Comment on International Woman's Day

At the urging of my wife, I am writing this comment on International Woman's Day (IWD) as it pertains to meteorology. Yesterday, there were quite a few tweets by young women studying meteorology or starting out in their career who wrote tweets along this line:

When it comes to meteorology one must ask, what glass ceiling?

I'm happy to say the three highest positions in meteorology are all filled by women:

• [Acting] Director of the National Weather Service, Mary Erickson
• Director of the American Meteorological Society, Stella Kafka (6 of the 7 top management positions are filled by women)
• Director of the National Weather Association, Janice Bunting (the president of the association is also a women)

My graduating class at the University of Oklahoma had six men and one women. None of the graduate degrees that year went to a woman. Some of us worked hard over decades to change that by hiring qualified women and making women feel welcome in our science. 

There were photographs yesterday from NWS offices showing a shift with women meteorologists filling all six positions. We have an extraordinary woman, Lisa Teachman, who is the chief meteorologist for the NBC station, KSNW-TV, in Wichita.

So, from my perspective, International Women's Day should be a day of celebration in weather science.