According to yet another Pew Research study, Michelle Obama has been making impressions on more people than schoolchildren and designers.
Her public image has maximized, leaving her husband — President Barack Obama — in her shadow. According to Pew Research, 71 percent expressed a favorable view of the First Lady, and only 16 percent expressed an unfavorable view. President Obama holds a 65 percent favorable rating, and 30 percent unfavorable.
Compared to her predecessors, like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Laura Bush, Obama has Wonder Woman appeal. Laura Bush had a 64 percent favorable rating in her first year, while Clinton was deemed only 60 percent favorability. Among opposing parties, both predecessors saw weak favorability ratings, but Obama is liked by at least 50 percent of Republicans.
As a fashion plate (some have compared her sense of style to the late Jackie O.), mother of two growing girls, active gardener and fitness enthusiast, Michelle Obama has inspired millions of young women from all races and ages.
It also doesn’t hurt that her husband’s administration is historically the most “open press, open door” administration to be in the White House, utilizing TV, Web, and social media to reach their audiences. Michelle has graced the covers of magazines around the world as a spokesperson for her causes.
Keep up the great work, Michelle.
A new Pew Research Center study reveals that men are actually “marrying up” to more educated, higher earning women.
Though nearly 15 million women still make under $25,000 a year, despite working full-time, many are going beyond a bachelor’s and reaching master’s and doctorate degrees, thus increasing their pay scale.
After centuries of women being encouraged to marry a wealthy man with a fat pocketbook, it seems the tables have turned.
According to the survey, since the 1970s, the amount of men marrying more educated, higher earning women has doubled. Many women are married to less educated, lower earning men.
“From an economic perspective, these trends have contributed to a gender role reversal in the gains from marriage,” wrote the report’s authors, Richard Fry and D’Vera Cohn.
So what exactly does this mean? It means that while we’re making more money and going to school, we may or may not still be raising the family. The college degree is a definite bonus. Once an institution for men only, the 30-44 age bracket has seen the highest rate of women with college degrees — in fact, more than men for the first time in history.
But, we’re still not making as much. Say what?
According to a 2009 Census Bureau survey, women are only making 77.9 percent of what men make, compared to 52 percent in 1970.
The economy has also played a role in the “role reversal,” too, with more men losing their jobs than women in the current recession, according to Pew researchers. There is, however, no research that men are staying in the home to raise the children while Mommy goes off to make the moolah.
For more information on the statistics and the study, visit the Pew Research Center.
A woman who chargeda path in the male-dominated aviation industry for women, Arlene Elliot, died Sunday, Jan. 17 at her home in Florida. She was 91.
She and her husband, Herb Elliot, co-founded Elliot Aviation. He preceded her in death in 2005, at age 90, and after 66 years of marriage.
Herb Elliot founded the Elliot Flying Service at Cram Field in Davenport, Iowa in 1936. His wife joined him in business in 1946 after working as a secretary. Elliot Aviation now employs over 350 people across the country and Midwest. Arlene Elliott soloed a Piper Cub flight in 1936 and found aviation to one of her passions.
She was also …”widely credited with persuading banks to finance purchases of business aircraft, which allowed more entrepreneurs to gain access to them,” according to AIN Online.
“She loved aviation. The business was really her identity, her true passion,” said Wynn Elliott, who took over the helm of the avionics services company in 1993.
LINK: Read “Elliot Aviation co-founder Arlene Elliot dies,” by Jennifer DeWitt in the Quad-City Times.
As details of the horrific rampage at Fort Hood, Texas began to stream through America’s media, pictures of the killer, Maj. Nadin Hasan, the 12 victims and over 30 wounded surfaced. One of the wounded, policewoman Kim Munley, had an interesting story to share.
On her way to a car appointment, Munley heard about the Ft. Hood rampage and shooting on her police scanner. Instead of an oil change that morning, Munley swung her car around and drove to the scene, where she tended to wounded and opened fire on Hasan, wounding him and ending the rampage.
It’s been said that without her involvement, the shooting would have continued, and many are probably right. Petite in size, Munley’s civil service as a police officer did not end with her badge on the kitchen table. She’s been regarded as a “hero,” but humble Munley said she hasn’t earned that title yet.
Below is a great shoe-leather reporting of Munley’s neighbors, many who say they felt “safer” with her in the neighborhood.
