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US & WORLD // MORE SPACE

Two NASA women
make history in all-
female space walk
— but gender equity
a ways off

Alex Stuckey Oct. 18, 2019 Updated: Oct. 18, 2019 1:53 p.m.

Comments
In this image released Friday, Oct. 4, 2019, by NASA, astronauts
Christina Koch, right, and, Jessica Meir pose on the International
Space Station. The first all-female spacewalk is back on, six months
after a flap over spacesuits led to an embarrassing cancellation.
NASA announced Friday that the two U.S. astronauts aboard the
International Space Station will pair up for a spacewalk later this
month. (NASA via AP)
Photo: Associated Press
For the first time in history, the only astronauts who
emerged from the hatch on the International Space Station
and floated out into space were women.
American astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir
conducted the first all-female spacewalk Friday, spending
more than seven hours replacing a battery unit that failed
last week.
The event was celebrated by people across the globe as
an achievement for womankind.
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“Congratulations to (Koch) & (Meir) for leaving their mark
on history with today’s #AllWomanSpacewalk,” Nancy
Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives,
tweeted. “You are an inspiration to women & girls across
America.”
Five hours into the spacewalk, President Donald Trump
called in to congratulate the women on their historic
achievement.
“You’re very brave people,” he said. “You are amazing
people.”
Meir used the call to credit the female astronauts who
came before them.

“We hope we can provide inspiration to everyone, not just

every woman, who has a dream,” she said. “The hard
work certainly did pay off.”
But many felt the milestone should have happened years
ago — after all, the first woman to conduct a spacewalk,
Russian cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, did so in 1984.
Ken Bowersox, acting leader of the agency’s human
exploration program, on Friday had an answer as to why it
took so long: “There are some physical reasons that make
it harder sometimes for women to do spacewalks.”
“It’s a little bit like playing in the NBA, you know I’m too
short to play in the NBA, and sometimes physical
characteristics make a difference in certain activities and
spacewalks are one of those areas where just how your
body is built in shape makes a difference,” Bowersox, a
retired astronaut, said.

Bowersox’s comments — made just minutes before the

historic spacewalk began — illustrate the problem women
have faced for decades at NASA, an agency that has
been slow to make historic strides with women and
minorities, said Laura Seward Forczyk, owner of
Astralytical, a space consulting firm.
“Shame on him … He’s ignoring the history of just how
much women have been oppressed at NASA,” she said.
“There are still people within leadership positions who do
not recognize that there have been and continues to be
biases against women.”
For example, women were barred from participating in the
Apollo program in the 1960s and as a direct result, the
Soviet Union put a woman into space 20 years before the
U.S.
NASA has since improved its inclusion of women in space.
Koch and Meir are members of the 2013 astronaut corps,
which was the first class to be 50 percent women.

But the world learned just how far there is to go in March,

when NASA’s first attempt at an all female spacewalk was
canceled because only one suit fit the women’s small
frames.
“What we’re doing now shows all the work that went in for
the decades prior; all of the women who worked to get us
where we are today,” Meir said during an interview earlier
this month on the station. “The nice thing is, for us, we
don’t even think about it on a daily basis. It’s normal.
We’re part of the team. It’s really nice to see how far we’ve
come.”
Gender inequity
In June 1983, Sally Ride strapped into the Space Shuttle
Challenger and rocketed out of Earth’s atmosphere,
becoming the first American woman to fly in space.
It was a big deal for young girls in the U.S., who had
watched 12 men walk on the moon knowing a woman
would never get that chance. Astronauts at the time were
required to be military-jet test pilots, a job not open to
women.

But the Soviet Union had done the unthinkable — sending

a woman into space — 20 years earlier, when cosmonaut
Valentina Tereshkova orbited the Earth more than 40
times in June 1963.
In fact, the Soviets flew two women in space, the second
being Savitskaya in 1982, before Ride.
The communist country beat the U.S. again with
Savitskaya’s spacewalk in July 1984. America quickly
followed suit, sending Kathryn Sullivan into the vacuum of
space three months later, in October 1984.
Since that time, more than 50 women have flown with the
American space agency, far exceeding other space
programs. Two women have flown for the Chinese
program, and eight women have flown in the
Soviet/Russian program.

