Dr Kat Ross

They'd rather give a woman a prize for pointing out the pay gap than just pay women.

I have a PhD in astrophysics and am working full time as an astrophysicist and today I had to message a friend to check how to spell astrophysicist 🫠

@astronerdika.bsky.social is one of our incredible team members who has been with #IncludeHer since the start.

She's written an incredible summary and opinion piece with @spaceausdotcom.bsky.social with everything you need to know about our paper 🔥

I cannot stress enough just how incredible this team is

@includeher.bsky.social started cause I was angry and wanted to do something about it

I never expected to find other people who are just as passionate about this work

The #IncludeHer team is such a powerhouse and an inspiration 💜🔥

Image of cover of journal paper with the title “Invisible women: gender representation in high school science courses across Australia”

Check out this paper! ✨

This research is outside my usual bubble, but is something I’m passionate about: #ScienceEducation and #WomenInSTEM

We did a study and found a clear gender bias in senior high school science curricula across Australia 😱

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Just living my best life what can I say 💁‍♀️💅

Last night I was at an event for students and after introducing myself and my research, when I sat down the student next to me SO SINCERELY asked me:

"What started your girl-boss-side-hustle era?"

I will now exclusively refer to @includeher.bsky.social as this from now on 😅

Summary statistics for NSW

Summary statistics for WA

Meanwhile other states take a ‘concept and scientist’ approach, but they fail to mention the contributions of female scientists (e.g. notably, Marie Curie under the topic of radioactivity!) ☢️

If this approach is taken, curricula should also talk about female scientists and their contributions.

Summary statistics for the ACT

Summary statistics for VIC

ACT and VIC take a ‘concept’ approach, avoiding mentions of scientists where possible.

Since many laws/methods were named after men due to historical reasons, this approach does not tell the full story and implicitly promotes the ‘lone-male genius’ narrative.

Pie chart showing the number of male vs female scientists mentioned in a selection of AUS STEM science curricula for yr 11/12. There are 144 males and 1 female mentioned.

We did some research on senior school science curricula across Australia. We looked at Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Environmental Science 🧬🧪✨🪴

And what we found was both alarming and disappointing.

Only 1 female scientist is mentioned across all courses 😱

Image of 7 pie charts showing the number of male and female scientists that are mentioned in STEM school curricula. There are almost no mentions of female scientists.

Let's break down our research across the states and territories.

Only QLD and SA/NT curricula make any mentions of female scientists.

1 female scientist. Any guesses who?

Have a moment to take that image in.

There are SO many male scientists that we put on a pedastool and highlight and yet women and their research is constantly undervalued.

It's time we change it. Give @includeher.bsky.social a follow to see what we're doing to change the narrative of a scientist

That's right folks @includeher.bsky.social is now on bluesky!

Give us a follow, I promise there will be some exciting news dropping very soon 👀🤫

When I first started my PhD I was blown away by my supervisors ability to pick a radio source from coordinates alone

Today I'm glad to report, I was able to be that person for a PhD student and correctly guess their source from coordinates alone.

I'm both proud and a little concerned😅

An adorable white lamb wearing a crochet blue and pink jumper standing next to a person wearing a gumboot with green grass in the background

Last week I worked remotely from my mums farm with this little guy to keep me company. Bluesky meet Hagrid:

I feel like I've forgotten how to do short text posts now? Do I share a joke? Intro post? Dog pic? Cool galaxy???

I dunno. So I'll just go with a theme of my socials and introduce myself as the person who discovered the Sun in my PhD. And now, fun update, I discovered the moon in my first postdoc💁‍♀️