Am I invited to this AWM event?
The short answer: Yes! AWM events are open to University of Michigan graduate students, post-docs, faculty, and staff.
The longer answer: Yes AND please consider the following.
Our intersectional identities affect how we experience the world. Studying/teaching/researching math as a woman, non-binary person, a trans person, a queer person, a person of color, etc. can be an isolating experience. Feeling alone or othered in your field can lead to stereotype threat, imposter syndrome, and leaving math altogether.
Our goal in holding AWM events is to create supportive spaces for people in the Michigan math community to support and build towards gender equity. Our events do this by having a warm and welcoming atmosphere, providing food and/or a shared activity to build community, and achieving a more gender diverse ratio than other math spaces.
We want to acknowledge that we can have an AWM chapter because there are actually enough women and non-binary folks to support having a club. There are members of our department whose identities are so under-represented that a club to support them would consist of one or two people. Our Association for Women in Math chapter attempts to support not just women (including trans women) but also non-binary folks, trans men, queer folks, and any other mathematicians that need someone fighting for them. We know we don’t do this perfectly, but we are working to do our best.
If you want to attend an AWM event we welcome you! As Bianca Viray said before her recent colloquium talk, “Oppressed people cannot fix the problem by ourselves.” We invite you to reflect on WHY you want to attend, and HOW your presence can be constructive, rather than perpetuating the status quo. We ask that you:
Come to listen and learn;
Share responsibility for centering marginalized voices in the conversation;
Listen to understand, not to respond;
Maintain hope while confronting facts; and
Reflect before and after the event on what you personally can do to support gender equity in your own classes as a student, in the classes you teach, in your mentoring relationships, and with your colleagues.
FAQs
Here are answers to some questions you might have.
Q: What is the gender ratio like in the Michigan math department?
A: Michigan is a very large department, and due to some conscientious hiring and recruiting efforts, we have a fair number of women and non-binary faculty, post-docs, and graduate students, with plenty of room for more. For example, in the 2023–2024 academic year, 15 out of 58 tenure-track/tenured faculty in the math department are women, and 50 out of 157 PhD students and 12 out of 64 post-docs are women, non-binary, and/or trans. We appreciate the department's efforts to improve these statistics in recent years—in this year’s cohort of first-year graduate students, 10 out of 35 are women, non-binary, and/or trans. On a national level, 24.9% of doctoral students in mathematics and computer sciences across the country in 2021 were women, so there is still a lot of room for improvement.
Q: Do AWM events really make much of a difference?
A: Our AWM chapter helps with recruitment each year by reaching out to admitted graduate students and letting them know Michigan is a good place to study. We strive to create a warm supportive atmosphere in the department so that we retain the women and non-binary folks that choose to come to Michigan, and to ensure that they feel welcome and included in the department. We also work to address challenges that women and non-binary folks face as mathematicians. See our about us page for testimonials from AWM members!
Q: How can I learn more about being a good ally?
A: Michigan has many resources. A few are the office for Women and Science in Engineering, the Center for the Education of Women+, the Spectrum Center, and the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching.