I got to the 2015 Geological Society of America annual meeting
in Baltimore, Maryland, Sunday morning, November 1, just in time to see the
talk that premiered the Bearded Lady Project trailer,
accompanied by a short background talk by the director and photographer (https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2015AM/webprogram/Paper260529.html).
The Bearded Lady Project “Challenging the Face of Science”
is “a documentary film
and photographic project celebrating the work of female paleontologists and
highlighting the challenges and obstacles they face” (http://thebeardedladyproject.com/).
The central collaborators on the Bearded Lady Project are Lexi Jamieson Marsh
(director), Kelsey Vance (photographer), and Dr. Ellen Currano (paleontologist
and lead subject).
I first became aware of the project as a Twitter follower of Dr. Claire
Belcher, who
tweeted about the project during filming of the segment featuring her research
(http://thebeardedladyproject.com/blog/;
post of November 2, 2015).
One audience question was “Why “bearded lady” for the
project name?” The answer was that some women geoscientists felt that they would be
more acceptable to audiences or students in the world of science if they could
hide behind a male disguise. I understand that perception. When I first started
publishing in the geosciences in the early 1980’s, I had thought I would only
use my first and middle name initials for authorship to disguise my gender (don't anymore).
And, although Dartmouth College, where I got my Master’s degree in 1982, was
very welcoming to women students (it truly was like a very close family), I got
the feeling, in a department where many graduates at that time went
into careers in hard rock or hazards mapping and ore deposits, that to be
accepted as “one of the boys” one had to be able to share stories of
bushwhacking through the woods in the rain, backing a field vehicle into a ditch
(twice), and/or encounters with bears (luckily only saw fresh prints going the
other way). I, therefore, chose a mapping thesis, although another strong reason was
a love of metamorphic petrology and regional geologic synthesis.
However, I was hoping the answer to “why bearded lady?” would
include the “bearded circus lady” metaphor explained on the Project’s webpage http://thebeardedladyproject.com/about/whats-in-a-name/:
bearded ladies in the circus were seen as deviations from the traditional
accepted standard of a woman, just as science was not seen as an acceptable
career for women. The documentary aims to show women geoscientists (or rather
geoscientists who are women) in all research venues, both out in the field and
in the lab, documenting the adventure, similar to goals of Lego STEM women sets
(http://carbonacea.blogspot.com/2015/07/lego-stem-women.html).
Another questioner asked why just paleontologists in the
documentary? The reply was paleontologists are a starting point, and the hope
is to expand to other geoscience disciplines. (The featured scientists are not
chosen but volunteer.) Actually, one of the featured geoscientists is not a
paleontologist: Dr. Claire Belcher, mentioned above, specializes “in the study of natural
fires in the Earth system” (http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Claire_Belcher).
She and her students study fossil charcoal and paleo-wildfire combustion
products in combination with modern fire science research techniques; coal petrography is also part of her research toolkit. Last year at the 2014 GSA annual meeting
in Vancouver, I had posts on two talks by Claire and her students:
http://carbonacea.blogspot.com/2014/10/paleo-wildfires-and-extinctions-at-gsa.html;
http://carbonacea.blogspot.com/2014/10/wildfire-and-extinction-ii-gsa-2014.html)
A very early promotional visual to encourage women in
geoscience was the Career Planning Program slide presentation by the Women’s Geoscientists Committee
(1977-87) of the American Geological Institute (AGI; now the American Geosciences
Institute).
I remember borrowing a copy to show at Dartmouth in ~1981. One of the featured
geologists was Jo Laird, since then professor at the University of New
Hampshire. Jo was also this year’s Outstanding Educator Award winner of the
Association of Women Geoscientists. Jo received her award at the
AWG breakfast, November 2, at GSA. I might point out that coal petrologist, Sue
Rimmer, who has been a co-author with Belcher, was AWG Outstanding Educator in
2007.
AWG also offers various student grant awards; I was fortunate in ~2000 to get a
small Chrysalis scholarship, aimed at women returning to grad school after an
interruption in education.
The Bearded Lady Project also includes large-format still
photography of women geoscientists at work, likewise highlighted in the GSA talk
on Sunday. They announced exciting plans to possibly display those photos in a
gallery-style exhibition at the 2016 GSA annual meeting in Denver!
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