Female astronomers speak out about a culture of pervasive sexual harassment in academia, especially in the sciences and other STEM fields.
"Conversations became increasingly sexual and they eventually progressed to physical touching, like skin on skin on my neck."
"He would actually come up to where I was staying at the observatory at 11 p.m. at night, and knock on the door and wait on my porch as I would hide under my bed with all of the lights off."
"It became clear that he actually wanted a sexual relationship. ... He got very drunk and physically separated me from the group."
These are the experiences of three women who spoke to CNN about a culture of pervasive sexual harassment in academia, especially in the sciences. They were harassed by different men, throughout different parts of their education and careers.
"We see it in anthropology, we see it in philosophy, we see it in physics, we see it in the humanities, we see it in the social sciences. We see it in engineering in particular. Astronomy just happened to be, sort of, first" to get attention, said Alessondra Springmann, a rocket scientist at the University of Arizona who studies asteroids and comets.
A peer-reviewed study of harassment and assault experiences in the scientific field found that 71% of the women surveyed were sexually harassed while conducting fieldwork and 25% were sexually assaulted. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Can we stop this and reboot the system?
Story via CNNhttp://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/30/us/astronomy-sexual-harassment/index.html
Study:http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0102172
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