UCLA Center for the Study of Women

Looking at the 40 top-ranked astronomy and astrophysics departments in the United States reveals the underrepresentation of minority groups in these fields. in 2005, of the 647 tenured faculty in the departments, 89 were women, 5 were African American, 50 were Asian, 3 were Hispanic, and 1 was Native American (Nelson 2005). in 2007, of the 594 tenured faculty in the departments, 94 were women, 6 were African American, 42 were Asian, 7 were Hispanic, and none were Native American (Nelson 2007). It is against this context of stark disparity that we place our research focus.

In order to respond to the question of why it is much less likely for members of underrepresented groups to build a career in science, we mobilized an experimental approach combining research techniques from history, anthropology, gender, and ethnic studies. in our national science foundation-sponsored pilot project, “Women and Minority Astronomers’ strategic engagement with distributed, multi-disciplinary collaborations and large-scale databases,” our main objectives included identifying women, ethnic minority, and foreign-born astronomers; learning about their trajectories; and investigating strategies, relationships, and mentorship practices that helped them to build a career. in the context of large-scale collaborations in (e-)science more broadly, we looked specifically at how gender, ethnicity, and nationality intersect in the process of scientific formation, as well as in the process of engaging partners for the construction of instruments, design, and implementation of large-scale data management system.