Maker Women In Space Analysis

The documentary, Makers: Women in Space, details the somewhat treacherous path to the allowance of female astronauts. Women in STEM is one of the most controversial and talked about issues in not only academia, but in the workforce in general. From an early age, girls are discouraged from the STEM fields and geared toward the arts or other stereotypically feminine interests. The recent defunding of the American space progra, mNASA, reflects the uphill climb for women in STEM fields. This is not The film details that in the beginning, women only played supporting roles in the space endeavors of the United States. The initial “good candidate” for space was a pilot and, possibly, a low weight woman. The issue being there were no female pilots.

Nichelle Nichols, the women of color and star from Star Trek, even became the face of NASA during this time. Then, the class of “35 new guys” NASA brought in included six women shuttle astronauts, Sally Ride among them. Sally Ride eventually became America’s first woman astronaut in space. Importantly, the women faced a lot of humiliating issues surrounding bodily functions in space; the men facilitating them did not want to deal with such issues like using the restroom or menstruating because they did not know how to accommodate the

Many were, like Poppy Northcutt, “behind the scenes” working and engineering successful flights to and from space. This is significant because it proves that the women were doing the intellectual grunt work but the men were the ones gaining the fame. This has proven a consistent theme for most of history; once one delves into the real facts they find that women were often behind the successful men the entire time doing the real work. The largely thought to be male dominated field was being backed from some of the smartest female minds in America and people, to this day, still do not know that because of the inability for the US to depict and accurate and inclusive historical