women

Dr Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, a botanist for 34 years at NUI Galway, last month won a case against the University who were found to have discriminated against her because of her gender when they failed to promote her to Senior Lecturer. However, five other eligible women lecturers at NUI Galway were also denied promotion in 2009 and have a similarly strong case. Dr Sheehy Skeffington is donating her €70,000 damages to these women to help them pay legal fees to fight the University for their right to be promoted. The fight for women's rights is as important as ever. Women are overwhelmingly under-represented in senior academic roles at third-level institutions in Ireland. Of the Irish institutions examined, NUI Galway has the lowest percentage of women holding senior academic posts with only 21% at Senior Lecturer and above.  In addition, Dr Sheehy Skeffington, granddaughter of famous suffragette Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, has been asked by the University to join a task force designed to review gender equality practices. This is part of the aim to win an Athena SWAN award. She will agree to join the task force ONLY if the University meets three conditions, which she also feels are essential for the award. See e.g. http://michelinesthreeconditions.wordpress.com/ https://www.facebook.com/events/1503189886613331/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular  Please sign this petition and demand that NUI Galway meet Micheline's three conditions. When signing the petition, please indicate if you are NUI Galway staff, student, past staff or past student in the Commentary box.  These are Dr Sheehy Skeffington's three conditions:   1.   That NUI Galway promotes the five other women who, along with Dr. Sheehy Skeffington, were interviewed but not promoted in 2009 when only one woman was promoted out of 15 applying but 16 men were promoted out of 32 applying. The women want their promotion back-dated to 2009 but are willing to forgo any damages because it is the recognition of their worth which means most to them.  2.   That NUI Galway admits that the subsequent round of promotions in 2014, for which there have been at least 20 appeals, was also flawed. That NUI Galway immediately puts this right in a way which at least ensures gender balance among the successful candidates.  The only fair way to do this is to promote all the shortlisted candidates, all of whom were deemed eligible, as half of them were female.   3.   That the aim of any attempt by NUI Galway to address the issue of gender imbalance in senior posts be to have an equal number of women as men in such posts and that NUI Galway starts to achieve this aim by promoting the same percentage of women from each level as the percentage of women at that level. According to recent government statistics, in NUI Galway, there are 53% women lecturers (lowest level), but only 30% senior lecturers and 14% professors. For non-academic posts, it is a similar pattern.        

Congress should pass legislation to expand insurance coverage to give      women with dense breasts access to supplemental breast screening.  Mammograms work well for many women, but they are not as effective in finding cancer for the 40% of women who have dense breasts.  Legislation has been introduced in Congress, such as the Find It Early Act (HR3086) by Representatives Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) and Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01) along with award winning journalist Katie Couric. This Bill would require all health insurance plans to cover supplemental screening and diagnostic mammograms for women at increased risk for developing breast cancer, including having dense breasts, with no cost sharing (co-payment or deductible).   Presently, 21 states plus DC, have passed similar laws for expanded insurance coverage of breast imaging after mammography for women with dense breasts. We are urging Congress to give women in all states equal access to these life-saving screening tools. It is pressing for Congress to do this now before another federal law, which mandates that women be informed of their breast density, becomes effective next September 2024.  Why this issue is so important:  1 in 8 women are diagnosed with breast cancer, and that number has been worsening.  An estimated 43,700 women in the US will die of breast cancer this year. Breast cancer is almost 100% survivable if caught early, but if caught late, a woman has only a 25% 5-year survival rate. Mammography misses up to 50% of breast cancers in women with dense breasts, meaning almost 300,000 women annually will be incorrectly told that they don’t have breast cancer, when they do. More cancers are missed in women with dense breasts, who tend to be younger (30-60 years old), Black, Latina, or Asian. Women with dense breasts are at higher risk for breast cancer and cancer mortality.    71% of breast cancer occurs in dense breasts Having dense breasts is a bigger risk factor than family history.   Imaging technologies exist to detect cancer in dense breasts but are often unavailable because insurance will not cover, and out-of-pocket costs can be significant. Lack of insurance coverage makes physicians reluctant to offer patients these imaging technologies as options.  Providing access to women to the right supplemental screening tool for their breast type can enable the earlier detection of breast cancer.   Please sign this petition to show your support for expanding access to    supplemental breast cancer screening so women with dense breasts can  obtain the right imaging tools to find their cancer early and saves lives.   

Every single base and derived SI unit named after a person is named after a man. There are 19 named SI units, and it is time that we named one after a woman. The derived unit for momentum, kg*m/s, is commonly used and a bit cumbersome as it stands. Emmy Noether made a key contribution to our understanding of the connection between symmetry and conservation laws (including conservation of momentum), so momentum is a natural choice for a unit named in her honor.We urge the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the General Conference on Weights and Measures (GCWM) to consider adopting the "noether" as the SI unit for momentum.

Did you know that not a single major airport in the United States is named for a woman?  Fortunately, the East Bay produced a trailblazing female pilot who would be a great namesake for the Oakland International Airport! Her name is Maggie Gee. Maggie Gee (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M3Y6OBs5jc) was a member of a pioneering group of women in WWII who aided in the war effort by enlisting in the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).  She was also one of only two Chinese-American women to serve as a WASP.  These women pilots worked stateside ferrying planes, towing targets for gunnery training, and serving as instruments instructors for male pilots.  Over 25,000 women applied to the WASP but only 1,074 were accepted and made it through the rigorous training program.  Thirty-eight of these pilots died in service to their country. As a child, Maggie Gee’s family would spend Sundays watching planes take off from the Oakland Airport. This is what first inspired her to fly. At the start of WWII, Maggie passed a drafting test and left her first year of college to work at the Mare Island Naval Shipyards in Vallejo, California.  There, she worked as a draftsman for the engineers who were working on classified projects on US Naval ships needing repair. Once Maggie saved up enough money, she traveled to Nevada and paid $800 for six months of flight training and fifty hours of flying time.   After she soloed and flew the required hours, Maggie applied for the WASP flying training program at Avenger Field, Texas and was accepted into class 44-W-9. After graduation from WASP training, Maggie was sent to Las Vegas Army Air Field, where she served as a tow target pilot for flexible gunnery training for male cadets until the WASP were deactivated on December 20, 1944.  Maggie spent the remainder of her life serving her country and her community. She finished putting herself through school at UC Berkeley and spent the bulk of her career working as a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 2010, Maggie and her fellow WASP received the Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of their significant service. The individuals we, as a society, choose to memorialize publicly create a statement about whose contributions are worthy of recognition. Representation matters. Currently women, and especially women of color, are woefully underrepresented among icons, memorials, and airports. It’s time to change that! We can make it happen. The Oakland Airport is the City’s front door. The City has always prided itself on its unique and rich cultural heritage. Oakland’s history is one of activism and the fight for social justice by marginalized communities. Like so many of the East Bay’s native sons and daughters, Maggie Gee was a groundbreaker. She was one of the first American women trained to fly military aircraft.  She answered her country’s call at a time of dire need.  She dedicated her life to her country and her community. The Maggie Gee Oakland International Airport would provide the perfect welcome for visitors to the Bay Area. We, the family and friends of Maggie Gee, are initiating this petition to demonstrate public support for renaming the Oakland Airport after this extraordinary woman. Please sign this petition to show your support for Maggie Gee and all monument-worthy women! In the words of Maggie Gee, “Women can do anything, everything! I’m proud to be a woman!”