EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN
-----------------
John Pazmino
NYSkies Astronomy Inc
www.nyskies.org
nyskies@nyskies.org
2014 January 20 initial
2016 July 31 current
Introduction
----------
Among the shameful realms of science history is the treatment of
females, and other declared subclasses, in the profession. Much
occurred in an academic setting, at universities and laboratories. A
small fraction of the women eventually became heros, touted as some
supergirl in the associated science. There are many obvious examples,
earning chapters or segments in present science history.
Behind these supergirls are legions of other women, who also made
substantial improvements to humanity thru their work. but did not
obtain proper status and recognition. These women commonly suffered
discrimination, neglect, rejection, Today most are still lost from
mainstream science history.
On and off since the spark of the women's movement of the 1960s
there were efforts to highlight the role, or lack of one, in various
professions. For sure immense progress was made, like in the
government workforce and business careers. Much advance was achieved in
the maths and sciences, too. There are now organized and influential
groups dedicated to bettering the status of females in society.
Some of this effort dissipated under resistance from the ambient
male-dominated world. Others failed from business or financial causes.
Others, believe or not, went by the boards for want of support from
empowered women. Others stuck it out and still agitate for awareness
and equality of women.
There is a more to do. In the United States the melding of women
into the sciences and maths, or more generally the STEM disciplines,
is largely propelled by government regulation. These come from all
levels, from the national down to the local.
Shows, conferences, exhibits are commonly run nowayears to bolster
women's confidence in entering and staying in various professions. On
September 26 of 2013 was such a meeting 'Inspiring women in STEM', or
similar title. Ir convened at the City University Graduate Center.
Grolier Club
----------
Grolier Club is at 47 East 60th Street, Manhattan. The 60th St
subway line runs in front of it, producing subtile vibrations in the
building. It was established in about 1885 and named for a 1500s
typographer Jean Grolier. He was a printer and publisher who also
collected specimina of typographic works of his trade.
Grolier Club is one place which scientists do not think of looking
for science activity. It promotes the art and craft of books and
printed material. The exhibit does have incredible paper artifacts,
some never before on public display!
Grolier's web is 'www.grolierclub.org', with details on its public
offerings. There was with 'Extraordinary women' an other exhibit on
the second floor, where the break and reception were held.
Exhibit
-----
On 18 September 2013 the Grolier Club opened a flagship exhibit
'Extraordinary women in science and mathematics'. It showed 32 women,
from the early 17th thru the late 20th centuries, who while doing
world-shifting work, were stifled by prevailing sexist society.
Dr Ronald Smeltzer was the chief curator, with other curators for
specific bays of the displays. Many of the displayed items come from
his personal collection. The rest were loaned to Grolier by libraries,
universities, historians.
The very bays in the exhibit show almost wholly the achievements
with little for illustrating the struggles and hardships of the women.
The latter are described in a handsome book discussing all of the
women with more biographical details. It's at sale at the lobby desk
of Grolier Club for $37.82. This includes the sales tax.
The show was free of charge during open hours of the Club. These
were generally 10AM-5PM Monday-Saturday. The Club is closed for
certain holidays. The exhibit ended on November 23 with ardent hopes of
preserving it thru modern media, such as DVDs.
Some of my colleagues noted that the exhibit by itself with no
interpretation was hard to understand and that the book doesn't really
cover the displays. The two, exhibit and book, work as a unit to
portray the honored women. One alone can not give the full story.
Facilities
--------
The exhibit was on the ground floor of the Club, straight ahead
from the street. The room is a church-like hall with three-story high
ceiling with balconies on the long sides. The displays are in wall bays
on the long sides, plus a couple table cases.
The floor was bare of covering, exposing for an rug in the center
covering its parquet pattern. On the central rug, where visitors left
coats and bags, was a long table with a few padded chairs. For
presentations, like the symposium and Curie movie, the table was
removed and chairs were set out in theater pattern facing the rear
short wall. The podium and screen were placed there.
Lighting was a bit dim, as expected in a temple for knowledge and
learning, yet entirely adequate for general mobility. The polished
stone floor in the lobby sometimes threw off confusing reflections.
Even then it was a matter of pausing for a second to sort them out.
The exhibit bays were top lighted. Their illumination was smooth
and even with no deep shadows on the displayed items. Captions were in
crisp easy-to-read lettering. Grolier IS an outfit for books and
printing.
I found it very handy to have a weak reading glass, of +1 to +2
diopter, to make out details in the pieces and to read text on them. I
got a cheap spectacles of +1.5 diopter. it really makes reading a lot
less trying.
Restrooms were on the lower floor via a reflex stairs. They were
of modern design with some ADA fixtures. An elevator works all floors
of the building, including several nonpublic higher ones.
At the symposium a coffee break and post-show reception were served
on the second floor in a much smaller gallery. The food and drink were
so filling that the NYSkies astrosocial for the symposium skipped the
own optional supper.
All crew of Grolier was utterly polite, cordial, welcoming,
helpful. This caliber of service prevailed from the simpler clerks to
the managers and scholarly team.
