Autobiographical Sketches of Women in Oceanography

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Introductory Letter From Peggy Delaney

In the following pages, you will have the opportunity to explore scientific autobiographies of more than 150 modern women oceanographers. These personal portraits give direct and compelling glimpses into the accomplishments, motivations, challenges, and lives of women scientists who come from a range of countries, institutions, career paths, job titles, levels of seniority, and areas of emphasis in ocean sciences.

Why autobiographies? A number of years back, I taught two undergraduate seminars on "women in science" at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). I found that my fascination with exploring the statistical data—the representation of women in different areas of science, the pipeline issues about career pathways, the different demographics in different fields and countries, the programs that worked to improve science teaching, the changes through time in women's representation in science—was matched only by the students' fascination for stories. While they patiently listened to, read about, and thought about data and their implications, what they most wanted was to read about, hear about, and think about individual women in science—what they had done, how they had faced challenges, what they found rewarding, and why. I decided to explore that same balance in this issue, combining a series of articles largely about data (see issue introduction for an overview of these) with the stories of individual women oceanographers.

To accomplish finding the stories, we used what I term a "viral communication campaign" to solicit potential contributors by e-mail invitation. We started with a list of women oceanographers I could think of—women I had worked with, women in my e-mail address book, women I had been on committees with, women I had been in graduate school with, women I had met at meetings—and complemented this list with contacts that Ellen Kappel, editor of Oceanography magazine, had accumulated, including asking all of the women authors of articles in this issue. There was no attempt to be systematic or comprehensive, no research on web sites to find more names, and only a very few screening rules applied. For example, I didn't include women who were currently graduate students or post-doctoral scholars in my initial solicitations, although we didn't turn these contributions away if they arrived. Because of the very idiosyncratic nature of the starting list and my desire to be as comprehensive as possible, I included a request in the invitation that each woman pass the invitation along to at least two other women oceanographers (the viral component), and I asked the article authors to contact an even larger number.

We asked contributors to provide an autobiographical sketch that covered both the professional and the personal, asking for a contribution roughly 400 words accompanied by one graphic, either a graphic or picture related to their research or a photo of the scientist in any setting. Although contributors were free to focus on any topics they wished in the broad sense of scientific autobiography, we asked them to think about a series of specific questions in framing their responses.

Suggested Topics for Autobiographical Sketches
(1) What are your scientific and research interests?
(2) How did you choose your field of study?
(3) What have you found most rewarding about being an ocean scientist and why?
(4) What have been your greatest career challenges? How have you responded to these challenges?
(5) How have you balanced your career and personal life? How has this balance influenced your career choices and your personal life?
(6) Are the conditions for women in your area of the field different now than when you began your career? If so, how has that affected your work?
(7) What other topics or issues would you like to address?

We gave a relatively short timeline for contributions, and we watched with growing glee as they flowed in. We answered questions about contributors and contributions. We applied no strict limits other than length, and we offered no restrictions on how the invitation could be passed along. We allowed broad interpretation of the boundaries of oceanography. When asked, for example, whether someone who considered herself a marine biologist or a geologist could contribute, we said, yes, if she also considered herself an oceanographer. We assured women that the timing of an invitation's arrival did not reflect any assignment of status; there was no A-list or B-list of invitees. We addressed fears about seeming too negative or too explicit about concerns, finding that pieces were written in balanced fashion. We were impressed by the growing reach of our invitation as responses moved beyond our initial viral inoculation.

Some themes stand out in reading through the autobiographies. Mentors and mentoring play a major role in many careers, both in presence and absence at different career stages, and many women link this to the great joy they find in teaching about oceanography. Some women knew from an early age that they wanted to be oceanographers, others decided later, and some didn't address this issue. Liking a challenge, enjoying solving problems, and working out puzzles are all defined as rewarding and compelling. The interdisciplinary nature of oceanography is important to many. Love of their work and their careers shines through in many autobiographies, with their greatest joy often found at sea or in the field, regardless of harsh conditions. The interactions, relationships, and collaborations with colleagues and students are mentioned as being fulfilling. Research funding comes through as a significant and growing challenge, specifically for those on "soft money." Career paths were sometimes mentioned as non-conventional or circuitous, with some contributors acknowledging obligations to family and/or children as a contributing cause to what they perceived as slow progress. A significant proportion of sketches acknowledge the difficulties and challenges of balancing career and family life. A number mention the effects of overt or implied discrimination, and some women refer to the combined and added challenges of representing a minority ethnic or racial group.

Because of the nature of the "viral communication" used to solicit autobiographies, there is a lot missing. The autobiographies focus most heavily in academic research oceanography, with more limited representation of women in mission-oriented agencies, government agencies, non-profit agencies, and other non-academic career paths in oceanography. There were worries expressed as autobiographies were composed and edited about seeming too negative or about offending potential employers, collaborators, and colleagues. Some women may have chosen not to participate or not to be as forthcoming as they might have been otherwise as a result. There are a suspiciously large number of scientists whose career paths at one time intersected with UCSC over the past two decades, my time on the faculty here, or with the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in the late 1970s and early 1980s (my graduate school days). In closing, I hope you find these stories as interesting as I do, and I thank all of the contributors for their generosity.

Acknowledgements. I would like to thank Lisa Borok, Visitor Programs Manager at the UCSC Seymour Marine Discovery Center for organizing the Fall 2004 public seminar series "Women Who Turn the Tides: Setting New Benchmarks in Marine Science," and for inviting me to design and host a panel discussion in that series about "Women in Marine Science: Discussing Careers and Inspirations." I would like to thank the panelists at that discussion for allowing me to "test drive" these questions on them in a very public setting. I would like to thank Alison Trybom, UCSC, for her able summary notes about the autobiographies. I would especially like to beg the indulgence of all those I missed in the viral campaign; omissions were not deliberate.

— Peggy Delaney, Guest Editor

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Autobiographical sketches of women in oceanography. 2005. Oceanography 18(1):65–246.

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