User:HUER00/Women in science

While women have made huge strides in the STEM fields, it is obvious that they are still underrepresented. One of the areas where women are most underrepresented in science is space flight. Out of the 556 people who have traveled to space, only 65 of them were women. This means that only 11% of astronauts have been women.

In the 1960s, the American space program was taking off. However, women were not allowed to be considered for the space program because at the time astronauts were required to be military pilots--a profession that women were not allowed to be a part of. There were other "practical" reasons as well. According to General Don Flickinger of the United States Air Force, there was difficulty "designing and fitting a space suit to accommodate their particular biological needs and functions."

During the early 1960s, the first American astronauts, nicknamed the Mercury 7, were training. At the same time, Dr. William Randolph Lovelace was interested to see if women could manage to go through the same training that the Mercury 7 undergoing at the time. Lovelace recruited thirteen female pilots, called the "Mercury 13", and put them through the same tests that the male astronauts took. As a result, the women actually performed better on these tests than the men of the Mercury 7 did. However, this did not convince NASA officials to allow women in space. In response, congressional hearings were held to investigate discrimination against women in the program. One of the women who testified at the hearing was Jerrie Cobb, the first woman to pass Lovelace's tests. During her testimony, Cobb said:"I find it a little ridiculous when I read in a newspaper that there is a place called Chimp College in New Mexico where they are training chimpanzees for space flight, one a female named Glenda. I think it would be at least as important to let the women undergo this training for space flight."NASA officials also had representatives present, notably astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter, to testify that women are not suited for the space program. Ultimately, no action came from the hearings, and NASA did not put a woman in space until 1983.

Even though the United States did not allow women in space during the 60s or 70s, other countries did. Valentina Tereshkova, a cosmonaut from the Soviet Union, was the first woman to fly in space. Although she had no piloting experience, she flew on the Vostok 6 in 1963. Before going to space, Tereshkova was a textile worker. Although she successfully orbited the earth forty-eight times, the next woman to go to space did not fly until almost twenty years later.

Sally Ride was the third woman to go to space and the first American woman in space. In 1978, Ride and five other women were accepted into the first class of astronauts that allowed women. In 1983, Ride became the first American woman in space when she flew on the Challenger for the STS-7 mission.

NASA has been more inclusive in recent years. The number of women in NASA's astronaut classes has steadily risen since the first class that allowed women in 1978. The most recent class was 45% women, and the class before was 50%. In 2019, the first all-female spacewalk was completed at the International Space Station.