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Register a new userWomen of the Future in the Royal Astronomical Society
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Karen Masters
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In this article we wonder what the next 100 years will bring for women in astronomy in the UK. After this year of looking back and celebrating 100 years of women in the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), we now ask: what might the future hold? Extrapolating current trends, when might we expect equality in the genders of RAS members, speakers at meetings, award winners and more? Ultimately, when might we stop needing to talk about women in astronomy at all - when it will be as irrelevant to the conversation about astronomy as being a male astronomer is?
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The future of astronomy is inextricably entwined with the care and feeding of astronomical data products. Community standards such as FITS and NDF have been instrumental in the success of numerous astronomy projects. Their very success challenges us to entertain pragmatic strategies to adapt and evolve the standards to meet the aggressive data-handling requirements of facilities now being designed and built. We discuss characteristics that have made standards successful in the past, as well as desirable features for the future, and an open discussion follows.
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The Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA) is calling on federal science funding agencies, in their role as the largest sources of funding for astronomy in the United States, to take actions that will advance career development and improve workplace conditions for women and minorities in astronomy. Funding agencies can and should lead the charge to produce excellent diversity and inclusion outcomes in our field by the 2030 Astrophysics Decadal Survey. Anecdotal and quantitative evidence, gathered both by the CSWA and other groups, shows that many structural barriers to success remain in our community. We acknowledge the success of programs like NSF-INCLUDES and NSF-ADVANCE and endorse their continued work. We also recommend further action to remove barriers to success for women and minority astronomers. Key recommendations are: - Federal agencies should push academic institutions to reconsider their support systems for scientists by requiring a high standard of pay and benefits. - Federal agencies should fund research and programs that explore and implement strategies for improving the experiences of scientists. - Federal agencies should require Principal Investigators (PIs) to provide plans for creating inclusive work environments and mentoring young scientists.
Our society is changing. Almost nothing these days works without a computer chip. Computing power doubles every 18 months, and in ten years it will probably exceed the capabilities of a human brain. Computers perform approximately 70 percent of all financial transactions today and IBMs Watson now seems to give better customer advise than some human telephone hotlines. What does this imply for our future society?
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