Women’s participation in space exploration- Then and Now
“Without women, we stood in space on one leg only” — Vladimir Dzhanibekov
We all are aware of 𝗁𝗈𝗐 there has been a persistent gap in the number of men and women who pursue careers in STEM with women lagging far behind. Including other fields in the industry, these differences have been evident in the field of space exploration as well.
(𝖲𝖳𝖤𝖬 — 𝖲𝖼𝗂𝖾𝗇𝖼𝖾, 𝖳𝖾𝖼𝗁𝗇𝗈𝗅𝗈𝗀𝗒, 𝖤𝗇𝗀𝗂𝗇𝖾𝖾𝗋𝗂𝗇𝗀, 𝖬𝖺𝗍𝗁)
Just a while ago
Apollo 11 - Trip to the Moon(1969)
In contrast to what I talked about till now, there indeed was the participation of women in the Apollo 11 mission. Thousands of women held the positions of human computers, who did all sorts of calculations that made spaceflight possible. Katherine Johnson was one among them, who not only was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom but also got a movie made on her and two other marvelous women, called “Hidden Figures”. There were also programmers, one of which was best-known, Margaret Hamilton, who too was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama himself. Some women engineers had their shares of contributions like one of NASA’s first, JoAnn Morgan.
Despite all this, one seat which remained unfilled by the women was in the spacecraft. You might be thinking it must be because women weren’t willing to be astronauts or that no one thought about sending them to space.
Well, take a look at this.
Before Apollo, William Randolph, a physician who did all kinds of psychological and physical testing for the astronauts, thought that women might be good candidates for space travel.
“Wow! Finally someone to think about equality”.
I am sorry but his interest in sending women to space wasn’t rooted in high ideas of equity or feminism. The sole purpose behind his idea was to maintain the so-called prenotion of social order. Simply put, he wanted women to participate in space exploration for assisting the men and do chores that were considered to be pink-collar jobs. So people did think of sending women to space, but not with so-called right intentions.
The scenario was quite similar throughout the globe.
Not so fun fact: In March 2019, the all-woman spacewalk was canceled because there were not enough medium-sized spacesuits.
Progression
The less opportunity phase for women however lasted as short as a day lasts in Jupiter. After Valentina Tereshkova was sent to space in 1963, things changed ever since. When this had happened, only 12 other people had been to space, so it was quite a big deal.
The end of certain laws from the 1970s onward aided women to get into STEM-related fields and that, in turn, opened up copious opportunities in space exploration as well.
A few masterful landmarks set since then:
· Sally Ride became the first American woman in space (1983)
· First American woman to walk in space — Kathryn Sullivan (1984)
· Jessica Meir and Christina Koch performed the first all-female spacewalk (1984)
· NASA’s First female shuttle pilot and commander — Eileen M. Collins (1995)
· First Indian woman in space — Kalpana Chawla (1996)
· Peggy Whitson holds the US record for the most time spent in space at 665 days (2002)
Plans and My opinion
It was declared in March 2019, that goal of NASA should be to land the first woman on the Moon by 2024.
Name of this mission?
Artemis (Sister of Apollo & Goddess of the Moon).
Suits well does not it?
No doubt, for this to accomplish, a lot of political and public support would be needed. However, the number of surveys have shown that there is a significant gap between men and women who supports the idea of further space exploration programs, with women being in the lower numbers surprisingly.
If you ask me, the whole situation isn’t at its best yet. 566 humans have been to space till now, out of which only 65 are women. That’s around 11.5%. By the way, 50 out of the 65 are from the US only.
I don’t think it’s good enough statistics to be happy about.
I don’t mean to sound like a pessimist, but all I am trying to do is observe what’s true. Things have gotten much better but conscious efforts will be demanded for the gender gap to be filled.
Concluding everything, we together witnessed how the tables have turned from all astronauts being men till end of the 1960s to all the women nailing down all kinds of landmarks achieved so far and changing the scenario in space exploration from performing complex calculations, being engineers, computer programmers to sending themselves into space as mission specialists and commanders.
Before we depart, I want to offer something that would help to keep your hopes high and your spirits motivated. It’s a quote by Sally Ride.
“The stars don’t look bigger, but they do look brighter”.