What’s amazing about Kim Munley is not just the fact that she’s a woman in a profession that is still sparse for man/woman ratio, but that she found her way to be of service off the job. She put her life on the line. She’s not a 6′2″ macho muscle builder and yet she took down an attacker at the height of his violence.
My best friend, Kelli (featured as a jailer in the Police Women: Working the Beat photo documentary), recently got a job as a police officer in Camanche, Iowa. She’s been working herself slowly into the profession since college, where she majored in criminal justice. She worked for a short time at the sheriff’s office and for the past two years has worked as a correctional officer at the Clinton County jail. Now she’s going to be a full-fledged police officer.
Does its scare me? Yes. Am I worried? Yes. But I’m so proud of what she’s about to become. She has a strong passion for helping people and getting rid of the bad, and this job will be perfect for her. She is a woman who, if faced in a situation like Kim Munley, would’ve done the same thing, so it honors me to say that about my best friend.
I’m sure we’ll hear much more about Kim Munley in the coming weeks, and when she’s released from the hospital, she will probably have a lot of interviews. But in my opinion, the spotlight can’t shine bright enough for a woman who saved others while almost killing herself.
So what does it take for women in this country to get representation for the work and value we give to society? Arnold Schwartzenegger’s wife. A Kennedy. Maria Shriver.
I won’t be too quick to criticize. Her efforts for recognizing women are commendable. But making it into a special feature seems a little out of touch, although I will say I’ve seen several women and work stories on CNN and other mass media outlets lately.
Shriver’s MSNBC package, “A Woman’s Nation” updates regularly with stories pertaining to women in the marketplace — not the grocery store, but real working women.
It’s interesting to see the people she focuses on. Nancy Pelosi, for example, discusses her role as Speaker of the House and being a woman. Politics has always been the boys’ playing field but the estrogen has started to infiltrate. Watch her video here.
(On a funny side note, when I clicked on the video, an advertisement for Swiffer came up first. Funny. Even with a special package like Woman’s Nation, we don’t forget we’re women.)
It seems Shriver has beaten me to the punch, so instead, I will answer her project with other opinions that may or may not be read. Stay tuned…I’m going to have to play catch up a little, too.
In an attempt to continue the discussion of women and work — a popular topic in the last year especially since the recession — MSNBC has put together a slideshow of women on television through the ages.
Lead characters like Mary Tyler Moore or Candace Bergen’s Murphy Brown are featured as strong women balancing personal life and career. In today’s climate we see Meredith Gray, who’s often accused of setting women back due to her undying devotion to Dr. Shepherd. My opinion? It’s just a fizzled out love story on yet another TV drama.
While I appreciate the efforts, it still seems back-handed. Balancing social and professional lives, eh? Why isn’t it miraculous when men have done so?
Regardless, it’s one of many ways mainstream media have begun paying close attention to women and work. I have a feeling First Lady Michelle Obama has something to do with it, too. While MSNBC doesn’t compare her to Claire Huckstable on “The Cosby Show,” I’m sure others have made that argument.
The First Lady, although clad in her designer clothes and pumps, always looking radiant, is still a tough woman, and I’m not just talking about those envy-inducing arm muscles. She stands side-by-side with her husband, and the president isn’t afraid to admit his success without the woman behind him all along.
This attempt to find a balance of family and work has been a serious debate topic for women in the working world. In the 1980s, many women found themselves going to work (see movie “9 to 5″ and others for proof of the trend) and putting family on the backburner, at least that’s what some traditinoalists think.
Now in the midst of an ecnomic downturn, women’s value in the workplace has skyrocketed. In some industries, like journalism, women are 2:1. The University of Iowa has actually been working vigerously to recruit men into its journalism school and programs.
Not so fast, haters. We can balance it all. We live longer, have cheaper insurance. What makes you think we can’t be Wonderwomen, too?
On a recent episode of The Colber Report: From Iraq, Stephen Colbert interviewed soldiers Tareq Salha, an Arabic interpreter from the 37th FA battalion, and Sgt. Robin Balcom from the 463rd MP Co., both stationed in Baghdad, Iraq.
