Jobs for women are there for the plucking

But a lack of role models - thank you, mass media - hinders our children's belief in themselves and their capabilities.

The article below is about airline pilots, but the same concepts hold true for women scientists. There are plenty of women scientists, but percentage wise they are only a small percentage of the whole.

Let's change that!

From Deutche Welle: More women earn their wings at Lufthansa and other airlines
Female aviators have flown combat missions for the military, but it's taken them much longer to break the gender barrier at commercial airlines. The percentage of women pilots is still extremely low, but rising.

Back in the 1960s, the head of Lufthansa's pilot training school, Alfred Vermaaten, once quipped: "A woman has a better chance of becoming a world heavyweight boxing champion than an airline captain". It took decades to prove Vermaaten wrong. Lufthansa's first female pilot took to the skies in 1988, and went on to becoming the German flag carrier's first female captain in the year 2000.

Lufthansa currently employs nearly 300 female pilots, which means women account for little more than 5 percent of the airline's pilots an industry average based on a random sampling of major commercial airlines compiled by Deutsche Welle.

Today the odds of a woman being a commercial airline pilot are better than becoming a heavyweight boxing champion, but they're still a lot lower than the 12 percent on the supervisory boards of Germany's major DAX companies. Furthermore, 36 percent of judges in Germany are women and nearly 40 percent of Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet is female.

No discrimination in the cockpit
In Vermaaten's time, it was unthinkable for a woman to be in the cockpit of any commercial airline, even though many female pilots had flown for the military during the previous half-century.

"We had a saying that 'if God meant women to fly, he would have painted the sky pink, not blue,'" said Captain Jörg Handwerg, a spokesman for the airline pilots' association Vereinigung Cockpit. However, gender discrimination is no longer an obstacle to a career in the cockpit, he added. Quite the contrary.

"When (women) apply for a job, airlines are happy. They want to get rid of the stigma they discriminate against women. They want to encourage women to become pilots, but with only an 8 percent application rate, you cannot have 50 percent women pilots," he said.

Although there are no quotas or numerical targets in its recruitment of female pilots, Lufthansa sponsors an annual program called Girls' Day, in which companies present vocational choices to teenage girls. "We try to promote the job of an airline pilot, flight engineer or mechanic to high school girls, to show them that these kinds of career paths are options for them," explained Lufthansa spokesman Michael Lamberty.

Lack of female role models
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Women fly for the German military, but few other female role models exist
That so few women apply for the flight training programs airlines offer is puzzling, especially since the pay is good. The starting salary at a major commercial airline such as Lufthansa is about 60,000 euros ($82,000), which is more than that of a junior hospital doctor or lower level federal judge in Germany.

First officer Rieke Hurler, 25, earned her pilot's license in 2010 after completing an in-house flight training course that lasted nearly three years. Hurler, whose father is also a pilot, had already dreamed about flying as a child.

"I think if my father would not be a pilot, I would not have even thought about it," Hurler said, adding that the lack of female role models could be a reason why so few women consider a career in the cockpit. "In the movies and TV, it's always the male heroes who are flying the airplanes".

Too technical for women?
Perhaps flying jets, like fixing cars, is simply one of those 'male' tasks which doesn't appeal to most women?

"The female pilots we have are wonderful, but women in general just don't seem to be interested in this very technical job," said Handwerg. But Hurler believes many women are frightened off by the perception that flying is a purely technical career.

"You don't need to study maths or physics to be a pilot. Lots of women think it's only a technical job, but you need communication and team skills, soft skills too," said Hurler. "I think there's no difference whether you're a woman or man flying an airplane. There's nothing that a woman can't do in this job," she added.

For many younger women, the technical demands of the job and sexism are not the primary issue keeping them away from the runway. What matters is whether a company offers family friendly policies that make it easier for women to combine work with motherhood.

Combining flying with motherhood
"The job of a pilot is not Monday to Friday 9-5. It's not very regular, but it is planable," said Lufthansa spokesman Lamberty, who explained that pilots can choose from several part-time schemes that allow them to fly a fraction of their regular roster.

Furthermore, flight simulators allow pregnant pilots to keep honing their skills so they don't lose their seniority when they come back to work after maternity leave.

"Of course I'd like to have a family in the next few years and with my job it's not a problem. It's a question of organization," said Hurler, who is married, but childless.

What can be difficult is being thousands of miles away from home at a four or five day stretch - a schedule demanded not just of pilots, but of cabin crew as well. And then there are contingencies such as a volcanic ash cloud that can leave the entire flight crew stranded for days and wreck havoc with childcare arrangements back home.

"For every mother it is hard to leave small children," said Martina Stickler-Posner, who was once a flight attendant, but is now a labor lawyer representing pilots. "What I found hard for me and my colleagues is the standby regulation. You're reading a book to your child, suddenly the phone rings and mummy goes off."

Part-time pilots cost more
Stickler-Posner said that while airlines do officially offer part-time modules to accommodate the work-life needs of their pilots, such practices are sometimes not popular with airline managers because it costs more to train and maintain two part-time pilots than just one full-time pilot.

"There are airlines who say we can't afford to have more part-time workers, that pilot education is so expensive," she said. The cost of training one pilot at Lufthansa is roughly 180,000 euros, of which one third is usually paid back by the trainee in the form of a salary deduction during their first few years of work.

Ironically, when the industry is in a slump, employers are happy to reduce the workload of working mothers and some pilots might even be forced to reduce their hours involuntarily. But during an economic boom or peak travel times of the year, part-time work is discouraged, said Stickler-Posner.

The airline industry is always one of the first to feel the effect of global economic developments, from changes in the price of oil to political unrest. But one steady trend is emerging: In the past decade, the proportion of female pilots at Lufthansa has more than doubled and the number of pilot trainees has tripled to make up 15 percent of the training roster. While it's still rare for passengers to hear a female voice emanating from the cockpit, their absolute numbers are growing quickly.

Seasoned archaeologist takes museum top job

From Cayman Islands News: Seasoned archaeologist takes museum top job
(CNS): Dr Margaret Leshikar-Denton, who previously worked at the Cayman Islands National Museum for 16 years as an archaeologist, doing research and developing displays, has taken the museum’s top job. The anthropology doctor returned just over a week ago to take up the post in familiar surroundings. Leshikar-Denton also worked on the Cayman Islands’ shipwreck register and was instrumental in developing the maritime trail. “I have great respect and appreciation for the heritage and culture of the Cayman Islands. It is therefore a privilege to be entrusted with the leadership and vision of the National Museum,” she said.

A serving member of the Cayman Islands Visual Arts Society, Orchid Society and National Gallery, she is also life member of the Cayman Islands National Trust. The new museum director holds a doctorate in Anthropology (Nautical Archaeology) and honed her archaeological skills in many countries, including Mexico, Spain, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos and Turkey.

National Museum board chairperson Jeana Ebanks said that during her previous tenure Dr Leshikar-Denton showed a deep personal dedication to, and respect for, Caymanian culture. “She is adept at forging partnerships to attain major programme objectives and enjoys the widespread respect of her peers and colleagues. In addition, she has earned the complete confidence of the Board of Governors to guide the museum competently,” Ebanks said as she welcomed her appointment. “My expectations is that she will provide strong leadership for our National Museum.”

The museum expert first came to the Cayman Islands in 1980 when a team from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (based at Texas A&M University) was invited by the government to survey the islands’ waters for shipwrecks. Six years later, she accepted a full-time position at the museum and moved permanently to the Cayman Islands.

Mark Scotland, the culture minister, said Dr Leshikar-Denton’s knowledge combined with her unique experience would ensure that the National Museum remains one of Cayman’s premiere cultural entities. “We expect that under her leadership we will see many meaningful initiatives that will support the preservation of Caymanian culture,” he added.

