We conducted two studies and our primary goal was to assess the similarity between stereotypes about women and men and stereotypes about successful scientists. In addition, we examined the degree to which scientists, men, and women are seen as agentic or communal. Results revealed greater similarity between stereotypes about men and stereotypes about scientists than between stereotypes about women and scientists. Men and scientists were seen as highly agentic, women as highly communal, and scientists as less communal than either men or women. The higher the proportion of women in a scientific field, the more similar the stereotypes of scientists in that field were to stereotypes about women. Female participants perceived more similarity between women and scientists and judged women to be more agentic than male participants did. The results are consistent with role-congruity and lack-of-fit theories that report incompatibility of female gender stereotypes with stereotypes about high-status occupational roles. The results demonstrate that women are perceived to lack the qualities needed to be successful scientists, which may contribute to discrimination and prejudice against female scientists. A podcast conversation with the author of this article is available to PWQ subscribers on PWQ's website at

[1] More than two years of COSMIC electron density profiles at low solar activities are collected to study the evolution of the Weddell Sea Anomaly (WSA), which appears as an evening enhancement in electron density during local summer. Observations show that the change in NmF2 (the F2 peak electron density) is associated with the change in hmF2 (the F2 peak height), while the latter is correlated closely with the components of the geomagnetic field. We find that (1) in the afternoon, hmF2 is more liable to rise drastically in regions with a larger jsin(2I)j value, which would occur early at certain declinations, eastward in the southern hemisphere and westward in the northern hemisphere; (2) subsequently, a larger increment of hmF2 is coincidentally followed by a stronger enhancement of NmF2 and the enhancement ends just around the local sunset; and (3) in midlatitudes, the evolution pattern of hmF2 in the evening of equinoxes and winter is similar to that in summer, albeit without a lasting NmF2 enhancement as that in summer. These features suggest that the NmF2 enhancement and the hmF2 increase could arise from the thermospheric wind effect, and solar photoionization plays a crucial role in the enhancement as well. The general midlatitude F2 layer enhancement in local summer evening is consistent with the WSA on the above features, indicating that the WSA is a manifestation, with a particular geometry of the magnetic field, of the evening enhancement induced by the winds.

[1] On 12 May 2008 at 0628 UT a major earthquake M s = 8.0 struck Wenchuan County (31.0°N, 103.4°E) in southwest China. The maximum ionospheric electron density at F 2 peak (N m F 2 ) recorded an unusual large enhancement during the afternoon-sunset sector by the Chinese ionosondes over Wuhan (30.5°N, 114.4°E) and Xiamen (24.4°N, 123.9°E), which are close to the earthquake epicenter. An averaged increase at these two stations is about 2 times on a geomagnetic quiet day, 9 May (Kp 2), 3 days prior to the earthquake, relative to the median value of 1-12 May, whereas the increase was much less significant over Yamagawa (31.2°N, 130.6°E) and Okinawa (26.7°N, 128.2°E) in Japan. Combining the data from the network of 58 global positioning system receivers around China and the global ionospheric map, the variations of the total electron content reveal the region where enhancement persisted for a long period to be within longitudes 90°-130°E. Our results suggest that this abnormal enhancement is most possibly a seismo-ionospheric signature.