I noticed one potential source of trouble. The entry steps were
bare stone with no safety stripes. Two small signs on the entry doors
warns that they can be slippery when wet.
The one and only sluggish action was the purchase of the exhibit
book. The computer to record the purchase seemed way too clumsy and
slow. I hazard this is a network or software situation?
Collateral events
---------------
There were several walk-alongs of the exhibit by its curators.
These were at first only in October. On October 30th Grolier posted
two additional tours for November 13th and 20th. All tours were on
Wednesdays at 1PM. I attended three tours and found them essential for
a cohaerent sense of the exhibit.
There were a few members-only events, like on November 6th for a
movie about Marie Curie, one of the women in the exhibit. I was
favored with an invite for this event, which was an excellent
depiction her life and work to discover radium. The audience munched
popcorn and sipped wine.
Symposium
-------
Grolier Club held a symposium in conjunction with the exhibit on
October 26. It featured four speakers discussing the status of women,
mainly in the academic theater. They were:
* Dr Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, historian and author
* Dava Sobel, historian and author
* Dr Paola Bertucci, Yale School of Medicine
* Dr Sandra Masur, Ichan School of Medicine
The presentations were verbal with no visuals except for Sobel's.
She displayed slides of women astronomers at Harvard College
Observatory, plus many illustrations of astronomy topics.
The symposium was in the exhibit room on the ground floor. chairs
were set out in theater pattern, to hold quite 100 audience. The
speakers were at the rear end of the room where a lecture stand was placed.
The projection screen was on the left-rear corner of the room.
After the individual presentations, the four speakers sat in panel
for Q&A. After that, we all went to the 2nd floor for the reception.
I do not try to capture each speaker's talk here. I compiled the
assorted features of the exhibit, the symposium, and external dialog
dealing with women in the STEM fields.
Audience
------
A fat one hundred audience turned out for the symposium, with
extra chairs stuffed into corners for the last several arrivals. About
3/4 of the delegates were women, mostly elders. All were dressed in
collegiate or smart street garb. The men wore business suits except
for one who looked like he came from his dockyard job.
Every attendee was thoroly professional in demeanor and
manner. They spoke erudita mente about many fields of science
academics, world issues. A few chatted together in French.
Almost every one was a scholar currently at a university, retired
from one, working part time or independently. Many endured indignities
for being female. Some know or worked with the 20th century women in the
exhibit! They offered fascinating anecdotes about them.
While most of the banter and chat was about females in STEM. with
copious examples offered from the many schools represented, there was
some 'shop talk'. This was almost entirely in the medical and
biotechnic fields, which I have little experience in.
Legal sexism
----------
A prime vehicle for discriminating against women in former ages
was to invoke s legal barrier. This is an antifeminist rule, law,
policy that put females in a lower status than males. The citation
often banked off of a reference to an external regulation, with claim
that it can't be violated.
An example is a college charter stating that only one female may
be admitted for every five males. The second female before filling out
five males is turned away. An other is that a female must have a male
superintendent for certain laboratory work. The rule is in the lab's
manual of practice and procedure.
These legal constraints paralleled those in the ambient society,
like restricting certain occupations from women. In many cases there
was no formal law but an in-house policy founded on the general
climate about female employment.
The bulk of the legal sexisms were abolished with the federal
legislation of the 1970s, such as Equal Employment Opportunity acts.
These banned many forms of discrimination, annulling local and state
laws, for facilities receiving federal funding.
Denial of access
--------------
Traditionally female students weren't expected to do science, altho
maths, They were not advised of or were discouraged from these
classes. These were reserved for the male students.
In a traditional secondary school the boys were assigned to
various shop class, for woodworking, metalworking, electricity. They
were given chances to take chemistry, physics, calculus, trigonometry,
earth science. They got permission to sit lectures at other science
and maths places, such as colleges and musea.
The girls were funneled into homemaking, typing, stenography,
bookkeeping, fashion, decoration. Girls wanting an electricity class
were told it wasn't meant for them. The course was too hard and it
didn't look good on their diploma.
The result is that female students were unprepared fir careers in
the technical fields and were unable to qualify for most college
admissions. Sometimes, depending on the school jurisdiction, girls
could get a lower valued diploma than boys, which further
disenfranchised them in later life.
In collegiate education the debasement of women continued. They
were expected to take soft majors: music, art, area studies, theater,
psychology. They could enroll in certain technical classes such as
geology and astronomy[!]. In older eras these were mostly descriptive
and simple subjects, mainly memorizing a bunch of facts and figures
with little 'science' in them and just about no maths.
Unequal facilities
----------------
After acquiring a career with a college, women were often given
second-class service and facilities. They were assigned to the cruder
offices, older equipment, low-rank crew, limited hours, scanty
supplies.
A women missed out on assorted perks, like a close-in parking
slip, discount theater ticket offers, invites to certain staff social
events, closet or storage for work materials.