Colbert, jokingly, says he doesn’t recognize either Salha or Balcom as soldiers like he sees in old World War II movies. Women, for starters, were seldom soldiers in the early 20th century. Though it’s grown, Balcom said there’s nearly 15 percent women in the army now, and it’s growing
Balcom received a combat badge, which Colbert mistakenly claimed she “won,” and she corrected him as “earned.” The audience cheered, and Colbert took his comments back.
from abcfamily.go.com
“Women can’t serve in the infantry, but can serve in the military police,” Balcom said. “There’s no front lines anymore…Now it’s mixed, there are no front lines, women play a very active role now.” The audience erupts with cheers.
It was a fantastic thing to see. Colbert’s USO tour in Iraq is already a great sign of support for a war that somehow gets pushed to the bottom left of every newspaper in the nation. Colbert even showed his support by buzzing his hair off — a look his fans will have to get used to.
These men and women are the reason we continue to live our lives in America, while they go another day without seeing their family and putting their lives at risk.
Women are just as much a part of this incredible war as men, and while they are still the minority, their presence is undeniable.
Hello!
Read the article written about me in the Univeristy of Iowa class media project Iowa Journalist, Spring 2009 edition. Friend and colleague Lindsey Hocker did a wonderful job writing (and taking my picture) for the article. Hopefully I can upload the PDF soon. In the meantime, here’s the web version. Check out the other stories, too.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iowajour/2009spring/stories/Tiesman.html
Thanks for the support and for reading my project! I’ll continue to post stories about strong working women in the meantime, and links to other articles from across the country.
Best,
Erin
Tina McDermott squirms into a 25-pound firefighter uniform equipped with pants, suspenders and a jacket that nearly reaches her knees. At 5-foot-3 and just over 100 pounds, McDermott already feels weighed down with the uniform. She adds the air tank on her back, and now is toting about 50 pounds of additional weight.
“My chiropractor says I do not have the body of a 27-year-old,” McDermott, 27, said. “There’s no way I could do this until I’m 50. I’ll be lucky to make it when I’m 40.”
McDermott is the third and latest woman hired by the Iowa City Fire Department. Her predecessor and colleague, Janet Vest, came on a decade before McDermott; and Vest’s predecessor, Linda Eaton, came nearly two decades before that.
McDermott’s gender, age and, above all, height took the male firefighters aback when she joined the force in 2003. She was younger than some of their daughters and pint-sized compared to the rough-and-tough 6-foot-plus guys roaming Station 1 on Gilbert Street.
Tina McDermott stands next to a fire engine in Firehouse 3 in Iowa City. She is the first female lieutenant of the company.
Today, McDermott and Vest are the only two women among 56 firefighters in Iowa City, and two among some 6,500 women out of an estimated 294,000 career firefighters in the United States.
Iowa City’s blazing history
Iowa City’s fire department is older than the state of Iowa, dating back to 1842, three years after the city’s founding and five years before Iowa joined the union. The first fire company was officially formed in 1844, and the early “fire trucks” were nothing more than a horse and cart, according to Lieutenant Ken Brown, battalion chief in Station 1. Horses were kept at a location near present-day Market Street, and the main station sat where the U.S. Bank parking lot on Washington Street is today, Brown said.
Several additional local companies emerged up to 1871, a time when “stations almost competed with each other,” Brown explained. Finally, a citywide department was established by the early 1900s, and by 1972, three stations served Iowa City in separate areas of town. The same stations continue today, with a fourth in the works.
Over the years, as technology advanced the ability to fight fires, horses and carts were traded in for automobiles and trucks. Today’s apparatuses are so large that many stations have needed remodeling to house their collections of fire engines, and hazardous materials vehicles. Over the last 200 years, the firehouse has seen a change — transitioning from a men-only job to a career for determined women.
First woman firefighter brings battles
The first woman firefighter on record in the United States was Molly Williams, a slave from New York City who joined an engine company around 1815. Women continued to enter fire services throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, according to the National Association of Women in the Fire and Emergency Services, and after World War II, a surge of women in fire and emergency work emerged.
Iowa City’s first female firefighter, Linda Eaton, was hired in 1977. “It was atypical but not unheard of,” Brown said.
Eaton’s three-year service on the force was groundbreaking indeed. Controversy erupted surrounding a disagreement between the fire department’s protocol and Eaton’s desire to breast feed her son while on duty.
According to a January 1979 Associated Press article by The Evening Independent in St. Petersburg, Fl., Eaton said she planned to breast-feed during “personal time” which is often used for activities or sleep, and requested to be exempted from emergency calls.
