Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Participation of women in spacecraft science teams

Nature Astronomy volume 1, Article number: 0148 (2017) Cite this article

Subjects

There is an ongoing discussion about the participation of women in science and particularly astronomy. Demographic data from NASA's robotic planetary spacecraft missions show women scientists to be consistently under-represented.

Many sciences have attempted to close the gender and racial gaps in their communities1,2. These same groups may attempt to measure those gaps by examining the success rates of white women and people of colour in their fields through, for instance, accumulating population statistics or determining publication counts. However, such numbers may mask the persistent effects of seniority and the accumulation of praise and accolades within the field3, as well as exposure to career-making opportunities. Just as assessing citation counts demonstrates a bias against women scientists4, there are other indications of field centrality and career success that we can turn to in examining the fate of women and members of one or more under-represented groups in the sciences.

This is a preview of subscription content

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Plot of the percentage of women on NASA robotic spacecraft science teams as a function of time.
Figure 2: Percentage of women in planetary science as a function of time from several different workforce surveys.
Figure 3: Effect of participating scientist (PS) and guest investigator (GI) programs on the participation of women in spacecraft teams.

References

  1. Shen, H. Nature 495, 22–24 (2013).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Dutt, K., Pfaff, D. L., Bernstein, A. F., Dillard, J. S. & Block, C. J. Nat. Geosci. 9, 805–808 (2016).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Merton, R. K. Science 159, 56–63 (1968).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Caplar, N., Tacchella, S. & Birrer, S. Nat. Astron. 1, 0141 (2017).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Rathbun, J. A. et al. In 47th Meeting of the Division for Planetary Science 312.01 (AAS, 2015).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Rathbun, J. A. et al. In 48th Meeting of the Division for Planetary Science 332.01 (AAS, 2016).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Kanter, R. Men and Women of the Corporation (Basic Books, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  8. DPS Employment Survey Results (AAS, 1989); http://go.nature.com/2p8NYFX

  9. DPS Survey Results (AAS, 2010); http://go.nature.com/2pFnXiE

  10. Hughes, A. M. Portrait of a Generation of Women in Astronomy (CSWA, 2013); http://go.nature.com/2p8MqvN

  11. White, S., Chu, R. Y. & Ivie, R. 2011 Survey of the Planetary Science Workforce (LASP, 2011); http://go.nature.com/2p8Gr9X

Download references

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank J. Vertesi for her assistance with the social science literature and editing this manuscript. Furthermore, the data presented here were compiled by a long list of volunteers, most of whom are listed as authors on refs 5 and 6.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Julie Rathbun is at the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona 85719, USA, and the University of Redlands, Redlands, California 92373, USA.,

    Julie Rathbun

Authors
  1. Julie Rathbun
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julie Rathbun.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rathbun, J. Participation of women in spacecraft science teams. Nat Astron 1, 0148 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-017-0148

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-017-0148

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing