In the military academies and military pilot training programs, women felt pressure to perform their best to keep the door open for other young women to enter. What had been impossible for women pilots in the 1950s and 1960s was an opportunity, even a right, cherished by military women in the 1970s and 1980s, not to be squandered. Despite hazing and lingering sexism in military culture, women found that competence was the best way to earn respect. If they could meet the same standards and do the same job as well as the best, they were likely to be accepted. Still, they faced unrelenting pressure to prove themselves to earn the respect that came more readily for men. As more women came into military aviation, researchers attempted to determine if men and women pilots differed in their personality characteristics. Their findings that pilots generally were quite similar in mentality increased confidence that women would be successful military pilots.

  Progress of women in military aviation continued through the 1980s and 1990s as they became more visible and less a novelty. Yet women pilots were a miniscule fraction of the force, by 1990 amounting to only 1–2 percent. Early concerns about detrimental effects of women’s presence on discipline and group cohesion, fraternization, and the fear of diluting standards gradually evaporated except in one domain: combat. Women flying in combat was the last stand of resistance. The very idea challenged too many taboos and threatened the last bastion of masculine warrior culture.[41]

  As early as 1967, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services had recommended abandoning barriers to women in combat, but there was widespread military and civilian resistance. However, as women participated in military actions in Grenada and Panama in the 1980s, in some instances close enough to combat that their safety was not assured, opinion began to shift.

  The Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991 became the turning point both for women’s wartime presence and for restrictive policies. Women pilots served on the perimeter and sometimes in range of combat operations while flying support missions to deliver troops and cargo, refuel airborne fighter aircraft, and evacuate casualties. In modern warfare, technology blurred the line between combat and noncombat zones, and commanders began to realize that it was impossible to protect women from hostile forces as they carried out their missions.

  Legendary naval aviator Rosemary Mariner, the first woman military pilot to fly a tactical jet in 1974 and the first woman to serve as commanding officer of an operational air squadron during the Gulf War in 1990, was a key figure in pushing for an end to laws and policies that prohibited women from combat duty. She and other military leaders who favored change argued for a mind shift away from gender and toward using the most qualified and capable people available for a mission as a matter of national defense policy. Commanders who wanted to put the best people in positions, combat or otherwise, found it hard to counter that argument, although they still could fall back on social and psychological concerns about integrating the sexes in combat.

  The Persian Gulf War experience brought to a focus mounting pressure to repeal the combat exclusion rule for women military pilots.[42] In 1991, Representative Patricia Schroeder attached to the 1992 Defense Authorization bill a provision to repeal part of the 1948 Women’s Armed Services Integration act that excluded women from aircraft engaged in combat. Her provision passed in the House but set off a storm of protest in the Senate, where debate more broadly considered women in combat roles at sea, on the ground, or in the air. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously opposed repealing the combat exclusion of women, and the Senate replaced the repeal provision in the bill with one to commission a study. However, Congress passed the defense bill with another version of the repeal and a study commission. This action did not immediately open combat aircraft to women, because the secretary of defense ruled out any assignment of women to combat aircraft until the study commission made its recommendations to Congress, thus delaying implementation. One woman Air Force aviator commented, “The march to equality was not steady. It was more like a game where the women started ten points behind, and every time they clawed their way forward, the opposing team ran back over them.” [43]

  After almost two more years of contentious debate and feasibility study, Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed a law in 1993 repealing the combat exclusion rule for women aviators and permitting the services to decide how best to use women in other combat roles. The secretary of defense partially lifted the exclusion for aviation, and Air Force Second Lieutenant Jeannie Flynn became America’s first female combat pilot. Some restrictions remained for years, despite recommendations to remove them to enable women to advance in their careers. In 2003 women finally flew fighters and bombers in the war against Iraq. The policy was further relaxed in 2012 and ended in 2013 upon unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a final step in what the New York Times characterized as “the steady but glacial evolution of the role of American women in war.” [44] By 2016 all the services had plans in place to admit women into all combat roles.

  From that point forward, military women could gain the same combat experience as military men, putting them on a level field for the first time in promotion potential and in applying to be astronauts. Although combat experience was not required of astronauts, it was an advantage that most male pilots had. The standard to do the job had finally shifted from gender to ability. These gradual changes in military aviation policies eventually enabled the selection of highly qualified military women, including academy graduates, test pilots, flight test engineers, and combat veterans, into the astronaut corps from 1990 on. Women had at last met the toughest aviation criteria and were equivalent to the male military pilots who had dominated the astronaut corps for its first three decades.[45] Women were now qualified to be not only astronauts but also pilot astronauts, eligible to pilot the space shuttle and command missions. By the year 2000, Eileen Collins became the first woman to do both.

