Women in Science

This year’s Climate and Society class is out in the field (or lab or office) completing a summer internship or thesis. They’ll be documenting their experiences one blog post at a time. Read on to see what they’re up to.

Amanda Evengaard, C+S ’18

Photo of the women at the Seventh AgMIP Global Workshop, San José, Costa Rica. (Source: AgMIP and IICA)

The United Nations emphasizes how fundamental gender equality and the role of women are for delivering on the promises of sustainability, peace and human progress.

One way the United Nations (UN) aims to inspire and engage women and girls is through science. In February, the UN celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, using the opportunity to reflect on women’s experiences as well as to share advice and encouragement with other women.

As of less than a year ago, I became a woman in science. I’m currently doing an internship with the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. AgMIP is a global collaborative network of scientists and stakeholders working to improve food and nutrition security. It hosts global workshops about every other year to provide the AgMIP community an opportunity to convene and share the latest findings, activities and focus areas for the future.

I was very excited for the opportunity to participate in this year’s iteration, the seventh meeting, held in San José, Costa Rica in April. This year’s meeting introduced a new activity: the women’s lunch, which aimed to identify how women can be better recognized in roles they provide, adopt strategies for success, influence their institutions and evolve at AgMIP.

The women’s lunch was organized by Carolyn Mutter, AgMIP’s international program manager, and Cynthia Rosenzweig, a member of AgMIP’s executive committee. For the activity, they set up a large table in the dining area, and female workshop participants gathered around the table to sit together for the lunch activity.

During the activity, participants discussed topics that focused on how women can be recognized for the roles they play, potential strategies to enhance the participation, success and influence of women, and what AgMIP could do to encourage their involvement. All participants wrote anonymous suggestions and ideas, which were collected by the activity organizers.

The main conclusions from the discussions were that AgMIP would benefit from mentoring women in the navigation of their careers, teaching strategies for enhancing their visibility in their organizations, and identifying ways to ensure women’s voices are heard in scientific discussions often dominated by men.

Potential strategies identified to enable women to influence processes in their institutions include the promotion of AgMIP in colleges and universities by giving talks, hosting events, sponsoring students in AgMIP projects, and promoting education and hiring of women in engineering, agronomy, and modeling.

Participants’ suggested strategies for how women can evolve at AgMIP include increasing the number of women leading sessions, inviting more women to participate in events and recruiting women to lead teams and participate in the executive committee and steering council as well as inviting women leaders to share their experiences, including challenges they faced and how to persevere.

Much of the experiences and suggestions from the participants connect to participation, motivation and inspiration through both indirect and direct mentorship as well as through open communication about experiences.

These results are of value to both women in science themselves as well as the organizations they work for, since it reflects what women consider important for them in order to further develop. Although these are some clear objectives and results, they show there isn’t a single path forward.

As one of the youngest and least experienced participants at the workshop, I realized that I had not yet reflected much on my own experience as a woman in science prior to this activity. Perhaps this is because the majority of the students in the C+S program were women, and about half of the faculty as well. During my time working with AgMIP and the rest of the climate impacts group at NASA’s Goddard Institute, I have also been surrounded by women role models.

I realize, however, how important it has been for me to have these women role models, including both direct and indirect mentors, and I am grateful for my positive experience so far. As the UN notes, the world cannot achieve change and improvement unless everyone is onboard, and I hope to help other women the same way so many women have done before me.

During the C+S program, we were trained with an interdisciplinary approach to understand and cope with the impacts of climate variability and climate change on society and the environment. This involves how society is impacted by the environment, how the environment is impacted by society, how those two are linked and how we can make changes and improvements for the better. We were also introduced to multiple topics related to challenges within society and how that impacts the promises to deliver sustainability, the role of women is one key example.