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MATILDA ANOKYE: Hello, good morning, everyone.
My name is Matilda Anokye.
And I'm here today with my colleague, Sarah Schenkein.
And we are Ladies of Landsat.
And we are here today to talk to you
about what Ladies of Landsat stand for and what we do.
I'm pretty sure that if you're on Twitter, on LinkedIn,
you might have seen a post from Ladies of Landsat.
And so today we are here to talk about Ladies of Landsat.
And our theme would be community over competition.
SARAH SCHENKEIN: Hello, my name is Sarah Schenkein.
And I am a new team member of Ladies of Landsat.
In my day job, I am a student contractor for USGS.
And I do research about diversity, equity,
and inclusion in Earth observations.
I first got involved with Ladies of Landsat
a little bit a little over a year
ago with helping with creating these trading cards, which
were displayed at the Landsat 9 launch.
A lot of people were going up and taking pictures
of trading cards of people that they
wanted to connect with and maybe collaborate.
And so that was a really nice way of showing off
some of the Ladies of Landsat.
MATILDA ANOKYE: Awesome, so my name is Matilda Anokye,
as I said before.
And I am a graduate student at Southern University.
I am studying urban forestry.
And my research focus has been in the impacts
of climate change on land cover and ecosystem restoration.
My first interaction with Ladies of Landsat
was with Dr. Morgan Crowley at Google's Geo
for Good in October just a few months ago.
And I have always been a fan of Ladies of Landsat.
And I spoke with her and I am now a new team
member of Ladies of Landsat.
And I help with the publication of the Monday Manuscripts,
which we post on our various social media platforms,
on Twitter, and on LinkedIn.
So we're going to speak more about what we do
and what we stand for.
So as we see here, we have the Ladies
of Landsat organizing team.
And that is Dr. Morgan Crowley, and Dr. Kate Fickas
in the first picture on the left.
Yeah, so that's Dr. Fickas sitting right here
is our leader.
And she coordinated with Dr. Morgan Crowley in 2018
to start Ladies of Landsat.
And then we have Dr. Flavia Mendes from Planet,
Dr. Crista Straub from USGS, Dr. Meghan Halabisky from Digital
Earth Africa, Sheryl Rose Reyes from the Philippines,
and then we have my fellow colleague here,
Sarah Schenkein, and myself, Matilda Anokye.
Yes, so who is a Ladies of Landsat?
Most of the times we get a question, "How do I
become a Lady of Landsat?"
And I remember this is a question
I asked Morgan when I met her.
I asked her, "So how do I become a Lady of Landsat?"
And then she said, Matilda, if you are already
a Lady of Landsat.
Since you want to be a Lady of Landsat,
you're already a Lady of Landsat.
So yes, Ladies of Landsat work on scientists
and allies of all backgrounds, genders, sexual orientation,
ethnicities, social statuses, geographical locations,
and all abilities.
And we also consider ourselves to be sensor agnostic.
This means that even if you don't use Landsat,
the Landset sensor--
if you use [INAUDIBLE] or any other sensors,
you can be a Lady of Landsat.
We are inclusive.
Yes, so our mission statement is that we
aim to make the field of Earth observation
more equitable, inclusive, and accessible for underrepresented
scientists.
So I'm going to hand over to my fellow
colleague here, [INAUDIBLE].
She speaks more on the actions we've
taken so far in amplification.
SARAH SCHENKEIN: So the way that Ladies
of Landsat kind of pursues our mission
is through bottom-up amplification
and representation of female and other underrepresented
voices in Earth observations.
We also call for action and awareness from the top-down,
asking those with power to change
the landscape for all of us.
And so we've had several kind of community get-togethers
of Ladies of Landsat, which have been really wonderful and fun.
We've gotten together at all of these different locations.
Recently I was at the Pecora 22.
And Matilda mentioned being a Geo for Good.
And so this is just a really great way
to show people who otherwise might
feel that they're kind of isolated that no, you
have a community, and that we can get together and celebrate
each other's work.
So that's been really nice.
We also are not alone.
So Ladies of Landsat is on Twitter and actually,
these numbers I think are--
yeah, I think they might be a little behind.
So we actually have even more of a following now.
But we also collaborate with Sisters
of SAR, Women of Waveforms, which is actually archived now,
Dames of Drones.
There are so many of these different organizations
and initiatives that are supporting women.
And there are more as well for other underrepresented
identities.
So we really love to be a community not in competition
with these other groups, because there's so much
more that we can do together.
MATILDA ANOKYE: OK, so another amplification
and representation initiative that we have taken so far
is the Manuscript Monday.
So most of the time there are a lot
of people that raise issues concerning
the fact that the handful of women in remote sensing.
And so Dr. Morgan Crowley started the weekly series
on Monday mornings known as the Manuscript Monday.
[INAUDIBLE] we publish research articles from women
in the Earth observation field.
So we highlight cutting-edge research
of women in the field of remote sensing
from all over the world.
And basically we aim to reduce the proven citation
gap between genders.
And self-nominations are encouraged.
And yes, so as we see here, we have
a lot of highlights so far.
And next, I'm going to talk about the GitHub Manuscript
Repository.
So we have a GitHub repository where
we have all of these manuscripts listed.
And you can go there to find any research
that you want that you think is in line with your research.
And you can cite this research from the woman,
so that you can reduce the gap that we have in cited women
in the Earth observation field.
SARAH SCHENKEIN: Ladies of Landsat
has also collaborated with the USGS with some
of the social scientists on these case studies, which
have been a really beautiful way to show Ladies of Landsat
in a more narrative story format.