. Many schools were once al-male colleges with features and fixtures
only for men. When they went co-ed, accommodations for women were slow
to appear. There would be no specific female restrooms. A women had to
ask a male partner to mind her in a men's room booth.
Structural sexism
---------------
This was, and still is!, a hidden form of sexism. This is the
construction or furnishing of a facility that ignores the use or
occupancy by women. It is usually the result of simply not considering
that women will avail of the facility, it being intended only for men.
An example is a college lecture hall with steeply raked seats. It
was built in an era when only men attended this school. Now the hall
is used by both genders because the college converted to coed. Women
in skirts or dresses who sit in the upper seats gave audience in the
lower seats a distracting show.
One other example is a set of shared bicycles to save time going
about in a large school campus. The bike is a male model, with the bar
joining the saddle support to the handlebar bearing. The rider mounts
it like a horse. A women in dress or skirt tangles yp around the bike
saddle, possibly toppling over. Or she gives the campus a peep show.
And one more is a campus walkway passing over a basement machine
room. The walkway has an open-grill deck to vent heat and air from the
machines. Women in dress or skirt must clutch the garment tightly as
they walk over this section. Else they turn into 'blown umbrellas'.
In these situations there was no deliberate intent or thought to
exclude women. It was a matter of having no women to consider when the
structure was built. When women came along they found the facility
could not accommodate them.
Compensation
----------
Women were paid less, often by rule or formula, for the same work
as a man. Often in the place of actually hiring a women, she was
offered an unpaid assistant's job. She did the full work as an
employee, as far as the school allowed a lady to do, but was not on
the payroll. She may be only reimbursed by a clumsy procedure for
certain expenses and supplies.
COmpensation often includes perks, like full membership in the
faculty club and a spot in the faculty parking lot. Women had only a
limited membership with fewer privileges, such as exclusion from
entering certain rooms in the faculty clubhouse or from renting space
in it for her own gatherings.
Lack of proper enrollment on the books also robbed the woman of
later benefits. These include Social Security, pension. health and
life insurance.
Nepotism
------
A collateral form of discrimination came from nepotism. In this
system, it was forbidden to have several family members employed at
the dame workplace. The intent was to prevent tangling work and home
affairs, speciallu verticly in the corporate ladder.
Since the first employee at a workplace, like a college, was
invariably a man, this excluded the prospect of female family from
getting jobs at the same place. Daughters, wifes, nieces, all were
barred from working so long as the prime male was on the books.
Male family was also barred but in all too many cases there were
ways to get around the rules, as by referring the newcomer to an other
college needing new crew. Such professional courtesy was overlooked
for the new woman applicant.
Nepotism, or antinepotism, laws were instituted when scandals
broke out about family members getting favored treatment in a company.
They got promotions or better assignments, were weakly penalized
for violations, exploited company property, and resources.
The motive was to keep family interaction out of business with no
positive idea to shut out women.
Most antinepotism policy was abrogated when civil and human rights
laws were enacted. Today it is illegal to inquire of a new job
applicant about her (or his) home life.
Gender schemers
-------------
After the equal employment opportunity laws went into effect, and
after state and local laws followed the federal lead, genderism waned
on the formal platform. It continued on the personal level or in cells
within the roof facility.
An individual official, from his upbringing, heritage, personal
experience, tries to set aside females. He does this by tweaking the
rules against women while staying on the compliance side of them..
He may, for example, issue a lower evaluation to a woman because
her work wasn't quite up to standard. He pretneds to randomly draw a
name for a single new promotion and the man's name came up. He doesn't
submit a woman's grant application, saying it went missing.
One speaker at the symposium, forget which, cited a female
professor who received passable ratings but not up to her work
performance. She left that job went thru transgenderation, and took a
new job as a man. altho her work was quite the same level as before,
he got better evaluations.
Domestics
------
In spite of the rising trend for women to aspire to and acquire
careers in formerly all-male fields, they are still treated as
homemakers in a household. At home she usually must do the housework,
care for children, cater to the men, as if she now has two distinct
and competing careers.
Time, travel, expenses associated with homelife press against the
professional obligations. The woman may have to leave work on time to
do supper for the male household, retrieve children from school or
pre-K, go shopping before stores close.
An other issue is that when a woman defers family planning to
enter a profession, there is often a day when she feels the lack of
her own offspring. If she begins her own family, she takes on, maybe
without fully realizing it, that the new second career with all of its
conflicts against the primary one.
Teamwork
------
Most 'big science' is done in teams of several principals. This is
all the more so nowayears due to the need for scarce or expensive
resources, which must be shared among far too many applicants. Unless
a woman is on a team, and on it as an equal with the men, she may miss
out on references, recognition, honors.
A person in a team gets noticed far more often than a solo
principal simply because each citation of the team includes her, even
if the citation didn't purposely notice her.
Other factors
-----------
The breaks, reception, and followup correspondence educed several
other factors that inhibit female integration into a male society.
