Participation of women scientists in ESA solar system missions: a historical trend

Abstract

Abstract. We analyzed the participation of women scientists in 10 ESA (European Space Agency) Solar System missions over a period of 38 years. Being part of a spacecraft mission science team can be considered a proxy to measure the “success” in the field. Participation of women in PI (Principal Investigators) teams varied between 4 % and 25 %, with several missions with no women as PI. The percentage of female scientists as Co-I (Co-Investigators) is always less than 16 %. This number is lower than the percentage of women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA's Member State (24 %), which can give us an indication of the percentage of women in the field. We encountered many difficulties to gather the data for this study. The list of team members were not always easily accessible. An additional difficulty was to determine the percentage of female scientists in planetary science in Europe. We would like to encourage the planetary community as a whole, as well as international organizations, universities and societies to continuously gather statistics over many years. Detailed statistics are only the first step to closely monitor the development of achievement gaps and initiate measures to tackle potential causes of inequity, leading to gender inequalities in STEM careers.

SDSS-IV from 2014 to 2016: A Detailed Demographic Comparison over Three Years

“…Some astronomical observatories maintain demographic data, but these focus on individuals that were hired into positions and the analysis is typically in regards to its hiring practices (Shugart et al 2018, and references therein). Reports on the demographics of proposals presented to Telescope Allocation Committees (TACs) or grant committees, and those awarded time are also becoming more common (Reid 2014;Patat 2016;Spekkens et al 2018;Carpenter 2020;Piccialli et al 2020). In some cases, these have led to policy modifications resulting in substantive change, such as the Hubble Space Telescope TAC process (see e.g., Johnson & Kirk 2020;Aloisi & Reid 2021).…”