So this has widened the view of what an Earth observation
user looks like in that more visual format.
And it's really beautifully illustrated
by [INAUDIBLE] visuals.
MATILDA ANOKYE: OK, so another amplification
and representation initiative was
the podcast that was already being
done by Alistair and Andrew.
And this was handed over to Ladies of Landsat
and the Sisters of SAR.
And recently we have updated this podcast
with two episodes where we highlight women in the Earth
observation field as well.
And they talk about the challenges, the progress
so far in the Earth observation field.
And so if you want to listen to a podcast,
you can just go to any of the--
on Spotify, anywhere that you can listen to podcasts.
And you can find "Scene from Above," the d from d podcast
[INAUDIBLE].
SARAH SCHENKEIN: So in Earth observations,
it's been commonly represented as a leaky pipeline where
the underrepresented scientists are kind
of falling through the cracks.
And so we have some Mythbusters about this, first of all,
starting with the metaphor of the leaky pipeline
to begin with.
So Dr. Berhe and also her colleagues
have described this more like a "hostile obstacle course."
And they get into how--
this isn't a mistake.
It's not like there are just cracks by accident
and some random people are falling out.
No, specific people are falling out.
But they're being pushed out by these obstacles that
are set in their way.
So you can see how people with different identities
have much different experiences.
And that is the reason why there are these discrepancies.
So the first myth that we want to bust
is that there just aren't that many women in remote sensing
and Earth observation.
MATILDA ANOKYE: So the first buster
was that there are not as many women in the Earth observation
field.
And the buster the Ladies of Landsat has
is that we have the Ladies of Landsat Manuscript Monday.
So if you are looking for any article,
if you are looking for any research that
has been done by women, you can just
go to our GitHub repository, as I mentioned earlier.
And you can find all of these publications.
All of these highlight that we have mentioned earlier.
And you can cite these women in your research.
So the myth that there are not enough women in the Earth
observation field has been busted here.
And we have a Ladies of Landsat Manuscript Monday.
They have accounts that you can log in
and you can find all of these women.
And you can cite your research in your research work as well.
SARAH SCHENKEIN: Members of Ladies of Landsat
as well as some of our colleagues
from other organizations have actually
recently published research on the power imbalance
in Earth observations.
This specifically focuses on editorial boards and reviewers
of remote sensing journals.
And so we can see on the left that women
are very underrepresented in these gatekeeping positions
to research being published.
But also on the right-hand side, you
see the very much inflated representation
of United States, China, Italy, Germany,
some of these countries.
And then you can barely see South America and Africa
on this map, because they're so underrepresented.
And so this is a problem of who is involved in deciding
what research gets published.
So visibility and opportunity are critical aspects
to representation.
The next myth is that we just need to hire more women.
All of our problems will be solved.
We just got to hire people.
But no, because there's so much more going on
than just the hiring process.
It's not only recruitment but retention
that's really important, because if this
is a hostile environment to work in,
then people are not going to be as willing to stay
in a hostile work environment.
And you can learn more on this topic tomorrow afternoon,
as I'll be presenting on this particular research study.
But it's just really important to recognize
that there's so much going on other than just the hiring
process.
And so retention is actually a harder and more important
problem than recruitment.
I'll also mention there is ongoing research
about community support and the role of supportive
systems in helping retain people in this field,
because when people have a community that supports them,
they're more able to thrive.
And this is a really important counter
to the hostile environment that some people work in.
OK, so our last myth that we want to bust
is that when people say we are gender blind and colorblind
and we only hire the best candidates--
and this is a nice idea.
But it doesn't really work in reality.
So Project Implicit in collaboration
with Harvard University has done some really great work
on studying implicit bias that all of us have.
You can't live your life in the world that we live in
and not get some bias just ingrained into you.
Even I actually took the test on Project Implicit
to learn about my own biases.
And I was surprised the bias that I even have,
that's not really conscious.
So we see this in hiring, which was also mentioned earlier.
But this is kind of the first step into things,
that this study shows how people with African-American sounding
names are held back for interviews 50% times less
than people with white, Anglo sounding names.
And this is when the resumes are exactly identical.
The research, they just change the name at the top.
They have the identical resume.
And this is what they found.
So if this is happening, there's clearly a problem.
People who think that they're colorblind are not, in reality.
So the last point on this topic is
that we want to create actual mechanisms and actions
to confront our biases, like was described,
like if you block the names and don't look at them when you're
looking at a resume and you only look at the experience.
But also we want to recognize that when people
say that they're colorblind or that they're gender blind,
they're discounting the experiences that people have
had that are really valuable, you know,
that lived experience is something that should also
be considered.
Did you want to mention more of that?
OK, so as we've been talking about,
these processes may be unintentionally biased
towards one group.
And the differences between people
should really be acknowledged.
MATILDA ANOKYE: OK, so thank you so
much for coming and listening to our talk today.
Yes, so I'm pretty sure you've [INAUDIBLE]
learned something about Ladies of Landsat today.
So if you want to help Ladies of Landsat organize events,
we have questions on how to be an active ally.
So don't hesitate to reach out to us on Twitter.
And that is our Twitter handle, @LadiesofLandsat.
And our email is ladiesoflandsat@gmail.com.
And talking about that, today we have a happy hour
social at the VU Rooftop Bar.
That is the address for that.
And this event is hosted by Ladies of Landsat
and sponsored by [INAUDIBLE].
And we'd love to see all there.
And yeah, whatever [INAUDIBLE] that you use,
you're welcome to be at this event.
So thank you so much for coming to listen to us.
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