Welcome to Women@NASA's Blog

Welcome to the kickoff of the new Women@NASA blog!  And goodness me-we are quite excited to display the wonderful work across not only NASA but also the world because there are women everywhere who go unnoticed but are oh-so-admirable.  One of the goals of this blog is to highlight diverse women and their contributions to society in an informal manner so that our readers have capturing stories from which to learn, self-educate, and empower.  What is diverse?, you ask.  Gosh, I sure am glad you asked.  Let me expound.  Diverse, as used on this blog, means “from a gamut of professional fields, geographical locations, educational backgrounds, interests, hobbies, successes, failures, lessons learned, and all other characteristics thought of when exposed to a new person”.  Suffice it to say, if you have or know someone who has an interesting story-contact us.  We want to hear all about YOU! 

Another goal of our blog is for us to stalk the major (and not-so-major) media sites so you don’t miss the best stories!  We will post our favorites here so you are up to date with the latest news.  We plan to update the blog frequently so visit us often, follow us via the RSS feed, and pass the word to other great women like yourself (and men-who says everyone can’t celebrate good being done?).

As we obtain and increase our readership, we would like to open the blog up to members who would like to contribute stories themselves.  To let us know about your interest, you may either leave a comment on the blog or contact us here.

Coming Soon:  About Us-Learn about the women (and the man!) behind Women@NASA.  Stay tuned.

 

From Our Founder…

From Rebecca Keiser:

 

It is funny—I have written many blogs for my bosses, trying to replicate their styles so I can write in their voices, but I have never written a blog about myself!  It is wonderful to now be able to do so, because I am writing to tell you how excited I am by this new blog site and by our soon-to-be-expanded Women@NASA website.  I took on the responsibility of being NASA’s representative to the White House Council for Women and Girls about 18 months ago, and one of the first goals I had was to develop a way to highlight the incredible women we have here at NASA and their stories.  Luckily, Nick Skytland, our opengov guru, was there to make the vision into reality, and he did an fantastic job.  Mamta Patel is now taking on the role and she is already implementing great ideas like this new blog! 

 

I often get asked, “why highlight just women on a website?  By highlighting just women, aren’t you feeding the stereotype of women being different and making a problem where one does not exist?”  Well, if you look at the numbers, NASA is 34% female.  However, in scientific and technical areas, NASA drops to 21% female.  In professional and administrative fields, NASA is 62% female.  Only 26% of NASA executives, both in technical and non-technical areas, are women.  I could go on, but I believe that, number one, there is still a need to promote all types of diversity at NASA so that NASA reflects the richness of the United States as a whole.  That means diversity of gender, background, ethnicity, mindset, and everything else that Mamta mentioned in her blog.  Diversity of people promotes diversity of ideas and therefore greater innovation, and innovation is what NASA should be about.  So, I am so proud to highlight the women of NASA and their amazing diversity of backgrounds on our website, and I am so pleased that we are expanding the site to include even more women and their stories.

 

Please do think of posting a blog to this site with your thoughts.  We want to encourage innovation through your participation!

Women's History Month Shout Out

“At a time when women had few options and were treated as property, Hypatia move freely and unself-consciously through the traditional male domains.  By all accounts, she was a great beauty.” – Carl Sagan on Hypatia of Alexandria, in Cosmos

(ca. AD 350/370–415) Hypatia of Alexandria was a mathematician and philosopher.  She was the daughter of a mathematician named Theon Alexandricus and last librarian of the Library of Alexandria in ancient Roman Egypt.  Hypatia was educated in Athens and Italy and became the head of the Platonist school at Alexandria.  Her notable students included Plato and Aristotle.  Hypatia is regarded as the first woman to have made substantial contributions to math.

Sources: Oregon State University and Wikipedia (for birth dates)