Here I note only one, one that I personally see in astronomy. In the
young years, women, and men, start to travel about by themselfs to
places of interest away from home and school. Until then they travel
by conveyances handled by adults, like the school bus or family car.
In the larger towns they can go about on the transport network,
using allowance or earned money for carfare. It is a fact of life that
in just about all of America, except in the very most evolved and
progressive towns, there is no functional transport system. If you can
not handle a car by age, medical cause, physical defect, poverty, your
life is horribly constrained. While this situation prevails for the
whole population, it seems to be specially severe for young women.
If the household does not favor self-motivation for its female
members, it can show up in denial or delay in providing transport. The
boys routinely get rides to their places of interest, like clubs and
sports. The females too often are left out because giving them the
ride violates the antifeminist mindset. Women are effectively isolated
from opportunities to prosper and nourish their interests.
Where there is a strong transport system young women can navigate
on their own. Women in such towns do advance on the equal level as
men. If you, regardless of gender, are old enough to reach the token
slot on the turnstile, you're off to explore the world.
The lack of mobility to explore STEM, and other interests, at an
early age, puts the women years behind men in preparation for later
attempts. They may lack the extra-credit activities in their college
admission that men can routinely cite.
EEO laws
------
One of the benefits of the Johnson presidency, setting aside other
aspects of it for now, is the stack of civil and human rights laws it
put into force. Later presidents, to a 'man', continued this trend to
either expand the existing laws or enact new ones.
The legislation is recta mentea a derivative from the civil rights
movement and other social upheavals of the 1960s. These included the
agitation for acceptance and recognition of women.
Collectively they are commonly called 'equal employment
opportunity' laws, partly because employers receiving any federal
funding had to prominently pot in job notices the phrase 'an equal
opportunity employer'. As the initial laws were elaborated and new
ones went into force, the scope of equal employment spread to many
other phases of the workplace.
Today the US Equal Employment Opportunity office handles generally
all forms of workplace discrimination and unfair treatment. It doesn't
cover for itself all forms, but it is a good first stop to file a
complaint. What it can't handle, because the relevant law assigns
jurisdiction else where, the EEO office will pass the complaint to
that other agency.
States and local governments commonly supplemented the federal
regulations for facilities in their jurisdiction, regardless of
federal funding. At first this may seem to be a good feature of
present American society but it can lead to confusion. It is almost
necessary for the workplace to maintain an EEO unit, perhaps in the
human resources department, to field employee complaints and handle
them under the appropriate regulations.
Some workplaces, like colleges, tried to evade EEO requirements by
giving up their federal money. This was not at all easy because these
colleges growed used to the largess over the years and did not plan
for any shutoff.
As a matter of fact, the federal closure of October 2013 kicked
the shins out of many colleges duly expecting funding to start in the
new fiscal year. When none ws forthcoming due to the closure, many
anticipated programs were cancelled.
In my own office my crew must sit and pass a annual class in equal
rights and prevention of sexual harassment. Part of the lesson is
knowing about the deck of laws, both federal and specific within an
agency, that govern genderist behavior. Failure to sit and pass this
class is noted for the next performance evaluation.
Affirmative action
----- ---------
A second tier of regulations, federal and lower, to promote women
in STEM are the Affirmative Action laws. These push to give redress to
past inequities and achieve a more balanced mix of men and women in
these fields. The rules apply to other careers, too. Some employers
note that they observe affirmative action in their publicity..
Unlike EEO laws, AA laws call for positive steps to remove the
depressed representation of women. EEO for the most part puts a stop
to this suppression, but don't require making up for it.
The specific actions required are often negotiated by the employer
and the administer of the applicable AA regulation. The college puts
up a plan of action, like more purposefully recruiting at female
schools or modifying campus facilities to adapt them for women's
needs. The plan has the force of a contract in some jurisdictions.
The AA plan usually has meterstones by which progress can be
assessed by the administer. These are stipulated in the plan in a way
that can be monitored by submitted reports, inspection of records,
campus visits, surveys of the workforce. Falling short of the plan's
meterstones can result, depending on the instant situation, a more
diligent exertion on affirmative action, administrative penalties, or
judicial remediation.
Affirmative action has been a contention among both women and men
because some see it as an interference with the due process of
academic career management. The news media are filled with allegations
of misapplication, moving along unqualified persons, withholding
opportunity from others outside the plan, cooking the books, and other
shady deeds. In some cases, a court was called in to review the AA
plan, with some finding it too onerous or severe.
The extraordinary women
---------------------
I do not try to summarize the displays for all thirty-two women
in the exhibit. The exhibit book does that. I do sketch out the work
of a few women to get you going with your own explorations into women
in STEM. .
Cunitia
-----
One of the 17th century women was Maria Cunitia, also Marie
Cunitz, as the exhibit carried here. She was a mathematician who
worked with Iohannis Hevelius in the mid 1600s. I knew of her as an
assistant to Hevelius, thinking she lived in or near his observatory
in Poland. She did a lot of the computations associated with the star
catalog Hevelius built.