“It just made me feel stronger than ever about breast-feeding him,” Eaton said in the article. “I still haven’t seen a good reason why I can’t.”
A 24-year-old fellow firefighter — and a man — Jesse King said he agreed with Eaton’s rights.
“The reason they’re so upset is it violates the ‘macho image’ of firefighters,” King said in the same article. “This (nursing a baby) kicks the legs out from under it and lowers it to a human level.”
She won the civil rights case in 1979, but later sued the city of Iowa City for $940,800 for sex discrimination after alleged harassment from male coworkers because of her breast-feeding decision caused her to quit her job, according to a 1984 New York Times brief on the case. She lost the sex discrimination suit in 1984.
Eaton has since moved away from the Iowa City area and few in the department know the full story — although it left a legacy of rumors. McDermott said fewer than five of the men who worked with Eaton at that time remain on the force today, so tensions have settled. But for Janet Vest, who came aboard in 1990, fitting into her job and in with her coworkers was no easy feat. Even members of the community gave her a hard time – some still do to this day– questioning if she was the one who “caused all that trouble.”
At first, many of the men refused to speak to her, and one even insisted she “pull him across the floor” to prove her strength, Vest said. “They really tested me.”
She blames Eaton. “It might be rude to say, but she was not the first female firefighter, she was not a team player,” Vest said. “She really ruined it for me.”
Brown, likewise, thinks Eaton’s main goal was to be the “first woman firefighter,” whereas Vest and McDermott “just wanted to be firefighters in general.”
More than a firefighter
Vest, 41, says she’s a mother first, and then a career firefighter. She could walk away from fighting fires at any time, she said, because there are plenty of jobs but only one family.
The mother of five has seen some ups and downs in her 19-year career, especially after joining the team post-Eaton. “People didn’t trust me,” she recalled. “They didn’t know what they could say around me, afraid I would tell on them. I had to gain their trust.”
In her early years, Vest recalled, she also faced lots of pranks. They weren’t malicious – on the order of hiding her belongings or putting her hairbrush in the toilet. It’s when she started returning the pranks that the men realized she could be one of the gang, she in turn now tests the male rookies.
“Now that I’ve gotten older and wiser, I stay my ground and tell them they have to prove to me that they deserve to be here,” she said.
She believes the men see her as just another firefighter on the force, and that’s just how they look at new hires.
“It’s the best person for the job, doesn’t matter if you’re a man or woman,” Vest said.
Interviewed at the Station 3 firehouse on Lower Muscatine Avenue on a chilly, drizzly March day, Vest confessed she was wary because she did not want to talk about Eaton, whom she refers to as “that person.”
Vest relaxed in a navy blue firefighter sweatsuit and stocking feet. Her brunette bangs hang low, almost over her eyes, and her smile causes mild crinkles around her eyes and mouth.
With nearly two decades on the force, she recalls being an ambitious 23-year-old interested in firefighting after serving some time on a volunteer department. To train for the agility test, she would strap a tank to her back and pound wood with a sledgehammer in the backyard. She says her only struggle between home and work has been finding childcare.
Vest is married to Iowa City police officer Tim Vest, and since she and her husband both work in stressful, violent and sometimes graphic situations and environments, they try to harness those experiences to teach their children, she said.
“I want to make sure they’re safe and taken care of, make sure they’re raised correctly and that they’re good, productive citizens, not someone the police is picking up,” Vest said.
Vest said her children were “born into” her lifestyle and 24-hour work shifts. She even comes to Safety Village at her children’s school in North Liberty in her firefighter gear so her children’s classmates can see what she does for a living.
“I don’t have hobbies, I have children,” she joked. When she’s not in uniform, she dishes up food in the her children’s school cafeterias or roots for them at athletic events.
Though she emphasizes her role as a mom away from the firehouse, at work she holds her own. Brown said some guys have to “swear enough just to keep up with Vest.”
“I’m an open person, I say what I think, which can cause problems and solve problems,” Vest said. “If I feel offended, if someone did me wrong, something didn’t go right, I’ll sit down and tell them how I feel. It’s about not being afraid to make mistakes, and learn from them, as long as you learn from them, is fine.”
Community criticism
The unsettling history of Linda Eaton has still left its mark on Iowa City, no matter how good Vest and McDermott are at their jobs.
