Women have penetrated just about every field and some women made the lists of firsts long before the USA. This series will concentrate on female astronauts. The astronauts are Russian, American, British, French, Japanese, South Korean and Canadian. Julie Payette is our home-grown Montreal born astronaut.
Sally Ride’s Amazing Accomplishments as first American woman in space
Awards
- Jefferson Award for Public Service
- The Women’s Research and Education Institute’s American Woman Award
- The two-time winner of the National Spaceflight Medal
- Astronaut Hall of Fame in Kennedy Space Center, 2003, inductee
Author of five children’s books
- To Space and Back
- Voyager: An Adventure to the End of the Solar System
- The Third Planet: Exploring the Earth From Space
- The Mystery of Mars
- Exploring Our Solar System
Sally Ride the Feminist
Sally Ride always was a feminist even from her early days. Her passion is to introduce young girls to science and math. This two subjects were less pursued by women even in her day.
Sally refused to be filmed in traditional women roles while in space, even though every astronaut prepared the food or cleaned the toilets. She also refused flowers after her first mission for again it was the traditional gift given to women.
She did break the gender barrier as the first American woman in space, though a Russian woman was there before her. However, that did not stop media from asking the questions no man was ever asked before such as “will space flight affect your reproductive organs?” Or, “do you weep when things go wrong.” Ride remained calm at the media interrogation and her last comment at the end of the ordeal was, “It may be too bad that our society isn’t further along and that this is such a big deal.”
Aftermath
Even Johnny Carson made a joke at the time, “the shuttle launch was being postponed until Sally Ride could find the purse to match her shoes.” It appeared that a lot of people were waiting for her to fail. Yet, Sally lived through it with dignity and encourages young women to follow in her footsteps to make a way for women to shine on this earth and beyond.
Sources:
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96may/ride.html
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96may/ride.html
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20085312,00.html
