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Discrimination and Women in Outer Space
According to the historian Kim McQuaid the American space agency NASA ignored gender issues at the start of the space era, and women were not normally admitted to technical schools or to undergraduate or graduate training in engineering and the physical sciences until the late 1960. However, it is important to note that NASA was not only hiring men in the 1960s, as it employed thousands of women at the time, but there was still notable gendered divisions within the organisation at the time. In the the period between 1972 and 1974, however, the focus on women in NASA became more prominent

In 2023, statistics from the United Nations showed that women are still underrepresented in outer space related occupations. According to numbers from ANOSA only 11 percent of the world’s astronauts are women, 6.6 percent are spacewalkers and 20 percent are in the space workforce. The women employed in the space agency NASA are still more likely to work in lower-ranked jobs, while men are more often employed in higher-ranked occupations, particularly in space crew settings, despite of women having similar qualifications to those of men. There has also been found a larger gender gap in certain jobs such as manufacturing, while downstream application and service jobs have a higher percentage of women employees. The UN Sustainable Development Goals state that an increase of women involvement in the space industry is important to secure the sustainable development goals in order to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, particularly since the UN anticipates that 90 percent of future jobs will require STEM related skills. The promotion of space technology in an inclusive manner is an important step towards achieving the SDG 5B. On the international women’s day in 2023, the Director of Space Technology of the Australian Space Agency, Katherine Bennell-Pegg, said that women are still in the minority in the space industry and that ‘STEM is for everyone’ whilst adding that inclusivity is important. A journal from 1995 suggested that Women have struggled to be taken seriously in space travel since it is largely a male-dominated arena where the male body is the standard while the female body has been seen as ‘contamination’ or uncertainty in otherwise stable environments. For example, the Russian astronaut Elena Olegovna Serova was criticised for her lack of physical capabilities and there was also a focus on her physical appearance. It is common that women in the space industry have typically masculine traits like assertiveness and dominance in the outer space occupations. The female astronaut Carloyn Huntoon, has previously said that some people cannot get over the fact that women and men are not the same, and that NASA would hire women to do jobs, and if they did not behave in the same manner as the guys, it would indicate that they could not do the job properly. Women have reported that they feel safer when there are more women since they can be themselves and are less likely to be seen as inferior in space work environments.

The Socialization Process and Gender Inequalities in Outer Space Occupations

Chris Pesterfield, a lecturer at the University of Bristol, has stated that legal and political changes have been made to allow for women to enter outer space occupations, but that these do not seem to have been as effective as one might have expected. Pesterfield argues that the unbalanced amount of women and men in space might be an outcome of the socialisation process, starting already in child years. For example, boys are more often encouraged to have interests in STEM subjects such as technology and science than girls and there may be societal expectations that gender will influence what a person is good at. Sage found that movie culture has contributed to how society views outer space as a masculine interest. For example, in the film Apollo 13 men appear to possess qualities such as ‘strength’, heroism, and creativeness, whereas the astronaut’s wives appeared to be nurturing, demure and domestically bound

Attempts at Combating Gender Discrimination
There have been attempts at combating gender discrimination within the space sector. For example, the United Nations has made the Space4Women project which is intended to focus on gender related issues in space and identify reasons as to why gender inequality is still an issue in the outer space sector. The project includes women from different backgrounds, professions and countries. One of the mentees in the programme stated that “working for girls and women in science has been empowering, encouraging me to persist in a work environment that is sometimes so hostile and not inclusive”. In October 2017, UNOOSA and UN women also cooperated to organise a ‘Space for Women’ Expert Meeting with the goal of empowering women in space industry occupations. Other ways of increasing the number of women in space occupations include increasing awareness and engaging with decision-makers at a high political level, address gender bias early and inspire girls in primary and secondary education, attract women to space-related higher education, promote gender equality in a professional setting, promote gender equality in entrepreneurship and innovation through for example research funding targets, scientific output targets and public procurement policies. NASA and other international agencies have done more to offer an inclusive environment for women in the past decade. Commercial spaceflight and increased societal emphasis on diversity are also playing a role in boosting participation by women. For example, in 2022 Nicole Aunapu Mann, who studied mechanical engineering at Stanford University and also has military combat background in Iraq and Afghanistan, became the first Native American woman in space and she went on the International Space Station. On the 2023 International Women’s Day, Mann stated that “inequality does stifle success” and that it is important to continue to break barriers and inspire and empower the youth to achieve their dreams

The 'Masculinisation of Outer Space
Some have suggested that the ‘space era’ is a way for terrestrial beings to leave patriarchal ideologies and structures behind, as new societies are created in space. On the other hand, Lovell suggests in her journal article that the ‘masculinisation’ process of outer space has already begun, and that the patriarchy could extend to other locations beyond our planet. Klinger also makes the point that how we produce outer space is linked to the production of socionatures on Earth, therefore feminism also becomes relevant in outer space. Beery also notes that outer space may be a continuation of terrestrial power relations and social dynamics and that space development is ‘business as usual’ and that outer space might function as a ‘utopia’ which is partly attributed to science fiction.