“We get asked all the time, ‘Are you going to try to breast feed your baby?!’” McDermott said with a sneer. “It’s really ignorant. It hasn’t been as bad lately, but some people that lived here when that happened aren’t over it yet.”
The community reaction to women firefighters has yet to catch up to those in the firehouse.
McDermott often meets dropped jaws and furrowed brows when she divulges her work. “It takes all sizes,” McDermott said. “It’s not like there’s a height or size requirement.”
Vest is a little less patient with cluless adults.
“I have more discrimination from adults than children,” she said bluntly. “The parents actually need more education than the kids do, because the kids already assume I’m a regular firefighter.”
Sometimes when she or McDermott answers the phone at the firehouse, the person at the end of the line assumes they are merely secretaries.
Joining a staff of men was not easy for the wives to swallow, either. Vest said many firefighter wives were skeptical of her being hired, because rumors had surfaced that Eaton had been engaging in affairs with the men on her team.
Now that hostility has smoothed over with Vest’s experience and dedication to her own marriage and children, she and McDermott take part in e-mail groups, recipe exchanges and activities with the wives of their male counterparts.
McDermott admits through it all that without Vest, she wouldn’t be as comfortable in the position.
“I owe everything to Janet,” McDermott said. “She paved the way for me.”
Small stature, big confidence
McDermott’s dedication as a career firefighter has clearly paid off. In February 2009 she was promoted to lieutenant of Station 2 off Melrose Avenue. She is the first female lieutenant of the company but does not make her gender the claim to fame.
“I just wanted to be a lieutenant,” she said. “And I got lucky. I got a great assignment, a great team, a great job.”
McDermott got her start in firefighting in her hometown of Dubuque, Iowa, where she graduated from high school and joined the volunteer fire department to work alongside her mother, Sharon, who was an emergency room nurse and volunteer paramedic. The daughter’s first medical call – a “full code,” or breathless and without a pulse – was with her mother. “I just wanted to do something that worked with people,” McDermott said.
One year into her associate’s degree in fire science at Madison Area Technical College in Wisconsin, she was called for the physical agility test in Iowa City. The test, which requires participants to crawl through an attic simulator, raise and carry ladders and pull a 200-foot hose, is required before advancing to a full-hire of the department. McDermott passed with flying colors.
Joining Iowa City’s team, McDermott completed her associate’s degree at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa City, and in February 2009, received a bachelor’s degree from Western Illinois University.
In her downtime, McDermott enjoys spending time with her boyfriend, an Iowa City police officer, Colin Fowler. She also enjoys roller derby, a new hobby she picked up when the Old Capitol Rollers came together late last year.
“I haven’t been able to make it to many practices since the promotion,” she said. “But they understand. I’m even trying to recruit some of those girls to be firefighters. My friend Laura was made to be a firefighter.”
Her derbymates gave her a great roller derby name – Tinamite – for her size, tenacity and carrot-red curly hair. McDermott smiles when she says her new nickname. She loves the toughness of the sport, but also the charitable work they do. In late February she and her teammates served a chili supper on skates, and in late March the derby team volunteered to clean plates at the Iowa City Fire Department fish fry.
“We just want to go out and do stuff in the community,” she said.
Off her wheels, McDermott is just as spunky with her fellow firefighters. McDermott exchanges jabs and roughhouses like the rest. On a snowy day in January, she and Lieutenant Brian Rohert threw snowballs as co-worker Chris Lacey backed the truck into the station. While throwing playful insults back and forth, McDermott shook her head at Lacey.
“Lacey loves me for the same reason he hates me, because I give him shit,” she said with a devious grin.
Same team, big differences
The firehouse is where teams of firefighters live on their shifts. They eat together, play together, watch TV together and work together. A large dorm-like room houses beds with small partitions, the only privacy between firefighters on a shift. Bathrooms used to be unisex until late 2008 when the third station of Iowa City Fire Department added a women’s bathroom. All three are now fully equipped with men’s and women’s restrooms.
While working together at Station 1, McDermott and Vest’s bathroom was all female. A decorative shower curtain, pastel-colored hand towels and cosmetics like hair mousse and body spray could be found throughout. The men’s bathroom looked no different than a public restroom.
But restrooms are not the only thing separating men from women in the Iowa City Fire Department. There are differences physically in terms of strength (and weaknesses). The training and physical agility tests are no different for males or females. The weight is the same, the expectations do not change and everything has to be done quickly and without struggle. Those attempting the test have the opportunity to train two or three weekends in advance to get used to the equipment used in the exam. McDermott hired a personal trainer in Madison before her agility tests in Iowa City.
“It’s upper and lower body—a lot of upper,” McDermott said. “A few things I had to learn to do differently to compensate, and since we’ve given the tests and helped out at the practice weekends, I try to pass that [advice] on to people my size.”
McDermott does have more than gender working against her. Her petite frame, however, should not be stereotyped. Brown contests that McDermott is much stronger than him and could probably “lift him over her head.”
Vest, on the other hand, finds herself compensating. Her upper body is not as strong as a man, she admits, so she uses her legs for situations that call for a tight grasp or heavy weight.
“The equipment is also built for men, which makes it hard,” Vest said. “When I first started, my gear was men’s gear. They have very limited women’s size boots and pants and things like that. For my first year, I was in men’s clothes.”
Many years ago, Vest said a friend and her parents came to visit, and the parents were surprised when she wasn’t masculine.
“That’s what they were expecting,” she said. “I think that idea is going out the window, that it has to be someone that’s burly, lesbian. That’s not it. You have to be healthy and strong to an extent, not Mr. or Mrs. T.”
As a working mother and four pregnancies on the job (her first time was twins), Vest has had stints of “light duty” – mainly consisting of office and desk work. She can’t stand it, she said, because she missed fighting fires.
“When you come back [from giving birth] you’re full time. You just climb right back in. It’s not their responsibility to give me time off, I have to prepare my body,” Vest said.
Another difference between the sexes is patience – something Vest takes seriously.
“I think women have much more patience, bedside manner patience,” she said. “We notice little things like, ‘Hey, can I put your slippers on for you first,’ and things like that. Not that every man slaps them in a chair and walks away, but in my experiences, we tune in the comfort things.”
Vest said after a tough call, such as a call involving a child, she usually needs five minutes to “just be alone and be quiet,” but often she needs to “babble and vent, too.”
“Everyone knows they’re affected but no one wants to admit it,” Vest said.
McDermott said the men on the force consult her and Vest for advice on anniversary or birthday gifts for their wives, or even for small favors like babysitting.
“I called Darrall [Brick, fellow firefighter] once. My wash machine was broken and I couldn’t reach my boyfriend,” she said.
“I don’t know a guy on the force that wouldn’t work with Vest or McDermott,” Brown said. “There are a lot of women i wouldn’t want to work with, but there are a lot of men, too.”
Ultimately they work of a firefighter comes down not to sex or gender, emotions or body structure, but just doing the job.
“It’s always gonna be a man’s job, and often a young man’s job,” Brown said. “But there’s always room for women.”
Mary Reno – or Hallsie, as she’s known by colleagues and friends – does not wear a white lab coat with a pocket protector. She’s not a shut-in; she’s not without friends and certainly not without personality.
The image that most people conjure up when they think of a physicist is a nerdy, socially inept scientist, Reno jokes. Oh yes, and male.
She couldn’t defy the stereotype more.
Mary Hall Reno leans against the bookcase in her office -- once belonging to James van Allen -- in her office in Van Allen Hall.
A graduate of Reed College and Stanford University, Reno has what she calls a “satisfying” career as a particle physics professor at The University of Iowa, where she has taught since 1990. Her Belgian husband, Yannick Meurice, also a particle physics professor, has an office right next door in Van Allen Hall.
But Reno’s status as a female physicist is rare indeed. Out of 30 members of UI’s physics and astronomy department, there are only four women.
The pattern is similar elsewhere. Nationally, only 30 percent of science faculty is female – a rise of only 5 percent since 1978. And only 10 percent of physics faculty are women. Internationally, fewer than 25 percent of earned physics degrees belong to women, according to a 2005 study by the American Institute of Physics.
A.N. Nall, author of a study about women scientists in academia, believes at this slow increase, gender ratios in science faculty will not be in balance until 2109. In the Big Ten, gender ratios are still slim – on average, some four to six women among 40 or 50 on each faculty.
Science starter
Reno’s roots begin in Baltimore, Md., where she was born and raised by a lawyer father and stay-at-home mother. She has three siblings – two brothers and one sister – all with advanced degrees in political science, theology and social work, respectively.
She describes herself as an eager learner and “always interested in science,” although she admits now she wasn’t sure if that was the direction she would follow. She enjoyed the equations and numbers in chemistry throughout high school, and found that the equations in physics – as she describes them, “start with a little and move forward,” – interested her most.
After high school, Reno decided to change direction and headed west to Reed College in Portland, Ore., a small school with a strong foundation in the sciences while maintaining a relaxed, avant garde reputation. She began majoring in physics but after two years was restless and unsure of her path. She moved to Haverford College in Haverford, Pa., and took classes in other subjects including astronomy and history. She quickly realized that yes, she wanted to be a physics major and yes, she needed to be at Reed. She transferred back.
She was only one of two females in the lab, she said, and at the time it seemed “normal” but not necessarily easy.
“I was still having trouble seeing myself as a physics major, and I think that was partly because of no female role models, and because I had this misconception of what physicists were like that I didn’t, and certainly didn’t, meet,” she said. “I was also realizing a lot of my physics major friends weren’t meeting that either. So I went away and came back with a fresh look and went, ‘Oh! I like these people!’”
Reno calls her career a very “linear track.” After graduation from Reed in 1980, she moved on to Stanford University where she finished her doctorate in 1985. Her dissertation, “Constraints on Left-Right Symmetric and 0(18) Unified Theory,” was a project analyzing various calculations for experiments based on models of how particles interact. She spent that following summer in the French Alps at a physics summer seminar where she met her husband. They married one year later.
By then she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago. She went on to be a visiting professor position with the Centro de Investigacion y Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politecnico National in Mexcio City in 1988, before joining The University of Iowa as an assistant professor in 1990 – all with her husband at her side.
“If you want to be a professor, you have to go on a straight line,” she said. “In some fields you can go away and come back, but in science there’s a pretty linear progression.”
Thriving in physics
Reno ultimately came to see that her successes and progression in physics have been hinging on her gender. The percentage of women holding bachelor’s degrees in physics was on a steady rise since 1977, and peaked at 23 percent in 2001, according to the American Institute of Physics. Women with bachelor degrees in other sciences, like biology and medicine, have peaked at over 50 percent. The outlook for master’s and doctoral degrees in physics is even bleaker.
To address the gender imbalance in physics, Reno and colleagues on the AIP Committee on the Status of Women in Physics meet twice a year to discuss how to make university departments and programs more “women-friendly.” Currently chair of the committee, Reno keeps pushing for progress for women, starting with her beginning physics classes.
“It seems to be that what’s good for women is good for all,” she said, referring to studies conducted of physics departments across the country.
In an editorial for the fall 2008 newsletter for the Council, Reno writes that after graduation in 1980, she expected she would see an increase, “a wave,” of women in the sciences. “Here we are in 2008,” she wrote, “and I see a ripple, not a wave.”
Another AIP study shows only a slight increase of women in the physics industry from 4 percent to 14 percent in a 30-year span. “This increase is not good enough,” Reno wrote. “These are still often only a handful of women in any physics event or meeting.”
She is eager to point out how medicine has seen nothing but growth for both genders since the 1960s. Law schools, too. So what is keeping women away from the sciences?
“If this were an easy problem, this would already be solved,” Reno said. “I don’t think you’re told you’re not supposed to be smart, but there’s some little thing that’s pushing that idea.”
During her time in Mexico City as a visiting professor alongside her husband, Reno said she often felt excluded from conversation or discussion because of her gender and felt more of a “wife than a professor.” And then the end of her contract came – without warning.
She had just given birth to her second child.
“I had made plans based on the assumption that I would be working the regular time. I would’ve changed my plans if they would’ve told me,” she said, her voice clearly holding hard feelings even 20 years later. “I was so hurt, because these are people with whom I had been working. I was so insulted; really, that they wouldn’t even tell me that I wouldn’t have a new contract.”
Fortunately, she has not felt any discrimination at The University of Iowa, she said.
The “too square” stigma plays a part, too, she added, and perhaps some students just don’t know what physicists do. The work can vary by industry.
From plasma physics for plasma processing to the “whole electronics industry,” to nanotechnology and medicine, physics has a wide range of function, Reno said.
“It all serves a purpose to help society.”
