Women have been a part of the story of geology from the beginning, but they have struggled to gain professional opportunities, equal pay, and respect as scientists for decades. Some have been dismissed, some have been forced to work without pay, and some have been denied credit. This volume highlights the progress of women in geology, including past struggles and how remarkable individuals were able to overcome them, current efforts to draw positive attention and perceptions to women in the science, and recruitment and mentorship efforts to attract and retain the next generation of women in geology. Chapters include the first American women researchers in Antarctica, a survey of Hollywood disaster movies and the casting of women as geologists, social media campaigns such as #365ScienceSelfies, and the stories of the Association for Women Geoscientists and the Earth Science Women’s Network and their work to support and mentor women in geology.

ABSTRACT In 1921, exploration for oil and gas was substantially assisted by the discovery that foraminifera could be used to more accurately correlate subsurface strata. This changed everything. It was at a time when the petroleum industry did not have the benefit of geophysical logging tools or seismic mapping capabilities. Micropaleontology was quickly embraced by industry and almost instantly expanded to global use. Three young women were responsible for this technological breakthrough—Alva Ellisor, Esther Applin née Richards, and Hedwig Kniker. They were hired by Texas oil companies in 1920–1921 for the express purpose of using paleontology, specifically macropaleontology, to try to solve the Gulf Coast stratigraphic problems. They were encouraged to collaborate—in itself an unusual phenomenon in the highly competitive oil and gas business—which they did with grace and skill and which led to their discovery of foraminifera as a major biostratigraphic tool. However, their role was downplayed over time, and by 1975 credit for this important technology was shifted to four men—men who had themselves failed to recognize the application, in fact one had ridiculed the idea, but who quickly embraced it when the women presented their evidence. It is time to recognize their revolutionary contribution to the improved economics of oil-finding as well as to the sciences of biostratigraphy and paleontology.

ABSTRACT Today, women make up about one-third of all scientists who go to Antarctica for research. However, it was just under fifty years ago that the first woman principal investigator was funded by the then United States Antarctic Research Program, which today is known as the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). Colin Bull, Director of the Institute for Polar Studies (today called Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center or BPCRC), had advocated for women to be allowed in Antarctica since 1959. At the time, female graduate students worked on Antarctic research, but were not able to conduct their own fieldwork; thus they relied on men to collect samples and gather the data they needed up until the ban was lifted. One such woman was Lois Jones, whose Ph.D. adviser was The Ohio State University geochemist Dr. Gunter Faure. Once she completed her dissertation on the geochemistry of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, she submitted a proposal for fieldwork in Antarctica to be funded by the USAP. Her proposal was approved and she and her field party of three other women went to Antarctica during the austral summer of 1969–1970. In addition to fieldwork in the Dry Valleys, they gained the honor of being four of the first six women to make it to the South Pole. While the women faced many challenges and chauvinism, their field season was successful. This has led to a legacy of women in Antarctica. Faculty, alumna, and staff from The Ohio State University figure prominently in this story, due to the affiliation of the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center with Ohio State.

ABSTRACT This is one of several chapters based on a themed oral session on “Women and Geology: Who Are We; Where Have We Come From; and Where Are We Going?” presented at the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in 2015. In this chapter, I will attempt to describe why I chose geology as a profession, how it has influenced my career, and what I perceive to be major changes in the geoscience field and more broadly science in general. In addition, I will touch on what has and hasn’t changed and what needs to happen to effect change as well as some ideas with which we can all identify and perhaps make conscious decisions to improve upon. A few lessons learned are interspersed with the hope that some may be useful to those beginning their scientific careers. I chose a career in federal government research rather than academia and that has taken me to places I never would have dreamed possible. A few references are provided to underscore my remarks and personal opinions but in no way are they intended to provide a comprehensive review of the subjects discussed nor do they reflect the views of any federal agency.

ABSTRACT In the 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Erving Goffman conducted gender studies on images and roles in advertising that established a framework for analyzing gender displays in print publications. Current efforts to increase diversity in professions advocate for media outreach to represent diverse populations so the groups they want to attract can imagine themselves fitting in. GSA Today , whether deliberately or not, is doing just that. This paper adapts Goffman’s “gender advertisements” methodology to analyze the portrayal of women in volumes 5 through 25 of GSA Today , the last full twenty years of monthly publications on news and information for the Geological Society of America. Two forms of gender identity are explored: photographs containing people and authors of content articles. While the number of women GSA members increased over the past 20 years, the representation of women in the Society’s publication also increased. In January 1995, women comprised 22% of people pictured in GSA Today and 17% of named authors providing written content. By December 2015, women accounted for 56% of individuals in photos and 36% of content authors. Trends demonstrate periods of rapid increase in representation and plateaus. Shifts in percentages did not correlate directly with changes in Society leadership or GSA Today editorial staff. Thanks to the ease of access to archived publications, future work can provide further insights assessing efforts to inspire career choices in geology and to encourage women to feel valued and welcomed in this profession.