From the exhibit I learned much more, yet we really have scanty
hard information about her. She corresponded with Hevelius, doing
'telework' for him. She and her family suffered wars and fires that
destroyed her papers and property.
The major surviving work is her book 'Astronomia Propitia' or
'Favorable astronomy'. It was on display and is available as scanned
pages thru Internet. It looks very complicated but it's mostly tables
of numbers for trigonometry, coordinate conversions, and Kepler theory
of planets.
The curator was unsure about a question I asked. Altho Hevelius
used telescopes for studying the planets, He used bare-eye sightings
for astrometry in his star catalog. It made sense in the mid 1600s to
do this because telescopes were so awkward and clumsy and so crude in
optical quality. Any position measurements made thru them would be
worthless. I believe, hardly certainly, that Cunitia advised Hevelius
not to try astrometry thru telescopes but to stay with doing it by eye
alone. Can any reader help with this conjecture?
duChatelet
---------
Emilie duChatelet was a physicist in the early 1700s with, among
other things did the first translation of Newton's 'Principia' from
Latin into French. She also explained the maths in it as a companion
volume. The pair of books brang France into the mainstream of Newton
gravity theory, prompting other mathematicians to develop new
applications and interpretations.
She also conducted experiments with combustion and fire, as part
of an essay contest for the French Academy of Science. She found that
radiant heat and light from flames shared many properties and
behaviors. This suggested that light and heat could have a common
nature, a fact ultimately confirmed in the mid 1800s.
She was also the first to clarify the interaction between gravity
energy, kinetic energy, and momentum, parameters only loosely handled
in science in her time. They are crucial for a sound practice of
modern astrodynamics. Yet even today most people have no understanding
of 'energy' and 'momentum' as seen in descriptions of vehicle
collisions and sports plays.
Franklin
------
Rosalind Franklin studied DNA via X-ray diffraction and found
there was a peculiar shape to the molecule unlike ay other biological
molecule. Her apparatus and analysis didn't quite resolve the
structure.
She insisted that a proper solution to the DNA had to come from
rigorous interpretation of data. Crick & Watson were doing similar
work by building models of the DNA. They checked the model against the
behavior of DNA.
At the 50th anniversary celebration in 2005 of their breaking of
the DNA code one of their original models was displayed at SIBL to
promote a series of lectures there. It standed next to the reflex
stairs leading to the lower gallery floor.
Franklin changed careers and left her material in her lab,
including an X-ray image of DNA. When Watson came to take over the
work he saw this picture and realized it showed why their models
didn't quite fit. he and Crick did up the double helix structure based
on Franklin's picture.
Harvard women
-----------
At the symposium Dava Sobel gave a tight and thoro history of
stellar astrophysics based on the women at Harvard College
Observatory. She ended with Payne-Gaposchkin, who is in the exhibit.
The use of women at observatories was common in the late 19th and
early 20th century as 'computers' and data collectors. They worked in
teams to inspect photographic plates, measure position and brightness
from them. The data was then handed to the men to build their theories
and discoveries.
They also did the computations, like for eclipses and dynamics of
star clusters. FOr critical work two or three teams did the same
problem and were cross checked every so often. f there was a
discrepancy among them the work stopped and the error was rooted out
and corrected.
. Harvard College Observatory was part of Harvard University,
Cambridge MA, but operated independently. By this good fortune women
there were better treated than in the main college, thanks to the
good graces of the observatory directors.
While the women were not severely mistreated or exploited, they
were paid only a small salary or stipend for expenses and had little
role in managing the facility.
I call Sobel's presentation the 'AAVSO talk'. At every annual
meeting of the American Association of Variable Star Observers you can
count on at least one talk about the Harvard women. AAVSO for many
decades was homed at the observatory. It maintains today a close
cooperation with it and the spinoff Center for Astrophysics.
AAVSO keeps a deep history of variable star astronomy, so much of
it pioneered by the Harvard women, at its headquarters about a
kilometer from the observatory.
Sobel introduced the audience to many concepts of astronomy, some
of which I explained during the break and reception. This task was
made easier since so many audience were active in the sciences. I
could build on their background to untangle the astronomy.
Meitner
-----
Lise Meitner worked with Otto Hahn, a male chemist, in Germany.
She for herself earned a professor career and her own lab facilities.
She studied the decay of elements into other elements and also
artificially induced such disintegrations with neutron bombardment.
Germany turned hostile to her, along with thousands of other
scientists, forcing her to flee and settle in the United States. She
and Hahn eventually discovered that the new elements came from the
actual splitting of atoms when they disintegrated. She coined the word
'fission'. The date of her publication with this term is often taken
as the zeropoint of the nuclear age.
The Nobel Prize went only to Hahn with no mention of Meitner. A
magazine article, in the display, about nuclear science erroneously
stated that Meitmer worked under Hahn, not an equal partner with him.
Eventually both Hahn and Meitner were honored by naming newly
created elements after them, hahnium and meitnerium.