Dr Leshikar-Denton is a member of the Register of Professional Archaeologists, has worked as an independent researcher and has served as the senior representative for Central America and the Caribbean on the World Archaeological Congress. She was also the UNESCO representative at the Latin American and Caribbean Technical Commission on Underwater Cultural Heritage Meetings in 1998 and 1999.

In 2001, she served on the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) delegation during development of the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. She co-edited, with Pilar Luna of Mexico, Underwater and Maritime Archaeology in Latin America and the Caribbean (2008) and contributed Caribbean Maritime Archaeology to the Oxford Handbook of Underwater Archaeology (2010).

Currently, Dr Leshikar-Denton serves as secretary for ICOMOS’ International Committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage (ICUCH), as an emeritus member of the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology (ACUA), and director and board member for the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA).

Time for a girl's own adventure

From Sydney Morning Herald: Time for a girl's own adventure

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is determined to avoid typecasting by the boys who run the show in Hollywood.

IF YOU have trouble recognising Mary Elizabeth Winstead in The Thing from her other films, good. That's how the 27-year-old actor wants it. Eager to carve out a lengthy career in a male-dominated culture of interchangeable ingenues, here-today-gone-already starlets and a poor choice of roles for women, Winstead has always been conscious of keeping her CV versatile.

''What's cool is when I do get recognised on the street, it's always for something different,'' she says from Los Angeles. ''A kid will recognise me for Sky High, a teenage boy from Final Destination 3, a 25-year-old girl from Scott Pilgrim vs the World. It's really cool to be slowly building a fanbase that's a little bit more broad.''

Winstead also played the kidnapped daughter of Bruce Willis in Die Hard 4.0, the sexy actress in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, the lead dancer in Make It Happen (she's a trained ballerina) and a sorority scream queen in the horror film Black Xmas.

In The Thing, an FX-heavy prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter classic, Winstead takes on the role of scientist Kate Lloyd who is stuck in an Antarctic station with other scientists and a shape-shifting thing from another world. Winstead plays Lloyd as a can-do gal who relishes the chance to fight back, usually with flame-thrower in hand.

''It is a rare role for a woman in film to be strong and powerful and smart but in a way that's realistic,'' she says. ''I didn't have superpowers, I wasn't perfect-looking or in Spandex. I was just a smart woman trying to figure out a way to get out of a horrible situation and stay alive.''

She says it's rare - but why is that? Winstead was born in 1984, the year The Terminator gave us female action icon Sarah Connor. Growing up, Winstead revered Connor and Ripley from the Alien films and admits that, by now, her character in The Thing shouldn't be an anomaly.

''I know, it's really strange,'' she says. ''It's not that it never happens because we do get occasional women superheroes but still, it seems like when we are kicking ass it's because we have some superpower. What's so great about Ripley is that she's just a kick-ass woman.

''For younger women like myself growing up in the 1980s, to see something like that was really empowering so I really want to find roles like that for that same reason, so that other girls will be able to say, 'Wow, she is a totally relatable woman who's able to be strong and kick butt'.''

After her appearance in Death Proof and the associated Maxim photo spread, Winstead suddenly became aware of how her sex appeal could begin to define her work. ''There's a lot more emphasis placed on sex appeal now for women and it's frustrating, because I certainly don't want to play those parts. That's just not me. It can be hard to find parts that aren't just focused on that.''

Is this because Hollywood is still primarily run by men for men?

''I think so, it really still is a boys' club, unfortunately,'' Winstead says frankly. ''Everything is from a male perspective. When Bridesmaids came out it was like this huge revolution, the fact that here was a comedy about women and written by women. It's sad that it had to be such a big deal. Even though there are amazing female directors and executives it is still really off-balance, so it is always going to be a struggle to find really great roles.''

And the Hollywood clock ticks faster for a young woman in the profession than for a young man.