In 2013, four of the eight individuals tapped to be

astronauts were women — a ratio that dipped lower in
2017, when five of the 12 picked were women.
Despite these strides, NASA still has not reached equity in
space. Only 32 percent — or 12 — of the 38 astronauts
currently eligible to fly for NASA are women.
The spacewalk ratio is even worse. Meir, who conducted
her first spacewalk Friday, was just the 15th woman to
ever walk in space. There have been 213 male
spacewalkers.
Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson celebrated Koch and
Meir’s accomplishment Friday, but said she’s ready for it
to be common practice.

“This is to honor the women who came before us and

didn’t get the same opportunities that we had,” Dyson
said. “I think we’re just looking for it to be normal.”
Better suits
In March, Koch and fellow astronaut Anne McClain were
scheduled to make the first all-female spacewalk, but it
was abruptly canceled because only one suit fit the
women's smaller frames.
When the space agency first started flying the Space
Shuttle in 1981, there were five suit sizes available for
astronauts to wear. Over the years, that number was
reduced to three: medium, large and extra large.
McClain, who did a spacewalk the week before the walk
with Koch was scheduled to occur, realized she was more
comfortable in a medium-sized hard upper torso — the
spacesuit's shirt — as opposed to the large-sized one she
originally planned to use.

But with only one usable medium-sized hard upper torso

on board, NASA bumped McClain from the walk, allowing
Koch to participate alongside American Nick Hague.
“We do our best to anticipate the spacesuit sizes that each
astronaut will need, based on the spacesuit size they wore
in training on the ground, and in some cases ... astronauts
train in multiple sizes,” said Brandi Dean, a spokeswoman
for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, at the time.
NASA says it is working on that. When the agency earlier
this week unveiled the spacesuits that will be used for the
planned moon mission in 2024, officials said the goal was
to accommodate more people of varying sizes.
During the Association of Space Explorers Planetary
Congress meeting this week in Houston, agency officials
said the new suits — called Exploration Extravehicular
Mobility Unit or xEMU — will have two different sizes that
can be expanded to four with appropriate shoulder
adjustments.
“We tested it on our smallest members of the (astronaut)
corps and it was a pretty comfortable fit,” said astronaut
Kate Rubins, who has been involved in test the xEMU’s.
Agency administrator Jim Bridenstine has repeatedly said
he wants the next woman and the first man to step foot on
the moon in 2024 — a plan that has yet to receive funding
from Congress. But these suits are the next step to
achieving that, he added.
“I will tell you I think this is an important day,” Bridenstine
said. “I will also say that we want to make sure that space
is available to all people and this is another milestone in
that evolution.”
alex.stuckey@chron.com
Alex Stuckey writes about NASA and science for the
Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at
alex.stuckey@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey.
Want more space news? Sign up for her newsletter,
Space Junk, which rockets into your inbox everything
Wednesday morning.

Alex Stuckey
Follow Alex on:
alexdstuckey
Alex Stuckey is the NASA and science reporter for the Chronicle.
Stuckey won a Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for her work on a project
examining the rampant mishandling of sexual assault reports at Utah
colleges while working for The Salt Lake Tribune. She is an
Investigative Reporters and Editors award winner and a Livingston
Award Finalist. She has won a Sigma Delta Chi Award for Excellence
in Public Service Journalism and a Frank A. Blethen Award for Local
Accountability Reporting. She also has won a Society of Professional
Journalists Don Baker Investigative Reporting Award.
An Ohio native, Stuckey has lived in five states since graduating from
Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism in 2012. She is
an avid runner, bookworm and lover of elephants. She shares a
birthday with Ruth Bader Ginsburg (girl power!) and the late Alan
Bean, fourth man to walk on the moon.
She likes puppies more than people.
Past Articles from this Author:
• Two American women make history in all-female spacewalk —
but there still is a long way to go until NASA reaches gender equity
• Houston-based company headed to the moon in 2021
• Budget leader challenges new lunar timeline
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