Payne-Gaposchkin
-------------
Ceclilia Payne-Gaposchkin worked at Harvard College Observatory in
the early 1900s. She was among the last of the 'Harvard women' and the
first female to earn a full PhD from the university.
Her great work was proving the chemical and physical makeup of
stars. By spectrometry since the late 19th century the stars were
known to have most of the chemical elements found on Earth. We just
assumed the mix of elements was comparable to Earth's.
The means of generating the light and heat from a star was utterly
unknown and no ordinary, and extraordinary, method worked. If a star
was a burning ball like coal, it would have consumed itself in a few
thousand years.
Payne-Gaposchkin applied the emerging quantum physics, until then
passed over by mainstream astronomers, for new interpretation of
stellar spectra. The spectral structure indicated the presence of an
element. She discovered that it also gave the fraction or percent of
the elements,
She found that a star is made of 3/4 hydrogen by mass, 1/4 helium,
and only 1 or so percent of all of the other elements. This was not at
first accepted by male astronomers.
When eventually the composition was verified else where the road
was cleared to work out a plausible energy production process by
hydrogen fusion. The egredient helium weighed a bit less than the
ingredient hydrogen. The missing mass was emitted as radiant energy.
The amount of hydrogen conversion for the Sun, as example, was enough
to give the observed light and heat received at Earth.
Delicate particle logic
---------------------
Apart from the Grolier exhibit and events, activity relating to
the status of women in STEM takes place else where in New York. It is
a mainstream theme for art, conferences, lectures. One was on
September 26 at the CUNY Graduate Center sponsored by the Feminist
Press. It was an all-day conference 'Inspiring women in science'. I
missed it because at the same time in the Center I was attending the
Tristate Astronomy Conference. I picked up some litterature about the
women's meeting at the lobby desk.
An other women-in-STEM event was on 4 December 2013, also at the
CUNY Graduate Center. It, a play reading 'Delicate particle logic',
was in the series of science interpretations in the Science and the
Arts program. The instant one was the final show of the 2013 fall
season.
'Delicate particle logic' tied in tightly, by chance coincidence,
with the 'Extraordinary women' exhibit for its dramatizing of Lise
Meitner and Otto Hahn. Meitner was one of the honored women in the
exhibit who probably was passed over for the Nobel Prize in the favor
of Hahn.
The play paralleled the Meitner bay in the exhibit in that she was
wrongly treated as a subordinate under Hahn and a subclass of crew in
German laboratories. Near the end of the play Hahn justifies his sole
award of the Nobel Prize by citing news items about Meitner. I'm not
sure but one could have been from the magazine displayed in Meitner's
bay!
The Science and the Arts shows are acted out by Break-a-Leg
players, who do minimalist staging. The show has almost no props
except for a couple chairs and tables, no scenery, no apparatus, and
no costumes. The actors may keep one role thruout the play or swop
roles for occasional parts.
They hold the printed script of the play and read directly from
it. The overall effect is actually very good. Perhaps, for me, it
makes the audience pay closer attention to the narration without
distractions from elaborate stage effects.
Home astronomy
------------
Home astronomy is the sector of our profession practiced by
independent astronomers, outside the academic setting. In the 19th and
20th century they banded into clubs, with most larger American towns
having at least one. Being that traditionally astronomy was handled by
men, the clubs were almost entirely oriented toward men.
Women had the traditional lesser regard there as in the
surrounding society. A woman joining these clubs was often treated in
an adolescent manner, with contrived concern and care. T This was
reflected in the dialog and behavior at club functions
At first it may seem that the clubs are outside the civil rights
principles. They operated like private groups, which are commonly
exempt from laws applying to publicly promoted services and
activities.
In fact clubs of home astronomers can, often without recognizing
it, be embedded in federal, state, local regulations about human and
civil rights.
Clubs usually need a place to meet or stargaze. A prime place is a
public facility such as a park pavilion, museum, library, college,
planetarium. For sure these obtain part of their support from funding
wrapped in human and civil rights obligations. When availing of the
facility, the club insumes the obligations of that host. For legal
purposes the club can be treated as an extension of the host,
The host deliberately arranged for the club to use it like any
other contractor. In the same way that a contractor can not engage
in sexist behavior, the astronomy club can not carry out actions
against females.
The host can suffer miserable legal damage if the club's use of
its facility is informal with no executed agreement or, worse!, it is
the favor of an individual of the host acting on his own.
A peculiar situation applies to clubs which are unorganized, not
covered by a corporate or business charter in its home state. All
liability, lawsuits, penalties, jail time, falls on the individual
officers of the club! This is a little-appreciated fact for smaller
clubs, who mistakenly believe they are some how exempt from such
troubles.
An incorporated club has the same obligations as a giant company
licenced in the state. It has no alternative but to adhaere to the
raft of human and civil rights laws. If the incorporated club does
substantial business across state borders, like one close to a border
within a metropolitan area, various federal laws may also apply.
Clubs should straight off review their internal policies and
procedures to specificly remove genderism, and other antisocialisms.