''It is frustrating,'' she says. ''Men never seem to be held back by their age while women reach a certain age and, oftentimes, they disappear into smaller roles or they're relegated to do things that are not quite what they would want to be doing. There are actresses though who are pushing the boundaries, such as Melissa Leo, so I'm hoping that as time goes on we get more diversity.''

To enhance her longevity, Winstead is using her high profile - she'll appear next year in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - to do more challenging fare in smaller independent films such as Smashed, in which she plays an alcoholic.

''I'm just getting to the level where a producer who's doing a little movie will say, 'Oh yeah, you've done some big films; we can put you in this film and maybe we'll be able to get finance and market it.'''

She lets out a laugh. ''It's so interesting how you do big films sometimes to get to do the little ones. It seems backwards but it's kinda the way it works.''

Twenty first century Girl Scouts have badges for science and technology

From Tech.Blorge: Twenty first century Girl Scouts have badges for science and technology

My memories of Girl Scouts involve camping in the rain, learning to build fires, cooking on upside down coffee cans and of course, selling cookies. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Girl Scouts now have badges for Computer Expert and Entertainment Technology.

National Public Radio’s (NPR) All Things Considered, looked at the twenty first century update of Girl Scout badges. While several still remain the same like Citizen, Cook and First Aid, you can now find on the Girl Scouts website badges for: Computer Expert, Home Scientist, Inventor, Investigate Award, Innovate Award, Digital Photography, Entertainment Technology, Geocacher, Product Designer, Digital Movie Maker, Science of Happiness, Netiquette, Website Designer, Locavore, Science of Style, Textile Artist, Car Care, Game Visionary, Social Innovator, and (Cookie) Research and Development.

Two of my favorites seem to be patterned of such shows as Covert Affairs or the cartoons, Codename: Kids Next Door and Totally Spies. These are the Detective and Special Agent badges. There are also a couple that sound daring like Adventurer and mystical like Truth Seeker. There don’t seem to be any for hacking. Maybe next year.

Not only are these badges a badly needed update but all of them help girls to explore professions that they might not think of otherwise. Activities promoted by the badges like inventing, innovating, and designing are necessary not just in science but also in most business endeavors.

To help them make the most of their science and technology prowess, there are also badges that help girls to learn about managing money. In the early stages of Girl Scouting they can earn badges for Money Counts, Making Choices, Money Manager, Philanthropist, Business Owner, and Savvy Shopper.

The upper levels, Cadet through Ambassador, cover such financial skills as Budgeting, Comparison Shopping, Financing My Dreams, On My Own, and Good Credit. Looking at today’s economy, it wouldn’t be bad if a adults were allowed to earn those badges too.

Finally, Girl Scouts aren’t just selling cookies for prizes anymore. Cookie sales are now about learning business skills. Daisy through Juniors learn about promoting the different cookies, treating your customers well and listening to their feedback, giving back to the community and being a Cookie CEO.

Beginning with Cadets the scouts start developing business plans, marketing, Thinking Big, Research and Development and P&L. Whether they ever own their own businesses or not, they are learning skills that will help them to work well in any business. They will also learn how to judge the health of a business.

Learning about nature, camping, first aid, citizenship are all wonderful, but today’s scouts are learning about much more. No longer are they preparing girls simply to be good housewives and mothers, but they are preparing girls to enter the worlds of business, technology, and science.

Now if I could just find a Girl Scout with an Entertainment Technology badge, I might be able to get all of my electronics working together or at the very least, reduce my remotes down to one.

Girls’ engineering dreams begin at MIT

From MIT News: Girls’ engineering dreams begin at MIT
Discovering the delights of hands-on science and engineering, 24 rising seventh-graders from Lynn, Mass., spent a week in July at the MIT Edgerton Center, soldering electrical connections, creating lip balm, sewing wearable circuits, inventing ice cream makers and programming their own computer games.

