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Q&A: “The Sky Is My Laboratory”

Marcela Valente* interviews Argentine astronomer GLORIA DUBNER

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 3 2011 (IPS) - When it comes to breaking through the glass ceiling, astronomers are among the most determined of female professionals. And they have high aspirations. “The sky is my laboratory,” Argentine astrophysicist Gloria Dubner told IPS.

“Gazing at the sky still fills me with awe,” said Dubner, director of the Institute of Astronomy and Space Physics at the University of Buenos Aires and a member of the Women in Astronomy Working Group of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), where 85 percent of the members are men.

The working group was founded to bring greater visibility to women astronomers in the IAU, establish strategies to help women attain true equality as research astronomers, and combat stereotypes and misconceptions that discourage girls and women from studying sciences.

In 2009 they launched the “She Is an Astronomer” programme that recommends visits by women astronomers to schools and other activities to encourage girls to enter the field.

In this interview in her office, the 60-year-old Dubner said the proportion of women in astronomy is not necessarily linked to a country’s level of development.

A mere 5.5 percent of IAU members in Japan are women, and only nine percent are women in Germany, 12 percent in Canada, and 14 percent in the United States. On the other hand, the proportion stands at 36 percent in Argentina, 26 percent in Venezuela, 22 percent in Brazil, 17 percent in Mexico, and 16 percent in Chile.

Q: How did the working group emerge? A: The IAU has been focusing on the question of women for a long time. The forerunners were those of us who formed the Latin American Association of Women Astronomers in 1982. But women astronomers in the U.S. had their own group, and the Europeans had an intranet.

We started to work together in IAU assemblies. The schedule of scientific events in the assemblies is very intense, and no one is about to miss a conference for a parallel issue, so we would organise luncheons. Finally, the working group was formally created in 2006.

Q: What was the assessment? A: We wanted to draw attention to the scant numbers of women astronomers, and show how there are fewer and fewer women the more senior the level. Equal treatment was needed.

At the congresses, there are many, many women on the local organising committees. But on the scientific committees that evaluates the works to be accepted, the number of women is significantly lower. And the proportion is even lower among key-note speakers and panel moderators.

Q: And what has the working group proposed for putting an end to this situation? A: We are calling for balanced participation in order for the IAU to provide financial and scientific support for a symposium. When the organisers provide a summary and the accounts afterwards, they should report how many women were on each committee, and whether or not there were facilities like child care or spaces for children to play.

Q: And to increase the visibility of women? A: In each institution, lists are drawn up of what women are researching, so it is clear what we are doing, when someone is looking for specialists. Since women don’t attend so many congresses and aren’t visible faces, because they have children, or due to lack of economic support. So we have created sort of a showcase.

Q: Is the proportion of women astronomers higher in industrialised countries? A: No. Latin countries have the highest percentages of women. There are high proportions in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, as well as France, Italy and Spain. By contrast, there are few in Japan or Germany. Latin women have more support from grandmothers and aunts, who help out with the children. In Japan or Canada women don’t have these networks.

Q: What kinds of obstacles do women face in their careers? A: One aspect has started to change somewhat. Astronomers have to travel for several days to telescopes at remote sites, in the mountains or deserts. Many observatories aren’t equipped to receive women astronomers.

There are notorious cases like Mount Wilson in (Los Angeles, California) in the United States, where women weren’t allowed until 1963. They couldn’t stay in the guest lodgings, but had to sleep in a cabin, which they had to heat with a wood fire.

Q: When does awareness of gender issues emerge in a woman scientist’s career? A: When you start studying, there are many doubts as to whether you will be able to hack it. And in the face of the difficulties, you start to think ‘I’m not good enough,’ ‘I have to learn more,’ ‘I can’t study more because I have to go pick up my daughter at school.’ I thought I had to accept that burden because I went into a field that wasn’t for me. But a woman colleague from Finland really helped me see that this wasn’t true.

Q: Why do fewer women choose scientific careers? Did something encourage you to go into astronomy? A: No. My father owned shops and my mother was a homemaker. And my sister and I are both scientists. My sister is a nuclear chemist. I think people just need someone to encourage their natural curiosity. All children are full of curiosity about the universe; it’s just a question of not stifling that and not conditioning kids with the idea that only ‘nerds’ choose the sciences.

Q: And in primary school? A: It’s difficult to break down the stereotype that the hard sciences are for boys and poetry or literature are for girls. Teachers are accomplices in this. My experience as a mother was very difficult. Every time I would go on a trip, the teachers, instead of cooperating, would feel sorry for my three kids. I lived with a sense of guilt throughout their years of primary school.

Q: Does motherhood slow down the career of a woman astronomer? (Dubner pulls out a bar graph with the number of studies she has published and the dates. The columns are shorter in her child-bearing and child-rearing years, and several times higher once her children were older.)

A: I asked the women researchers at the institute to make a bar graph like this, showing publications and congresses they have attended, and the years their kids were born or their parents fell ill, and it was really noticeable.

Q: How can these problems be worked out? A: In Argentina the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research should raise the age limit for women with children, because now to be eligible for a scholarship for a doctorate or to be accepted as a researcher, the upper limit is 30 and 35 years, respectively, for both men and women. And the idea is that maternity leave for women should also be taken into account.

Q: Gazing at the sky sounds romantic. And you make a scientific career out of it. A: And without losing the romanticism. Because I am still filled with awe when I look up at the sky. I even like it more than I did as a girl because now I am aware of the real dimensions.

Q: So did your vocation come from gazing up at the sky? A: No, I didn’t go into astronomy because of a childhood fascination. I do remember, though, that the nights were really dark in my town, and I would go out in the yard with my dad to look at the stars. But that’s not what motivated me.

I got into astronomy through other routes. In fact I’m a physicist, and I could have carried out research in other fields. The surprise or the passion for astronomy crept up on me, and now the sky is my laboratory.

*This article forms part of IPS coverage for International Women’s Day, Mar. 8, whose theme this year is “Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women”.