telescopes, named invited talks, citations for papers, leadership
of teams—are hard to define and count precisely. But some exam-
ples illustrate the point. See, for instance, the fraction of prizes
given to women by either the Kavli Foundation or the AAS for
general scientific contributions: from 2001 to 2005 it was 4 per-
cent; 2006 to 2010, 12 percent; 2011 to 2015, 23 percent; 2016 to
2021, 30 percent. Or the fraction of panel seats granted to women
for the NAS’s decadal surveys to decide the future course of
astronomy: 1990, 8 percent; 2000, 15 percent; 2010, 27 percent;
2020, 43 percent. Or look at prestigious postdoctoral fellowships
that award research money to be taken to whatever institution
one chooses, including the Chandra, Sagan, Einstein and Hub-
ble postdoctoral fellowships. From 1996 to 2010, between 24 and
28 percent went to women; 2011 to 2015, 31 percent; 2016 to 2021,
45 percent. In 2021, of the now merged Sagan Einstein Hubble
fellowships, awarded by nasa, women won 58 percent.
Notably, somewhere around 2015 the lines charting all three
metrics took a fast turn to the northeast. Moreover, women in
this post-2015 subcohort are visibly “badasses,” says Jessica Werk,
Ph.D. 2010, a Hubble fellow and associate professor at the Uni-UNIVERSITY OF
WASHINGTON’S astronomy
department includes ( from left )
Jessica Werk, Emily Levesque
and Sarah Tuttle.