It must publicize the correct rules to its membership, set up dispute
processes, and post meaningful penalties. While these measures will
not avoid a lawsuit, they can soften the court's punishment.
Grand exceptions
-------------
While the stereotypical American astronomy club is an male-
dominated group, there are marquee exceptions. In these exceptions
women members are equal to men and receive the same respect and regard
as men for the same level of service.
American Association of Variable Star Observers, noted under
'Payne-Gaposchkin' above, is homed in Cambridge MA, about a kilometer
from Harvard College Observatory. It nonce was homed at the Observatory
and most of its early crew came from there. Variable star study was
the domain of the women at Harvard, making for a female-oriented
membership. OF course, any one could join from any where, but the
management was dominated by women.
It still is today altho it has its own headquarters away from the
college. It still has a close cooperation with the newer Center for
Astrophysics at Harvard. And its annual meetings, in or near Cambridge,
are run by its own women and many from that Center.
The other major exception are some astronomy clubs around New York
City, Yes, there are male-oriented clubs there but they can not
control the female astronomer. She simply ups and allies with one of
the more progressive clubs across the road.
One example is NYSkies Astronomy Inc on Manhattan. It is immersed
in a climate of tolerance for all peoples and enjoys an high order of
demographic diversity. Females enter astronomy thru NYSkies 'off the
street' as an extension of their wiseliness about the City.
An other example is Amateur Observers Society on Long Island. The
Island is a crazy-quilt of social norms. Some 'cells' enjoy a thoroly
urbane and humane mindset. Others are frozen in mediaeval attitudes.
The cells are numerous and small enough to easily cross over to more
favorable ones. The club gets its females from the propitious cells.
Paperless future
--------------
This exhibit, and almost all other historical exhibitions, are
crucially dependent on the existence of hard evidence. Else there's
nothing to display! Until the 1960s it was a given that you had to
carefully document your work thru paper products: reports, worksheets,
notebooks, tabulations, graphs, photographs, and the like. These were
preserved at the host facility for its records and to defend against
challenges.
When an exhibit was planned, the host could lend it some of the
physical material. This was the case for 'Extraordinary women' where
libraries, universities, laboratories supplied items for display.
During the walk-alongs the curators expressed, and so did the
visitors, the dread that within a few decades there will be no more
permanent artifacts for future shows! Just about all science today,
even this here summary of the Grolier show!, is done in evanescent
electronic form.
Can you foresee a show where in the place of a lab worksheet we
display a microchip? The caption claims the datafile backing up the
person's work is in this chip. You can make printouts of select items,
but these will be on modern paper in modern ink, not a relic from the
time of the honored person.
In fact, in one bay, I forget which, the curator pointed out that
Grolier could not find a certain book desired for the exhibit. By good
luck a digital scan was done years ago into a PDF file. That was in
the display bay! It was so awfully out of time and place.
A corollary problem is that electronic media change on timescales
of decades or YEARS. Files stored in media more than 15 or so years
old may no longer have players to extract their contents! If you got
files on the older 130mm floppy discs, can you now find a disc drive
to play it? Most new computers do not have a floppy drive and external
USB external drives are hard to find. The same story applies to laser discs,
35mm photo transparencies, audio wire recordings, punch cards,
This is a severe problem for long-life operations. NASA has
warehouses full of tapes and cards and discs from the early years of
the space program. They were written and played on computers that are
simply no longer made or serviced. Just about all of the players were
junked, for replacements that can not handle the old media.
In my own case, my first home computer used audio cassette tapes
for file storage. The digital bytes were converted in the computer to
a screeching noise piped to a cassette deck attached by audio cable.
Not only do I no longer work this machine but cassette players are gone
from stores. I likely will never retrieve the material written into
the old cassettes.
The fear is real.
Looking back
----------
For women less than 40 years old the stories of discrimination and
margining may seem weird. While such activity persists it is orders
less severe than what their older female associates went thru.
Reconstructions, like the Grolier show, go a long way to educate
current women, but they can seem biased and prejudiced.
How can we illustrate, live and, sometimes, in living color, what
times were like decades ago?
I see one killer method. One is the emergence of nostalgic or
vintage television programming. In New York this is 'Antenna TV', now
on channel 11-2. These stations are scattered across the country under
various local names and channels.
They broadcast shows from the mid to late 20th century! The
permissions were duly obtained from the authors and producers. Perhaps
the best specimina of bygone treatment of women are in the 'family'
serials. The household is paternal to the core, with the women in
subordinate roles.
Watching how women in these shows fared can be a real eye-opener
for the young women of today! They may take deep offense at the
language, gestures, attitude, largely contrary to feminist interests.
One way to tell these shows are nostalgic is to watch the ads.
They promote services and products for elder and senior audience! Even
here, many push homemaking devices catering to women.
In some shows the original ads are left in place, probably too
hard to remove?. Many of these ads feature products presented in a
openly sexist manner.
Recordings of these TV shows can be a jumpoff to explain and
explore the world of degraded women.
