Women in space
Tereshkova was a textile-factory assembly worker, rather than a pilot like the male cosmonauts flying at the time, chosen for propaganda value, her devotion to the Communist Party, and her years of experience in sport parachuting, which she used on landing after ejecting from her capsule.
Other countries (USSR, Canada, Japan, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France, South Korea, Italy) have flown one, two or three women in human spaceflight programs.
[8] In 1959, after their research project Woman in Space Earliest of the Air Force Air Research and Development Command was not permitted, Don Flickinger and William Randolph Lovelace II subsequently formed a group of thirteen women US pilots,[9] dubbed by the American press as the "Mercury 13".
Wanting the chance to become astronauts the women took and passed the health screening tests as the men, supervised by Lovelace Clinic staff.
[10] Subsequently, Kamanin crucially gained space program leader Sergey Korolev as a supporter, getting approval six months later for women cosmonauts.
[15][16] In February 1962 from over 400 applicants a group of five female cosmonauts were chosen to be trained for a solo spaceflight in a Vostok spacecraft.
[12] The first woman to fly in space was Valentina Tereshkova, a textile factory worker who was an avid amateur parachutist, as parachuting was necessary for the Earth landing which was made outside the reentry capsule.
[18] Tereshkova flew aboard Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963, completing a 70.8 hour flight making a total of 48 orbits before returning to Earth.
By 1971 NASA had hired staff tasked to address issues of adhering to legal ramifications to include underrepresented people of society.
[28][29] On January 16, 1978, NASA announced the selection of its eighth group of astronaut candidates, which included the first women, six Mission specialists (not pilots): Anna L. Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Judith A. Resnik, Sally K. Ride, Margaret Rhea Seddon, and Kathryn D. Sullivan.
[30] Peggy Whitson became in 2007 the first woman to command the International Space Station,[33] and in October 2009 NASA's first female Chief of the Astronaut Office.
[38] In April 2023 NASA, together with the Canadian Space Agency, announced their selection of the Artemis II crew, the first since the Apollo program to go around the Moon.
When Sally Ride became the first female US astronaut to go into space in 1983, the press asked her questions about her reproductive organs and whether she would cry if things went wrong on the job.
[41] Shannon Lucid, one of the first group of female US astronauts, remembers questions by the press on how her children would handle her being a mother in space.
[50] The UN Sustainable Development Goals suggests that an increase of women being involved in the space industry is important to achieve the SDGs and gender equality, since 90 percent of future jobs will probably require STEM related skills.
[52] 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.
[46] The American scientist and former government official Carloyn Huntoon, has previously said in an interview in 2002 that if the women did not behave in the same way as the guys, it would mean that they were not doing the job properly.
[46] Pesterfield has argued that the unequal number of women and men in space might be an outcome of the socialisation process, starting already in child years.
[46] 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.
NASA reports initially argued that menstruation could pose serious health risks or have a negative effect on performance, although it is now dealt with as a matter of routine.
[67] A study published in 2005 in the International Journal of Impotence Research reported that short-duration missions (no longer than nine days) did not affect "the ability of astronauts to conceive and bear healthy children to term.
[74] Ionizing radiation may destroy the egg cells of a female fetus inside a pregnant woman, rendering the offspring infertile even when grown.
[71] The lack of knowledge about pregnancy and birth control in micro-gravity has been noted in regards to conducting long-term space missions.
[80][81][82][83][84] In February 2003, mission specialists Kalpana Chawla and Laurel Clark were among those killed on re-entry in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
Twenty years later, Yelena Serova became the first Russian woman cosmonaut to visit the International Space Station on September 26, 2014.
In 1985, Chiaki Mukai was selected as one of three Japanese Payload Specialist candidates for the First Material Processing Test (Spacelab-J) that flew aboard STS-47 in 1992.
China's first female astronaut candidates, chosen in 2010 from the ranks of fighter pilots, were required to be married mothers.
[68] The Chinese stated that married women were "more physically and psychologically mature" and that the rule that they had have had children was because of concerns that spaceflight would harm their reproductive organs (including unreleased ova).
Wally Funk, member of the Mercury 13, became the oldest woman in space when she flew on Blue Origin's New Shephard sub-orbital flight on 20 July 2021.
She aimed to fill an unused Soyuz seat bound for the International Space Station because "…creating a spacefaring civilization was one of the most important things we could do in our lifetime.
