Tackling biases and unveiling disparities in astrophysics
Through an anonymous survey, we have collected data on demographics, professional activities, career development, workplace environment, and work-life balance for a large sample of European astrophysicists. One of the most striking results is that the field has a systemic bullying problem, which disproportionally affects women and minorities.
Focus Group: Inclusion and Diversity in Physics
Dr. Sara Lucatello (INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova), Alumna Anna Boyksen Fellow | Host: Prof. Laura Fabbietti (TUM)
(Image: INAF / R. Bonuccelli)
The under-representation of women and, more generally, the lack of diversity in hard sciences, is a long-standing issue: Women, racial minorities, and people from socio-economically underprivileged backgrounds have a harder time successfully pursuing an academic career (see, e.g., [1]). This suggests that the metrics adopted, in spite of being generally reduceable to numerical indexes that allow easy comparison, are not as unbiased as assumed (see, e.g., [2], [3]).
The problem is particularly severe in Germany, with the under-representation of women in hard sciences being consistently more pronounced than in most EU countries across all academic levels. Building a fair and equitable system is a crucial step in improving diversity, which is linked to innovation (see, e.g., [4]). This is of fundamental importance at this time, as post-secondary education in Europe will see a large influx of second-generation immigrants as a result of recent waves of migration.
The goal of our efforts was to improve awareness of the conscious and unconscious biases affecting the selection and evaluation systems in natural sciences, and in particular in the European astrophysics community. In fact, while awareness of the problem of under-representation of women and lack of diversity is improving, there is still a widespread belief in the scientific community that it is only marginally affected by this matter.
During the funding period, the Focus Group has undertaken a number of activities.
On the one hand, we have been working on organizing events aimed at improving the awareness of conscious and unconscious bias in academia. With this goal, we have held unconscious bias training workshops in major research institutions: at the Collaborative Research Center “Neutrinos and Dark Matter in Astro- and Particle Physics” (SFB 1258) general meeting in Munich (more than 100 attendees), at the European Southern Observatory headquarters (more than 50 attendees), and at the Faculty of Physics at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago (more than 50 attendees). A larger number of events were originally planned; several of them were canceled because of the pandemic, while others were turned into virtual events, such as those at INAF (more than 100 attendees) and the DARK center of the University of Copenhagen (50+ attendees).
We also held three international meetings on the topic. The first, “Working toward an equitable, diverse, and inclusive astronomy” was organized as a special session within the European Astronomical Society (Lyon in June 2019), a meeting that attracted more than 1,200 attendees.
Following the success of that meeting, we worked with the European Astronomical Society to institute an EAS Advisory Committee on issues related to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, which started its activities in 2019.
We also coordinated the organization of two editions of the EAS yearly Inclusion and Diversity event for the European Astronomical Society. Both Inclusion Day 2020 and Diversity and Inclusion Day 2021 were virtual due to pandemic disruption.
On the other hand, we have worked on the administration of a survey aimed at examining the demographics of astrophysics communities in Europe. Originally intended to take place in mid-2020, its schedule was affected by considerable delays associated with the pandemic.
The survey was designed to explore dimensions related to professional activities, career development, workplace environment, and work-life balance, as well as to probe the impact that COVID-19 had on such activities. It was developed with input from experts in the field and was run in collaboration with the European Astronomical Society. Data collection was completed in late 2022, resulting in more than 1,300 responses from 68 countries, the largest survey sample collected to date from professional astrophysicists.
Data analysis is currently being completed, and we have an agreement with Nature Astronomy for publication. One of the striking results emerging from the data is that the community is affected by a systemic bullying problem: One in five people report having been subjected to instances of bullying or harassment in the workplace, and women and minority groups are disproportionally affected. Women and non-binary people in the field are at least twice as likely as men to be bullied or harassed. Moreover, one in three members of the LGBTIQ+ community report having been subjected to instances of bullying and harassment.
Another interesting and unexpected result involves remote participation in conferences. The annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society is the largest astronomical conference in Europe, regularly attracting well over a thousand professional astronomers from 50+ countries in Europe and beyond. Participants based in countries where research is not funded at the level of Western Europe (e.g., Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America) account for roughly one-sixth of the attendees.
Due to the pandemic, the 2020 and 2021 meetings were held virtually, with considerably reduced registration fees. The number of attendees for these two events was larger than usual, reaching 2,200 for the 2021 edition. The expectation was that the availability of affordable remote access would widen the pool of participants, in particular to scientists based in countries where research is poorly funded, or to holders of non-powerful passports.
The fraction of attendees from these countries, however, did in fact have a moderate decrease with respect to those for in-person meetings (2022, 2019, 2018, and 2017), while there was a clear increase in participation of scientists based in affluent countries beyond Europe (e.g., USA, Canada, Japan, and Australia). While there is no doubt that allowing remote attendance increases the accessibility of meetings, our results suggest that this facilitates the participation from minorities based in western-world countries, but does not seem to have the same positive effect among other communities.
[1]
Lucatello, S. & Diamond-Stanic, A. Diversity and inclusiveness in large scientific collaborations. Nature Astronomy 1 (6), 0161 (2017).
[2]
Larivière, V., Ni, C., Gingras, Y. et al. Bibliometrics: Global gender disparities in science. Nature 504, 211–213 (2013).
[3]
Boyle, P., Smith, L., Cooper, N. et al. Gender balance: Women are funded more fairly in social science. Nature 525, 181–183 (2015).
[4]
Jones, G., Chirino Chace, B. & Wright, J. Cultural diversity drives innovation: empowering teams for success. International Journal of Innovation Science 12, 323-343 (2020).
Selected publications
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Schiappacasse-Ulloa, J. & Lucatello, S. Neutron-capture elements in NGC 6752 multiple populations. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 520(4), 5938–5949 (April 2023). www.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad486.
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Jin, S., Trager, S., Dalton, G., et al. The wide-field, multiplexed, spectroscopic facility WEAVE: Survey design, overview, and simulated implementation. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, stad557 (2023). www.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad557.
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Schiappacasse-Ulloa, J., Lucatello, S., Rain, M., et al. Lithium abundances as a tracer of asymptotic giant branch star pollution in the globular cluster NGC 6752.Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 511 (1), 231–240 (March 2022). www.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab3795.
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Gratton, R., Bragaglia, A., Carretta, E. et al. What is a globular cluster? An observational perspective. Astron Astrophys Rev 27, 8 (2019). www.doi.org/10.1007/s00159-019-0119-3.