Does The NASA CIO Endorse Or Oppose Gender Bias? Answer: Both

Meet NASA Datanauts: 2016 Class, OpenNASA

"In 2014, the Open Innovation team noticed a disparity in the ratio of International Space Apps Challenge participants -- roughly 80% men to 20% women. We embarked on a quest to better understand how to attract more women and girls to data by conducting a year-long study, which included a literature review followed by dozens of interviews with leading women's organizations in the data, tech, and startup communities. ... Based on what we learned, we created two new initiatives to signal a welcome environment for women: Space Apps Data Bootcamp, as a one-day pre-event to get introduced to data and code before the annual hackathon; and NASA Datanauts, as a year-old engagement to learn and practice data science skills. The all-female 2015 Founding Class of Datanauts, served two important functions -- to signal NASA is a welcome environment, and to help us understand their communities and how to design data engagements that attract more women and newcomers to NASA data and the new field of data science."

Keith's note: I totally get the issues that the NASA CIO's Open Innovation Team recognized and heartily applaud their decision to address them. But what I simply do not understand how they can discriminate on the basis of gender so as to only allow females to participate in the 2015 Founding Class of Datanauts. Males apparently were not offered an equal opportunity to participate in this government program. I am sure we all know that a lot of the issues facing women being studied by NASA CIO are faced by males too. I am certain that there are hundreds of rules and laws that are supposed to prevent such blatant discrimination. To be clear the new class (2016) has males in it but a quick unscientific survey of first names and pronouns makes it look like only 6 out of 49 are males. I am sure I counted/guessed wrong. I have sent an email to Beth Beck and NASA CIO Renee Wynn asking "Can you please explain to me how NASA, a government agency, could legally discriminiate against males in the selection of its "all-female 2015 Founding Class of Datanauts"?". The NASA CIO office never responds to media inquiries - so I do not expect them to start responding now.

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