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Mars Is Good For Women In Science!

By thusspakezuska on February 29, 2008.

Lab Lemming recently wrote to me:

However bad the situation here on Earth gets, at least there is another planet in the solar system where women scientists and engineers can work

and then directed me to this very heartening story on the Mars Exploration Rover tactical operations team. It seems that last Friday, every single person on the rather large team operating the rovers that day was a woman. Yay! Emily Lakdawalla, the author, tells us

Think about that. One, two, or a handful of women around could be explained away by the chauvinistic as token participants, the product of affirmative action. But the entire tactical team, from top to bottom -- there's no way to dismiss that; these women all have the skills to do the work, work they do every day...The Jet Propulsion Laboratory sure has changed a lot from the days when women were only in secretarial positions, and competed in an annual beauty pageant called "Miss Guided Missile" (see M. G. Lord's Astroturf for more on that story).

Miss Guided Missile, indeed. Astroturf sounds like a fabulous read...I suppose I ought to add it to my ever-growing, never-shrinking TBR pile.

Thanks, Lab Lemming, for sending this bit of news my way...it is indeed refreshing to read about a positive workplace transformation for a change! See, it can happen - so I don't want to hear about that "lowering our standards" crap ever again.*

*though I know I shall not be so lucky.

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