ABSTRACT Much attention has been paid to what students and the general public should know about geoscience content through discipline literacy documents (cf. Geoscience Literacies, 2017), but there is little effort to teach about the identity and life of scientists, especially female geoscientists. The stereotypical view of a scientist being an older white male in a laboratory begins in the second grade, with adults viewing scientists’ personalities as robotic, potentially dangerous, and not necessarily a group that can be trusted (Rutjens and Heine, 2016). Social media can provide a platform to reach audiences that range in age, geographic location, and formal/informal settings. The use of selfies and hashtags on social networking services such as Twitter and Instagram can educate others in what scientists do and what scientists are like. Online campaigns such as #ActualLivingScientist and the Earth Science Women’s Network’s #dayofscience are examples of ways to generate conversation and build community in breaking the scientist stereotype. Whether a campaign is one month in length, as the National Science Foundation’s #NSFstories during Women’s History Month, or a year-long daily snapshot into the life of scientists during #365scienceselfies, the images and stories of female scientists become available to a global audience, especially to teen girls and young women who are more likely to use these visual social media platforms. Existing hashtags will continue and new social media campaigns will emerge with time, but to fully educate others about the lives of female geoscientists, we need to diversify our scientist participation on social media and post honest, unfiltered information about the ups and downs of being a scientist in this discipline.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine the work of Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards who is known more commonly to some individuals as the founder of the field of home economics. Richards’ first scientific studies focused on the compositions of ore minerals and later evolved into studies of water, air, and food quality. The first woman to earn a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she achieved the position of Instructor of Sanitary Chemistry there. Throughout her lifelong career as a scientist, Richards’ work ranged so widely that it is difficult to classify her among any particular group of scientists. Herein I focus on Richards’ scientific work within both the context of the existing knowledge of her time and twenty-first-century developments in science of “the environment.” Rather than reinscribe Richards as the doyen of home economics—an antiquated field of study—I trace her evolution as a scientist and resituate Richards as a source of inspiration for present-day earth scientists who dedicate themselves to the idea that scientific work should be undertaken for the public good.

ABSTRACT Before the mid-to-late twentieth century, women were not welcome on research vessels conducting oceanographic research. Thus, women interested in oceanography in the early twentieth century had to make their mark in ways that did not rely on doing oceanographic fieldwork. Three American women oceanographers made huge impacts in the field prior to the ban of women on ships being lifted in the 1960s: Mary Sears, Elizabeth T. Bunce, and Marie Tharp. Their contributions to oceanography in the first half of the twentieth century helped advance the science, as well as to provide role models for the next generation of women who wanted to be oceanographers. Participation of women in oceanography in the late twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century is assessed using the lists provided by the Deep-Sea Drilling Project, the Ocean Drilling Program, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, and the International Ocean Discovery Program Initial Reports volumes that are publicly available online. Each participant of the shipboard scientific party was evaluated to be male or female, based on the person’s first name. Participation of women over the nearly fifty-year history of this ocean drilling program has increased from an average of 10% to 32% by early 2017, with women serving 45 times as co-chiefs on expeditions. Visibility of women working in oceanography is improving. The stories of women like Marie Tharp are told on the Internet and in books for both children and adults. More of these stories need to be told. Today, women hold important positions within academia and professional organizations, proving that women can play an important role in the discipline, acting as advocates for their science and their gender.

ABSTRACT Katherine Greacen Nelson (1913–1982) achieved many firsts in her career, but sharing her enthusiasm for geology was first and foremost to her. As the first child born into a military family in 1913, Katherine Fielding Greacen was exposed to nature and travel at an early age. By 1934, she received her bachelor degree from Vassar College, winning a prize for excellence in geology. Just four years later, she received the first Ph.D. in geology from Rutgers University and was the first woman awarded a doctorate in any discipline at that school. Soon after, Katherine was hired by Milwaukee-Downer College as the geology/geography department and curator of its Greene Museum. She left campus for the Texas oilfields in 1943 to do her part for the war effort, working as a petroleum geologist and paleontologist. Having returned to Milwaukee-Downer in 1946, she left again in 1954. The newly founded University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM) acquired the Milwaukee-Downer campus in 1956, and Katherine became the first faculty member and chair of the geology department. She later brokered the purchase of the Greene collection for UWM and established a public education program at the museum. Serving many professional societies and lay organizations throughout her life, Nelson was the first woman president of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters in 1952, and the first woman to receive the Neil Miner Award from the National Association of Geology Teachers in 1978. Throughout her career, Katherine’s mission was to help people understand their surroundings, appreciate geologic time and processes, and feel awe for all that has gone before. To these ends, she put her effort and energy into reaching the widest audience by presenting public lectures, helping geology hobbyists, giving museum tours to schoolchildren, writing popularized articles, and giving media interviews. She even explained the importance of Wisconsin’s glacial features to politicians to help establish the Ice Age National Scientific Reserve. Katherine especially enjoyed taking students into the field, many for their first exposure to the landscape. As a result, she inspired generations of students to share their (and her) knowledge and enthusiasm, which continues to support her goal of putting the appreciation of geology and the landscape on par with cultural pursuits.

