Posted on by Munira

Mentors Matter

A factor that had the biggest impact on making my journey as a woman in a male-dominated field easier was the luck of having good mentors and role models. I have been fortunate in finding women who I could relate to and who believed in me, which helped me get through tough times and helped my career progress so far.

There is an important difference between a mentor and a role model. A mentor is someone who knows you personally, advocates for you and supports you in a professional capacity. A mentor can be your supervisor, but may even be someone completely outside your narrow field of study. Whereas a role model is someone you may not know personally, but you can relate to in terms of their journey and their values. They often represent something you would like to replicate in your own life or career. Finding mentors and role models can be quite challenging, but the search pays off in many different ways.

Although many postgraduate programmes and universities run mentorship programmes, I have found my mentors informally like most South African students. As an undergrad, I would often ask questions in class and speak to my lecturers and tutors afterwards. This helped me form a relationship with the academics and postgrad students, which made it easier to seek out advice from them when I needed it. If I am struggling with something, I know there are several people who want me to succeed and would be willing to help me – whether it is directing me to resources on writing a good application letter, listening to me vent about a difficult course, or helping me find an internship.

A good mentor will help you progress as a scientist. By sharing their knowledge and experience, they can improve your skills and help you grow as a researcher and as a person. You should also be willing to take their criticism – which should always be constructive – and approach them with respect and eagerness! 

I would like to emphasise that although there are advantages to having a mentor who shares part of your identities, such as your gender, race or religion, for example, a good mentor does not have to be someone who resembles you. As I was working on this post, I attended the UCT Vice Chancellor’s Postgraduate Brunch. During her talk, Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng also mentioned the importance of having a mentor. She shared her definition of a good mentor, as someone who is “‘highly achieved and generous with their knowledge”. To me, these are some of the most important characteristics of a good mentor as well – someone who cares about your progress and can help you grow as an academic. 

In rWhatsApp Image 2019-08-22 at 10.07.25ole models, however, it is more important to have people who you can identify with. When I started studying astrophysics, I didn’t know of any other Muslim women in my field. Like many sciences, astronomers also wanted to stay as far away from anything political as they could, which felt isolating as someone who cares about social justice. It was comforting to me when I stumbled across a blog post about Naziyah Mahmood – a Muslim aerospace engineer who advocates for women in STEM, and seeing Professor Chanda Prescond-Weinstein openly discuss politics, share advice on surviving academia as a woman of colour and – most importantly – happily talk about her work on axions on twitter has been incredibly valuable to my experience as a scientist. 

Up until recently, most portrayals of scientists have focused on white men in lab coats, but fortunately, there has been a shift in popular culture to diversify this image. With movies like Hidden Figures and even seeing women as scientists in the cartoons my 3-year-old niece watches, it’s reassuring to know that, in the future, girls will easily be able to see themselves as scientists.

I hope that this post will inspire you to seek out new mentors and look out for role models. Who inspires you to be a better scientist?

Posted on by Munira

The Gemini Problem

There are two words that will upset most astronomers – ‘astrology’ and ‘aliens’. Although searching for extraterrestrial intelligence has embraced the scientific method in recent times,  (Area 51 memes aside) and the consensus amongst historians and astronomers is that human beings built the pyramids, astrology becomes more mainstream by the day. A recent video clip from The Bachelor Australia that has been making the rounds perfectly captures how most astronomers feel about this situation. So it got me thinking about pseudoscience and astrology in particular.

On the one hand, things like astrology are pretty harmless and have helped people with things like self-improvement and introspection. All of us (including myself) have beliefs that we follow that aren’t scientific at all but improve our lives. On the other hand, we have climate change denialism and the anti-vaccination movement that are causing serious harm to us as human beings and the planet as a whole. The trouble is figuring out where to draw the line. 

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Something else that bothers me about astrology is how it is specifically targeted at women. Young women who are interested in stars and space might be directed to a Refinery29 article about ‘black hole astrology’ (I refuse to link to it) instead of an article talking about the amazing scientific achievement that several women were involved in. Because astronomy is a field where women are underrepresented, it can be frustrating when you want to encourage girls to become scientists but all of the content targeted towards them is about astrology instead. 

My natural reaction to these posts is usually ‘No!!! You’re wrong!!! That’s not how this works!!!’ and panic, rather than taking the time to stop and listen to the other person and understand their reasons for following whatever they are following. Maybe they’re concerned about their children’s health. Maybe the politician that they trust told them that there are more pressing matters – like poverty and a weak economy – to worry about besides carbon emissions. Sometimes – like in the recent debates about plastic – people are living with disabilities and other concerns that you haven’t taken into account.

Added to all of this is that science is complicated. Many people have been told that they are not smart enough to understand something difficult or that ‘Western’ scientists aren’t to be trusted. 

While explaining complicated scientific concepts in a simple way is a challenge science communicators embrace, science remains intimidating to many people. And it is very easy to insult and belittle people – especially when you are (like I’m sometimes guilty of) coming from the ‘I’m a scientist who knows everything’ perspective. 

Like any good scientist, I am trying to figure out a methodical way of engaging with people around controversial topics. So far, I’ve come up with a few different questions to ask myself: ‘Does this belief cause harm?’, ‘Is this a stranger on the internet or someone I know?‘,  ‘Am I educated in this topic well enough to properly counter their argument?’, ‘Would I be insulting a traditional/marginalized belief system?’ and ‘Have I listened to their reasoning behind these claims?’. I think framing my responses to situations with these questions in mind will help my science communication be a little less frustrating and a lot kinder around controversial topics. 

How do you deal with controversial topics and pseudoscience that overlaps with your field? If you have any advice or questions that you ask yourself, please let me know!