Women in Science Linky-Post

My beautifully kludgy little script that does much of the work of putting together linky-posts for me – pulling everything with a special “to SB” tag off my del.icio.us account and formatting it – has stopped working. I cry tears of sadness. I also have a backlog of links.

Like, f’rinstance, April’s Scientiae carnival. And the announcement for next month’s Scientiae carnival – I’m excited about the theme!

And a couple of things on the social status of women in relation to geology: A Broadsheet summary of this article (pdf) about how oil and mineral-resource economies are bad for women. The kernel of the argument is this: “when growth encourages women to join the formal labor market, it ultimately brings about greater gender equality; when growth is based on oil and mineral extraction, it discourages women from entering the labor force and tends to exaggerate gender inequalities.” There’s also an article in Advances in Geosciences about women’s role in social adaption to climate change.

MOAR LINKS under teh foldz NOM NOM.

The Angry Black Woman has called for a Carnival of Allies:

Is it easier to understand oppression, to move past guilt and on to useful dialogue, etc., if the person explaining these things to you in-depth is a person like yourself? White or male or straight or Christian or whatever? I don’t know. But as this is the Internet, it should be easy to figure out.

Posts are due May 5, see ABW’s post for details.

Renée Bergland reviewed wrote a biography of 19th Century astronomer Maria Mitchell, and was surprised that it’s not a story about a woman who triumphs against the forces of oppression:

On one hand, it’s exciting to realize that there was a time (not that long ago) when a girl like the young Maria Mitchell grew up believing that there was nothing preventing her from achieving scientific greatness. On the other hand, it’s a bit discouraging to realize that when I was born in New York City in the late twentieth century, the odds were worse for girls in astronomy than they had been when Mitchell was born on Nantucket more than a hundred and fifty years before. To add to the depression factor, I worried that uncovering Mitchell’s advantages might make her achievements seem less impressive.

Finally, this is way old, but that loyalty oath thing? The teacher got her job back.