Diversity and inclusivity are issues of the present as well as of the past for a scientific organization like the RASC; the topics of gender, cultural origins, and "race" are nothing new.* No Society which extends an open invitation to all to join its ranks, and purposes to make positive astronomical contributions to the local, regional, national, and international communities of which it is a part, can afford to ignore questions of who is in, and who is out, which cultures are represented, and which ignored, which matter, and which don't.
A 17th-century monastic advocate of female particiupation in the learned world (Dom Bonaventure also had an interest in astronomy; image © by R.A. Rosenfeld)