ABSTRACT Thirty-six theatrically released movies containing characters identified as geologists were analyzed in order to see if Hollywood casting practices reflected real-life demographics of women in geology between 1986 and 2016. Forty-eight actors portrayed geologists in these movies, with fifteen of them women (31%). This figure is only slightly lower than the percentage of members of the Geological Society of America self-identifying as women, which is 34%, as well as the percentage of geoscience jobs in the U.S. workforce being held by women, also at 34%, according to data from the National Science Foundation. Although the percentage of women entering the geologic workforce has increased over the thirty-year period, this analysis finds that the number of women portraying fictional geologists has not. To determine the likelihood of the one of these characters leaving a positive impression on the viewer, the gender demographics of the actors were compared with the movies’ ratings by professional film critics on RottenTomatoes.com. Only three of the fourteen movies featuring women geologists received the highest rating possible compared to thirteen of the twenty-eight movies featuring male geologists. (Movies with both men and women are included in both totals.) The Fresh ratings for the women range between 85%–96%, a potential proxy for their character’s likability. The final metric used to estimate public perceptions of female geologist characters was to look at the box office success for these movies. Nine of the fourteen movies featuring women geologists were considered box office successes in their time, including some films that had received low ratings from professional critics (i.e., 1997’s Dante’s Peak ). By understanding how fictional women in geology are perceived by the public, it is possible to effect change to present more positive representations of such characters on screen. Suggestions include using the Bechdel-Wallace Test and the Finkbeiner Test to create accurate, intelligent, capable characters that could serve as positive role models. Such representation could allow the public to see themselves as geologists, which may result in support or participation by members of the public.

ABSTRACT Women have historically been underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, specifically within geosciences. St. Lawrence University (SLU; ~2400 undergraduates) is bucking that trend with a 19th ranking by Forbes magazine for best colleges for women and minorities in STEM (~60% of majors are female). Specifically, SLU’s geology program has been distinguished for decades due to the individual support and real-world opportunities provided for its students. These characteristics can lend themselves more broadly to improvements for female participation in the geosciences. From the 898 geology graduates since 1950, we analyzed patterns of female involvement using geology department alumnae/i records. Our particular focus was on the top three cohorts of peak female graduation rates: 1978–1982 ( n = 60), 1997–2001 ( n = 28), and 2012–2016 ( n = 28). These data show increased female participation in research within the most recent cohort (2012–2016) with women averaging 71% of senior theses compared to 32% (1997–2001) and 16% (1978–1982). Moreover, the likelihood of women in the department to complete a senior thesis has increased from 13% to 43%, supported by a new fellowship program. These results were qualitatively verified by personal observations of the current geology student body. All geology department students are privileged with opportunities for research, travel, and individual attention. These experiences, combined with our close-knit group of professors and students, are positive aspects of the SLU Geology Department used to construct an applicable model. Current SLU female geology enrollment continues to be strong, showing that this model may strengthen the undergraduate experience and inspire increased female geoscience participation.

ABSTRACT The Association for Women Geoscientists (AWG), founded in 1977, is a non-profit organization that encourages women to pursue a career in the geosciences; enhances their professional development and career opportunities; and exchanges educational, technical, and professional information among women scientists. This chapter chronicles the 40-year history of this organization, including its formation, successes, and struggles. In addition, it highlights (1) the evolution of the role of AWG to combat the barriers that women have faced since its formation, and (2) how this role must evolve in the future in hopes of finally achieving gender equality in the geosciences.

ABSTRACT Informal networks play a critical role in advancing careers by providing peer support. This is particularly important in fields where women are grossly underrepresented, because peer networks can reduce feelings of isolation and provide access to information and opportunities for professional development. The power of networks lies in their ability to mobilize people and information for educational and institutional change. Here we highlight the example of the Earth Science Women’s Network (ESWN), which grew from a group of six female graduate students and postdocs to a non-profit organization with more than 3,000 members worldwide in 15 years. ESWN’s activities support women at all career stages and include a program for undergraduate students. Today, ESWN is partnering with larger professional societies to improve work climate conditions and shape a more inclusive society, particularly in light of incidences of sexual harassment. We describe the evolution of ESWN in response to membership needs and as a model for online and in-person community building. The ESWN community supports peer mentoring that builds upon personal connections to catalyze cultural and institutional change for the advancement and promotion of women in the geosciences.