Rebecca: 

This is episode three of season 2, the Meridian, and we're once again coming to you from Lund Observatory, Lund University, here in southern Sweden.  It is March 18th when we release this episode and this episode will talk to Professor Nikolai Piskunov, who's visiting us from Uppsala University a bit up north.  Well, middle of Sweden, but a bit up north.   

This season we're also bringing you some field reporting from the Nordic Optical Telescope on La Palma, where Nick and his team are trying to catch a transiting exoplanet. More about that later. 
 

------------------------------------------    

The intro scene includes background music and 24 high school students saying astronomical words like “Space missions”,  "Solar wind", "The big dipper", "Galactic dynamics", "Gravitational waves", "Exoplanets", "Black holes", "Betelgeuse", "Dark energy", "Near earth asteroids", "Jupiter", "Ground based telescopes" and more.  Slowly it fades to everyone saying “The Meridian”.      

------------------------------------------ 

Nic: 

Hey Rebecca. 

Rebecca: 

Hi Nic 

Nic: 

How are you going? 

Rebecca: 

I'm doing fine. Actually. I actually thought we could talk about something that might be a bit of a tricky subject. 

Nic: 

OK. 

Rebecca: 

So a couple of months ago I wrote a piece for the student magazine here Lundagården about the International Day of Women and Girls in science. 

It's an official UN day 11th of February and I talked with female researchers here at the university about their science and also how they see their fields gender-wise. 

And I also looked up the numbers, like how many women, researchers there are in general in the STEM fields. So that's science, technology, engineering and mathematics - not medicine. 

Like 33% of scientists are women, but when you look at sort of the student level, so like masters and pH D level, it's more of a 5050 ratio, so it's like why is that? 

Yeah, it's like some kind of drop off going on, so like after the PhD - So like postdoc and below,  or above the field sort of becomes more man dominated. 

Nic: 

Yeah, right? Uhm I guess like 33% is.... Is that a bad sign or a good sign?  What do you think? 

Rebecca: 

I know when I read the number I was like, well, that's high. 

But I guess it can also be high, since it's clump of all these fields together, right? 

When you look at physics and chemistry, for instance, it's a lower rate of female to men. But when you look at biology and environmental science, it's much higher, so I guess it sort of brings the number up. 'cause I I was sort of. Yeah happily surprised. 

Nic: 

So like, if I could ask you a question, do you think 50/50 is what we should be aiming for? 

Rebecca: 

The thing is, if one assumes - which I hope a lot of people assume - that men and women are equally clever and capable, and then most scientific fields should be 50/50, given that everyone has the same interest, but I guess one can assume that too and the fact that we don't have 50/50 for me, points that that we're sort of benefiting men more. 

Because... probably there are women that perhaps are more capable not sitting at those scientific positions. 

Nic: 

Yeah, exactly. 'Cause when finish a PhD. Like both me and you are going to be almost in our 30s when we do that and then like, you know, we might want to be considering starting a family then as well. 

And starting a family, it usually the mother takes at least a year of maternity leave. It's different for different cultures across the world, but that's a lot of time in science to not be doing science. 

And if you spend time away, you're not reading papers and so the field gets ahead of you and then your networks sort of deteriorate a little bit so it can be quite a difficult challenge for some. 

Rebecca: 

Yeah, exactly. If you're on parental leave, how do you also keep on top of your field?  'Cause the field is moving so fast forward, right? 

No, I think that's super tricky.  At least in Sweden, here we have that a part of the parental leave is marked towards the father and a part is marked towards the mother, which is also very heterosexual way of looking at it. 

But yeah, but still so the mother tends to take more of the parental leave. And as you say then you might lose some of the connexion with your field. 

Nic: 

Is there anything you would like to see, as an aspiring woman researcher that you think would make things easier? 

Rebecca: 

I guess as I said, and once again this is sort of a heterosexual way of looking at it, but you know, actually having men stepping up and taking more of that leave to to actually raise your children so that it doesn't lay too much on the woman to do that,  but I think it's so hard 'cause it's like, as you say, you will lose up on the networking and the reading up on papers everyday. And what can you really do about that? 

Nic: 

Yeah, I think it's good that we, when raising young girls, especially going through high school  - to tell them that it is OK if they want to be career oriented.  They don't have to be a mother.  I think in the modern era that pressure is probably somewhat less. I still think it exists, and it's quite common for men, researchers to take families with them all over the world while they do research positions and and so... 

Yeah, I think just bucking these trends takes time and it takes time.  And just reaffirming these ideas to girls so that they you know....  it's OK to be a mother and should raise children.  There's nothing wrong with that as well, but it's it's OK to make their choice not to or to like... do whatever makes you happy as a person. 

Rebecca: 

So you feel like, perhaps women and girls are more pressured into becoming a mother than a guy would be into becoming a father. 

Nic: 

Yeah, I think there are these still societal pressures that a lot of young girls feel that we need to sort of work on and I think a good example is this. When you have a lot of people don't like putting quotas in like a 50/50 quota, and we’re not really here to discuss whether not it's a good or bad idea, but I do remember one case where people stopped putting a 50/50 quota once it was reached, and then it sort of shifted back to being more male dominated. 

Rebecca: 

Yeah, OK. 

Nic: 

And so the idea is that I think there are some of these kinds of pressures that still exist which take time to erode. And I think you know.  We as people will benefit from them if we don't have these pressures and people get to be the real person that they really want to be. 

Rebecca:  

Yeah, what you actually can sort of see scientifically is that in countries that tend to be have more well educated girls if that the birth rate drops because you make more well educated choices in life, perhaps.  I don't know. Or maybe that you actually focus on your career instead, but I think that's very interesting. 

Nic: 

Yeah, and like a low birth rate isn't necessarily a bad thing. 'cause we are, you know, overpopulation is a problem, and so if women are living more fulfilled lives and that leads into having maybe less children... or maybe making them making the active choice to have a child, which then will be raised in an environment that is nurturing and happy.   I think that can only lead to good things and then we have. You know. Earth has a finite amount of resources and so on. 

Rebecca: 

Yeah that's true. OK, yeah, thank you so much for wanting to talk about this with me. 

Nic: 

No, I'm glad we chatted about it. 

Rebecca: 

Thank you. 
 

 

---------------------- Scene change with music.     

 

 

 

 

---

 

Please contact Anna Arnadottir if you would like to obtain the rest of this transcribed text