April 19, 1982: Astronaut Dr. Sally Ride received the news that she would be the first American woman to enter outer space. Two months later, she broke NASA’s gender barrier as a mission specialist on the space shuttle Challenger. Two decades earlier, the U.S. Congress launched a subcommittee investigation into the lack of women’s representation within NASA. Three cisgender male astronauts testified on July 18, 1962. They argued that women did not possess the qualifications. John Glenn took this furthest. He stated: “[L]ooking at it as we do we have qualified people from these [elite and ideal] schools now to do the job, yes, we do, and for the numbers we are talking about in the foreseeable future, we do. Now, to spend many millions of dollars to additionally qualify other people, whom we don’t particularly need, regardless of sex, creed or color, doesn’t seem right, when we already have these qualified people.” Ride overcame this persistent status quo approach two decades later when she went into outer space.
Citations: U.S. Congress, House, Hearings Before the Special Subcommittee on the Selection of Astronauts, 87th Cong., 2nd sess., July 17-18, 1962, Statement of Colonel John Glenn, (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1962), 74; Marie Lathers, “‘No Official Requirement’: Women, History, Time, and the U.S. Space Program,” Feminist Studies 35, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 16-17, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40607922; “About Dr. Sally Ride,” Sally Ride Science @ UC San Diego, accessed March 27, 2024, https://sallyridescience.ucsd.edu/about/sallyride/about-sallyride/; NASA, “MISSION SPECIALIST - SALLY RIDE,” photograph (location unknown, August 30, 1983), https://catalog.archives.gov/id/354373594.
Comments