New Scientist - July 27, 2019

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27 July 2019 | New Scientist | 41

imagine things you can’t see,” she says. This
rings true for Coleman, who didn’t consider
working as an astronaut until Sally Ride visited
her college to speak. “I just thought, wow, she
seems like me,” says Coleman. “And maybe
that means that if I worked really hard at this,
I could do this too.”
Once Coleman arrived at NASA, she received
direct support from Kathryn Sullivan, who had
been the first US woman to do a spacewalk.
She told Coleman that being an astronaut
didn’t mean giving up on having a family.
“I think there’s really a huge, enormous value
in having people that you can identify with,”
says Coleman.
Getting more women in space means more
women need to apply, says Auñón-Chancellor,
and that requires more women to feel that
becoming an astronaut is within their reach.
“I think a lot of women believe they aren’t
qualified enough, and that’s just inherent
cultural beliefs,” she says. “We need more
women to try.”
We will know that we have really arrived
at equality when women, like men, don’t
have to be extraordinary in order to become
engineers and scientists, says Coleman.
Until then, she says, “if they’re not incredible
superstars, women are still considered to be
not satisfactory”. ❚

obtaining physical science ones were women.
But for engineering, that number dropped to
20 per cent.
Additionally, NASA requires three years
of experience in academia or 1000 hours at
the controls of a jet aircraft. According to the
International Society of Women Airline Pilots,
only 5 per cent of the pilots at 34 major airlines
in the US are women. Back in the 1960s, it was
even worse: the first astronaut candidates
had to be test pilots, roles that were off limits
to women in the US military.
With similar barriers to entry in existence
elsewhere in the world, it is small wonder that
women make up a mere 10 per cent of all space
travellers. But after decades of disparity, the
situation finally appears to be improving. The
Canadian Space Agency’s most recent intake
consisted of one man and one woman, and
NASA accepted five men and seven women
in its most recent class.
This increased diversity is enormously
important, says Jackson. “It’s very hard to

Abigail Beall is a freelance
writer based in Leeds, UK

That being said, she supports NASA’s
freedom to choose the right astronauts for
the spacewalk. This year’s planned all-female
line-up, for example, was a fluke of scheduling
rather than NASA having explicitly picked
the candidates only because of their gender.
“I can’t speak for others, but I would be insulted
if they did,” says Coleman. Others agree that
the system is ruthlessly meritocratic. “Once
you get in the corps, you’re treated the same
across the board,” says NASA astronaut Serena
Auñón-Chancellor, who came back from
her latest role as flight engineer on the ISS in
December 2018. “Nothing is altered because
you’re a man or a woman – whether it’s an
exam on space station systems or an exam
on how to do spacewalks in the pool, which
is a very physically demanding task.”


Level launchpad


But the barriers to equal representation in
space start long before you get to the ISS, says
Libby Jackson, author of A Galaxy of Her Own,
a book telling the stories of women in space.
“One of the barriers is society saying to young
people that there are boys’ jobs and girls’ jobs,”
she says. Being an astronaut is seen to be a
boys’ job, says Jackson.
NASA requires all astronaut candidates
to have a bachelor’s degree in biology,
mathematics, physical sciences or engineering.
According to the US Department of Education,
for all bachelor’s degrees earned in 2015,
43 per cent of students getting mathematics
and statistics degrees and 38 per cent


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The final frontier


Women have always been a minority in space travel, but the situation is slowly improving


First woman in space,
16 June 1963

First US woman
in space,
18 June 1983

First British woman
in space,
18 May 1991

First woman of
colour in space,
12 September 1992

First woman to pilot a
shuttle, 3 February 1995
First woman to command
a shuttle, 23 July 1999

First woman to fly
on a space station,
August 1982
First woman to perform a
spacewalk, 25 July 1984

Valentina Tereshkova Sally Ride Helen Sharman Mae Jemison Eileen Collins
First Chinese
woman in space,
16 June 2012

Svetlana Savitskaya Liu Yang

Female astronauts Male astronauts

SOURCE: SOVFOTO/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES: SPUTNIK/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO: NASA: GAGARIN RESEARCH & TEST COSMONAUT TRAINING CENTER: TKSTEVEN/CC BY 3.0

“ Increased diversity


is enormously


important. It’s hard


to imagine things


you can’t see”

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