An other look-back method is old magazines and newspapers for
stories and ads relating to women. This method requires access to such
material, likely in a library archive. The publications may be on
microfiche or microfilm rather than in hard copy.
More and more early print material is now archived in webs where
the articles can be saved or printed. I do warn that some of the
material can be, by today's women standards, disgusting and revolting.
Yet it was the cotidian litterature of its era.
Tracing a theme
--------------
'Extraordinary women' had a once-in-lifetime spinoff. In its one
room you could trace many threads in the advance of science and maths
by studying selected bays. For the NYSkies Seminar on 2013 November
15, discussing the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, the astronomers drew
on duChatelet for light, heat, radiation; Meitner for nuclear
reactions; Payne-Gaposchkin for the predominance of hydrogen and
helium in stars.
The bays aren't ordered by time but by broad subject: physics,
chemistry, maths, astronomy, medicine. It was feasible to trace these
subjects thru the honored women, filling gaps in time or activity
along the way. Curie, both Marie and Irene, knew that artificial
elements can be made by neutron beaming of certain atoms but they
didn't understand why this happened. Meitner, in the adjacent bay,
showed that the atoms split into these other elements. She
coined the term 'fission' to describe the process.
Science and maths are interconnected across disciplines in
historical times as now. You had to skip around the exhibit bays to
follow a theme.
Nelma Garcia
------- --
In 1975 I had the blessing to meet a young women Nelma Garcia on
an astronomy tourist trip. I was then, with the late Donald Trombino,
among the first tier of astronomers to operate public tours for
eclipses and observatory visits. Ms Garcia was one of about thirty on
the trip under our care.
She then lived in northern New Jersey. After the trip Ms Garcia
came to astronomy club meetings on Manhattan. She became active in the
astronomy clubs and worked on several committees for them.
Nelma was already a scholarly woman, traveling for learning and
enlightenment. She showed keen interest and strong ability in many
worldly matters. These included civic affairs, astronomy and science,
languages, culture, art & music.
Her profession then was an executive secretary at Grolier Club.
She often greeted her new astronomy friends there. From her Grolier
Club work she developed a profound love of books, litterature, and
history, which she abundantly shared with me.
In the cradle years of the feminism, she voiced annoyance and
anger at the treatment of women, including instances for herself. She
placed into me the seeds that such a world against females is terribly
wrong. She hoped that in our lifetime we can move toward parity of men
and women. By 1977 she and I bounded into a lifelong love.
She moved to Chicago in about 1979, taking her second career at
Adler Planetarium. The planetarium was deeply impressed by her skills
and interest in astronomy, as developed thru her tenure with New York
astronomers. She left Adler in about 1990 and circulated thru several
residences in the Chicago and other midwest regions.
This 'Extraordinary women' exhibit at Grolier Club pushed me to
let Nelma know about it. By asking ancient friends, I discovered she
recently moved back to northern New Jersey! I sent her the exhibit
book and some fliers.
Ms Garcia was not in the planning, assembling, staging of
'Extraordinary women' and its collateral events. Yet this show was her
show in the very tangible sense. As I inspected the exhibit and
attended its associated activities there was, like a water-mark, her
name every where. This show validated her life, and my life with her,
for shifting the world toward a more equable treatment of women.
We aren't yet at that ideal goal, the goal so much a part of
Nelma's vision.
Conclusion
--------
The Grolier exhibit is now closed with as yet no positive
assurance of preservation. It was a meterstone show that only a
generation ago could not be favorably fielded.
It's main purpose was to portray and document women over the ages
who made society-shifting progress under miserable circumstances of
antifeminism.
You really needed both the viewing of the displays and reading the
companion book. Together they round out the stories of the 32 women
honored in the exhibit. If the exhibit is captured, such as in a DVD
or permanent website, young females considering to enter the STEM and
can learn that their current struggle isn't as terribly chancy as
their predecessors's. They can also learn there is much more to
accomplish by them to bring a thoro removal of artificial genderism.
Collateral benefits of the show are source materials for lessons
in the several disciplines. At the NYSkies Seminar on November 15 the
audience learned about the Harvard women's work with the Hertzsprung
Russell Diagram. It was reminded of duChatelet and Payne-Gaposchkin in
the exhibit. Similar lessons can be exercised at meetings of other
groups, like a chemistry club or maths club.
Some of the honored women were 'standard' fare for talks and shows
about female scientists, like Curie and Hopper. Others are imperfectly
appreciated even by seasoned scientists like duChatelet and Cunitia.
It can be argued that the very women in the exhibit weren't
absolutely necessary for human progress. Their work would have been
accomplished within years or decades by 'real' scientists, the men.
This is trvialization and marginalization, a hideous practice that is
sometimes not recognized in early stages.
The greatest lesson that it is plain crudelity to arbitrarily shut
out sectors of people. The society that welcomes the whole spectrum of
humanity into it is the society that excels in progress and
prosperity.
Capriciously inhibiting its people corrodes the society
into stagnation and decline.