60 years ago, women broke the ceiling to space. More are flying with every mission
Sixty years ago, a small rocket launched from a remote site in the former Soviet Union, taking Valentina Tereshkova on a multi-day mission to Earth's orbit and securing her place in history as the first woman in space.
Her mission, made possible by a humble spacecraft known as Vostok-3KA, included an impressive 48 trips around Earth before returning home via a parachute landing. From liftoff on June 16, 1963, to landing, Tereshkova spent two days, 22 hours, and 50 minutes in space.
It was an accomplishment of historic proportions for women around the world, but across the Atlantic Ocean, it was also bittersweet. It showed the Soviet Union was still eclipsing the United States in human spaceflight firsts just as it had with the first person in space, Yuri Gagarin.
A group of American women known as the Mercury 13, meanwhile, had gone through privately funded training nearly identical to that of NASA's male astronaut corps. They'd hoped to be the ones to break that space barrier but it didn't happen for them. In fact, an American woman wouldn't follow on the Soviet success until 20 years later.
When it comes to women in space, June is a critical month in spaceflight history. Tereshkova flew on June 16, 1963. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space on June 18, 1983, flying a space shuttle mission from Florida.
Fast-forward to 2023, and now, for the most part, women astronauts are the norm. Nearly every crewed mission to the International Space Station in recent years has included at least one woman astronaut or cosmonaut. NASA also has plans to send the first woman to lunar orbit and, during a later mission, land on the surface for the Artemis program.
But that doesn't mean those early frictions in the space enterprise have entirely disappeared. Statistics show increased participation by women across all parts of the industry, but when it comes to gender representation, there is still work to be done. And it's not just about representation – as a spate of reports in 2021 illustrated, sexual harassment and discrimination insidiously live on.
State of the space industry today
Today, women wanting to reach orbit and beyond are likely to face much more favorable conditions: they fly on nearly every public and private mission to the ISS, are being assigned to future Artemis program missions to the moon, and sit in some of the world's most prominent leadership positions.
"This is my 35th year supporting NASA," Karen Fields, a vice president at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, said. "Over last the 20 years, things have really changed as far as women in leadership roles."
NASA centers, for example, are led by more women than ever: seven of the agency's 10 centers are led by women. And at SpaceX, the most prominent commercial spaceflight company, Gwynne Shotwell has helped steer the ship since the company's founding in 2002. Other space-related companies and agencies are seeing similar rises of women to leadership roles.
"These are very high-visibility, very important roles that women are fulfilling in NASA and the space industry," Fields said. "Twenty years ago, I was working by myself in a very technical area with all men and just me. It's very, very different these days."
Eileen Collins, a four-time space shuttle astronaut who became the first woman to pilot and command missions, told Florida Today, part of the Paste BN Network, the growth of women in space has been evolutionary. Though more can be done to improve circumstances, the positive changes she's seen over the years have inspired her to continue pushing for more.
Many of those evolutionary changes, Collins said, began with the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II, an Army program that recruited more than 1,000 women to fly aircraft in support of the allies. From there, women expanded to the Mercury 13 in the 1960s, though they didn't get a chance to fly because NASA required astronaut candidates to be military pilots, a career path available only to men. Then in 1978, NASA's astronaut class included four female mission specialists who all eventually flew on space shuttle missions.
"This was all an evolutionary bringing of women in spaceflight and it paralleled the evolutionary change in society of women becoming more involved in professional jobs," Collins said. "I just happened to be born at the right time when my opportunity to be an astronaut happened to cross paths with the increase in opportunities."
Collins continues to push for more women in the industry, especially among girls who aspire to join STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. She also co-authored a 2021 memoir titled "Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission."
"Because I was in such a unique position as the first woman to pilot and command a space shuttle, I decided to become a professional speaker and write a book," Collins said. "I think I'm fulfilling a need in our world that not many people can fill."
Cutting-edge industry, old problems
Though space is a cutting-edge field that has seen improvements, it has continued to suffer from the ancient problems of sexism and harassment. Organizations from private spaceflight companies to public agencies like NASA have been the subject of behavior accusations in recent years that range from the inappropriate to potentially criminal.
A group of former and current Blue Origin employees published an essay in 2021 calling out sexism at Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company. Dozens joined a Facebook group dedicated to offering support in dealing with inappropriate behavior on the job, leading some to make their stories public. NASA even changed its code of conduct, potentially giving officials more leeway in enforcing bans of people caught behaving badly.
In speaking with more than a dozen women in the industry for a story in 2021, Florida Today found that sexism and harassment continued to be common. Experts agreed that while things have gotten better for women on many fronts, this topic is especially important when seen through the lens of exploration – how will people behave when hundreds, even thousands, begin reaching for Earth orbit and beyond?
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The idealistic nature of space and focus on "the mission" adds to a dangerous dynamic in which women, already a minority in the high-tech workplace, might be willing to put up with unacceptable behaviors to achieve success. If left unresolved, insiders are concerned this culture could someday extend to astronauts on assignment or deep space colonization efforts.
"So many of us entered into this industry thinking we were going to help usher in a better future where there's no more war or poverty or any of these things," said Alexandra Abrams,the co-author of an essay that focused on sexism and harassment at Blue Origin. "Instead, companies are only focusing on technological advancement and leaving the social advancement opportunity in the dust."
Looking ahead
If any astronaut can represent the future of women in space, it's probably Christina Koch. Not only does she hold the record for longest time in space by a woman at 328 days, but she's also been selected for NASA's most prestigious ongoing program: Artemis.
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If schedules hold, Koch will join three others – NASA's Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen – on a trip to the moon no earlier than late 2024. Though their Artemis II mission won't land on the surface, Koch will become the first woman to orbit the moon.
Koch also exemplifies the evolutionary changes Collins mentioned. Aside from her gender, she became an astronaut without the advantage of a military background, opting instead to study engineering and physics.
NASA has more plans beyond that: for the Artemis III mission, which will include a landing, the agency wants to put the first woman and person of color on the surface. The mission's two astronauts have not yet been announced, but it's still likely several years away.
“For the first time in more than 50 years, these individuals – the Artemis II crew – will be the first humans to fly to the vicinity of the moon," Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche said during the Artemis II announcement in April. "Among the crew are the first woman, first person of color, and first Canadian on a lunar mission, and all four astronauts will represent the best of humanity."
Bill Nelson, NASA's administrator, followed up: "This is humanity's crew."