As incoming chair of the department, she hopes to see more high school students attracted to the UI’s physics program. Staff members have made an effort to visit high schools and provide tours or scholarship opportunities to demonstrate how helpful and interesting physics can be as an academic and professional career.
UI Department of Physics and Astronomy resource specialist Dale Stille conducts 50 to 60 experiments a year in K-12 schools with a program called “Hawk-eye on Science.” Shille shows experiments using magnets, balloons and ping-pong balls, along with various other materials, to demonstrate exactly what physics is all about.
“We want to let kids know that physics is an interesting thing to do,” Reno said. “It’s not just a service to the state but a service to the profession.”
Hallsie leads the class
Reno is not into drama or too much excitement. But she’s clearly devoted to the world of physics.
“I really enjoy trying to sort of bring people into physics,” Reno said. “I also get to instill in them some study habits and ways of approaching science.”
Her pace changed in the spring 2009 semester. Usually a teacher to 30 or 40 eager freshmen physics majors, Reno took on a 300-person lecture for Physics 1, filled with mostly freshmen and sophomores from all backgrounds, many engineering and chemistry.
In a deep lecture room where teal-colored padded seats stretch up an incline, her gentle, clear and confident voice echoes off the cement-walled room. Students sit, squirm and whisper as she teaches them the laws of springs and reviews the past day’s equations.
Their attention or lack of attention does not seem to bother her. She continues to direct the class to watch her triangles, formulas and illustrations on the green blackboard. Whispering students are quickly hushed and embarrassed when she asks, “Do you know the answer to this equation, or do you have something to say?”
To break up the sessions and gossip, Reno is trying a new learning approach: a series of remote controls, bought by the students at the beginning of semester, which control the answers to various big-screen displayed computer questions. In a “voting” format, the students can converse and answer questions.
Afterward, Reno discusses the answers and why they are or are not correct. Aside from in-class demonstrations and interactive questions, she assigns online homework for equation problem solving, calling writing of equations like “an English paper, it has to make sense.”
“I think it’s challenging to make, for instance, this engineering class interesting and exciting,” she said. “It took me a while to realize that actually there’s a little performance aspect. My students right now may not say that I realize that, but I do realize that, even if I’m not so dynamic up there. So I guess that’s one challenge is to get hepped up enough for the entertainment.”
When she’s not in front of a classroom and a sea of fresh faces, she is in her office assisting graduate students with their research, many working on theories for publication in academic journals.
“You like to see people be successful at what they want to do. It’s a subject that I love, so it’s nice to see people that come in with a passion for it succeed and move on,” Reno said. “I’ve enjoyed supervising graduate students and seeing people be successful.”
Balancing act
But the challenge still lies ahead in equaling, or at least raising, the female ratio of genders in physics. According to her research, nearly half of all high school physics classes are made of women. Perhaps, Reno said, it is the double-edged sword of a working woman with a family – something that she said isn’t encouraged in society or media.
“At some point I just decided I have to stop reading popular media related to women working because the message was that unless I had to work for financial reasons, that I was a bad mother,” she said. “I think there’s still a lot of that out there.”
Reno is a mother, and a proud one. She and her husband have three daughters – Marielle, 19; Nova, 10 and Naomi, 8. Emma, born in 1987, died in a car accident only a short time after Reno and her husband took sabbatical in 1997. “It was supposed to be an happy, exciting time,” Reno said wearily. “But that time is difficult to think about now.”
Marielle attends Northwestern University and the younger daughters are active in sports and other elementary school events. When they’re sick from school, they often stay in their mom’s office keeping busy with crayons, coloring books and toys. As a family they enjoy hiking and camping.
Reno’s challenges are about to multiply; she’s not sure she’s ready but said she will do it no matter what. In August 2009, she will be the first female chair of The University of Iowa physics department. In her work for the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics, she will make visits to other campuses to evaluate the status of women in physics programs.
She’s also teaching a one-credit mathematics, science and computing class in a UI dorm next fall, along with setting up plans between the physics and engineering colleges and the College of Education to create a straight-forward track for students to receive a teaching certificate after graduation, allowing for more job opportunities in physics education. Despite the various roles she plays and the upcoming responsibilities that weigh on her shoulders, Reno refuses to believe her life is not one of possibilities.
“There’s all this media ‘You can’t have it all,’ and I feel like I’ve got it all,” she said. “It’s a tricky balance but I’ve got a rewarding career, I’m moving along,
