My daughter finished up Space Camp today at the Kennedy Space Center. It’s the second year in a row she’s attended, and she absolutely loves it. She still wants to be a rocket scientist when she grows up, as well as the first female president.
I know I posted last year, in that link above, about how surprising it was to me that there were so few girls at Space Camp; the numbers continue to surprise me. This year, though, we spent some time going through the museum at KSC afterward, and I’m so pleased that society is at least changing from what it was when the space program began.
Everyone knows about the Mercury 13, right? Thirteen women who passed all NASA’s tests–performing better than the men on many of them–who were nevertheless denied the chance to go into space? To me, the sixties don’t seem horribly long ago–I was born in the sixties, after all. Yet walking through the Space Museum, seeing all the portraits and mementos of all the early astronauts–all of whom were male–I was honestly offended. Thank God my daughter isn’t growing up in those times, or in a place where she can’t be valued.
What makes me sad is that I know it still isn’t even, but at least it’s getting there.
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I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Endeavour, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I became the first and only copyeditor ever short-listed for a World Fantasy Award.
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I’ve been meaning to point this out to you for a while, but it just seems so appropriate tonight. Have you seen How I Am Becoming An Astronaut, about one young woman’s journey up the space program ranks (right now she’s a Boeing employee at Kennedy Space Center)?
I did not know about the Mercury 13. Thanks for posting about them.
I was 11 at the time of Apollo 11. My grandfather bought me a souvenir magazine that had an article titled “Astro-Wives: Women Who Wait.”
Gaah. Thank God, indeed, that our daughters are growing up now and not then.
Ah, Deanna. You might agree with T-Rex in this Dinosaur Comic then! Also… you might want to buy the t-shirt for your daughter? Shirt
In my role as The Reluctant Feminist, I have to agree. I’m grateful my parents were supportive of whatever career path I chose.
I can unequivocally state that (at least as far as women in construction engineering is concerned) things are better, treatment-wise. I no longer have men telling me they don’t think I belong in the field simply because I am female. But, case in point: There are only three female safety engineers in my company. That’s our core competency: we are a consulting safety engineering firm with 200 employees.
To say females are underrepresented in my field is the understatement of the year.
I wasn’t familiar with the Mercury 13 until I proofread the book about them a couple years ago. I think things have advanced a good deal since those times, but still have a long way to go–as the recent brouhaha about the “Astro-Nut” (as the New York Post is wont to call her, as well as “star-crossed space cadet” and many more colorful epithets) shows.
I’m older than you are and I’ve been amused at my reaction to the new bank branch manager in our town. I asked him a question and he said he didn’t know, “You’ll have to ask one of the girls.” Although I didn’t say anything I was irritated. My immediate thought was, “Girls? Where? I see a couple of women, or ladies, or tellers, but no girls.”
He later opined that there are a lot of men around who would NOT vote for a woman for president. When he asked me if *I* would vote for a woman for President, I think he was surprised when I said, “It depends on who the woman is. Generally,” I told him, “I’d have no trouble at all voting for a qualified woman for any office.”
Are there a lot of men who think like he does? (I don’t get out much.
;-D)
Just as a side comment — my small company at JSC has hired several “fresh out” new grads, including two young women who just completed BS degrees in Aerospace Engineering. As their direct boss, I’d like to say that they are kicking ass.
And, a few years ago I was working in a lab at JSC that consisted of: two white men, an Egyptian Muslim male, an Indian Hindu woman, and a Vietnamese Buddhist woman. And the only two times that any of these things ever were noticed was when the first woman brought some neat souvenirs from home for everyone in the lab, and when we had an interesting, non-judgmental discussion about how the line taken by Muslim extremists goes against core teachings of Mohammed.
Life in NASA these days is about as gender/race/religion neutral as I could imagine any place being.