The GE Girls at MIT summer program, funded by General Electric (GE) and developed by members of the GE Women’s Network, the MIT Edgerton Center and the Lemelson-MIT Program, aimed to interest girls in science and technology, and ultimately increase the number of woman engineers.

Each day the girls dove into activities organized around the themes of engineering, construction, computer programming, electronics, aviation and chemistry. Amy Fitzgerald and Jessica Garrett of the MIT Edgerton Center developed and taught most of the lessons, assisted by female GE mentors, MIT undergraduates and two sixth-grade teachers from Lynn.

Garrett and Fitzgerald chose activities designed to be flexible and approached in multiple ways. For example, the girls planned and built paper-card houses with the aim of making the biggest, strongest, “coolest” structure with the fewest number of cards. Though most groups built flat structures, one group created a three-tower skyscraper taped together in coordinating colors. With its substantially greater area and high “coolness” factor, this structure scored several times higher than the competitors.

Fitzgerald commented, “This activity shows them that there’s more than one right answer in engineering. I love when kids finally look up from their own project and say, ‘Oh, theirs is totally different! What if we try ...,' and, like real engineers, borrow from each other and improve what they are doing.”

Another highlight was designing and creating a 30-second video game with help from staff members from MIT’s Scheller Teacher Education Program. Daniel Wendel and Wendy Huang led the session, and every table of four students had an undergraduate help them step by step through the process, creating games that were both challenging and humorous.

Garrett noted, “The week completely changed their view about what science is. They thought that science was only reading about what old guys in white coats discovered long ago, but afterward they were saying, ‘We never knew science was so much fun! Making lip balm is science! I can sew a circuit with metal thread and make an LED light up!’ On their surveys, most of them wrote that they had learned about a lot of new careers.”

“Our plan was to clue the girls in to as many careers as possible that they don’t know about,” says Fitzgerald, who remained unflappable amid excited middle schoolers. “If we can show them that there is such a thing as mechanical engineering and every day they use things made by mechanical engineers, then maybe they will want to be one.”

An integral part of the program were the GE mentors — including an MIT alumna and mother of a current MIT student — who shared their own science and engineering background and career choices with the girls. From Leigh Estabrooks, invention education officer with Lemelson-MIT, the girls learned about her previous career as a scientist working in product development for soft drink and cosmetics companies.

On a more general level, one girl wrote that she learned “not only boys can be engineers.” Another realized, “that everything I love is actually science. I learned that I could have a career in science. This program has opened a lot of doors for me that I thought would always stay closed and it has really brightened my horizons.”

The GE Women’s Network has worked for 14 years to attract young women to science-based jobs and help them develop their talents. After this successful pilot, the group plans to create more “GE Girls at” programs at other universities. Joanne Kugler, leader of the GE’s Women and Technology Initiative, said of the program, “Our vision is to excite young girls around STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math] and retain their interest as they head into high school, college and eventually the workforce (and maybe they’ll even work at GE).”

Fitzgerald pointed out, “We won’t know for years whether this group will end up studying science,” while Garrett added, “But they wrote on their surveys that they want to go to college now … and they want to come to MIT.”

Established in 1992, the MIT Edgerton Center continues the mens et manus (mind and hand) legacy of beloved Institute Professor Harold (Doc) Edgerton who believed that learning by doing was integral to an MIT education. For MIT students, the center supports student teams in engineering competitions, offers hands-on classes and workshop space, and engages students in service projects in developing countries. Outside of MIT, the center advances kindergarten to 12th grade hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education through on-site workshops and intensive summer programs for youth, distribution of curricula developed at the center, and professional development workshops for teachers.

On travel til Wednesday

I'm visiting elderly relatives in Box Elder, SD who do not have internet.

Will try to sneak out now and again to an internet cafe to post, but more than likely will not be posting until Wedneday.

New stuff coming!

I've been working on a website for Girl Scientist, and there's a webzine in the works...everything that I'll share with you in the next couple of days.

So stay tuned for some good stuff!