  Demystifying the Female Body and Psyche

  Ignorance about the female body and psyche posed another barrier to women’s participation in commercial and military aviation and spaceflight. Since ancient times, women’s fertility and menstruation have been viewed with fear or awe as a mystery.[46] As recently as the 1960s in American society, misconceptions existed about what happens to women in the normal course of menstruation and how it might affect their capabilities. Whenever women were poised to enter male-dominant occupations, there was usually an initial assumption that women were biologically and temperamentally unsuitable, because they were not men and they allegedly had a periodic disability.

  That belief infiltrated male-dominant realms and recreations, such as politics, social clubs, and sports. An example: the Amateur Athletic Union banned women from running a distance greater than 1.5 miles because it was too strenuous. Prolonged running might damage the female reproductive system, leaving women unable to have children or the uterus might detach and fall out. Lack of evidence was no deterrent to such beliefs. It was not until 1972 that women could officially run the Boston and New York marathons and not until 1984 that women’s long-distance running events, including the marathon, were added to the Olympics.[47]

  The Lovelace Woman in Space Program was one of the first scientific attempts to study women’s bodies to measure their physical strength and endurance. However, it was not free from mistaken assumptions about women’s fitness. Only one brief scientific paper was published in a 1964 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology from what must have been reams of data collected.[48] The authors, both male research physicians on the Lovelace staff, concluded that women made unreliable astronaut candidates because “their menstrual cycles fundamentally compromised their suitability for space.” This was pure speculation, since nothing in the women’s screening program that paralleled the tests given to men addressed menstruation or its effects on performance. The authors posited that women’s reproductive capabilities might compromise their attentiveness, coordination, decision making, mental stability, and other crucial functions. The authors called for further physiological research on women through an entire menstrual cycle and “a full psychiatric examination or psychoanalysis for cryptic mental aberrations” before women become eligible to venture into space.

  Although it may be laughable today, the idea that women’s physiology was a problem that complicated things for men was not then uncommon. Even more ignorant was the idea that women somehow became different people at different times of the month. The idea of hysteria, or excessive emotion, as a female condition related to the uterus extends back thousands of years. Hysteria is no longer recognized as a mental or physical disorder, but a belief that women are different during their periods remains, with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) named the culprit. Misunderstanding menstruation fostered a rationale—“menstrual politics”—for excluding or at least discrediting women.[49]

  Social taboos on frank discussion of menstruation as a normal physical function led to mistaken notions, as evidenced in a public survey published as The Tampax Report in 1981.[50] The findings at that time were that “one quarter of Americans think women cannot function normally at work while menstruating”; “one third believe that menstruation affects a woman’s thinking ability”; and almost 90 percent of women compared to only two-thirds of the men surveyed thought that menstruation has no effect on job performance. An antidote to such thinking helped women, if not men, dispel misinformed beliefs. A landmark book for the women’s liberation movement during this era, Our Bodies, Ourselves, first published in 1973 and updated in 1984, dealt frankly with gynecological matters and countered inherited cultural notions of femininity as weakness with culturally masculine notions of strength.[51]

  When the idea of women as astronauts arose there was, predictably, a culturally influenced initial response that women were not suitable because females were not as strong and capable as men. A corollary was that their monthly menstrual cycle would complicate spaceflight. At a time when no one knew exactly how the human body responded to weightlessness and the high gravitational force of launch and reentry, there were more uncertainties about the female body. Some of those concerns were practical: Would menstrual blood flow out of the body in weightlessness, or would it stay pooled inside or flow into the abdominal cavity? Would weightlessness ease or exacerbate cramps, headaches, and bloating associated with periods? How many pads and tampons would have to be stowed on board a spacecraft, how much space would they take up, and how would feminine products be disposed of without a health risk to the crew? Besides such hygiene and sanitation concerns, there were the hypotheticals: What if a woman became temperamental or incapacitated during her period? How would that affect mission success?

  None of these questions could be answered until women actually flew in space, and it would take some years to acquire enough data to begin to understand which, if any, were relevant. The article by the Lovelace doctors raised these concerns and suggested a possible solution—to delay menstruation during spaceflight by use of oral hormones. However, menstruation in orbit has not been researched, so it is still unknown whether weightlessness causes any real change. Anecdotally, it does not. Menstruation in space has not been a problem.

  Menstruation is inextricable from women’s sexuality, and that caused further concerns about admitting women into men’s realms. Military leaders worried about fraternization—romances and sexual relationships—that could impair group cohesion and combat readiness, yet they bemoaned separate sleeping quarters and latrines as a burdensome expense. Astronauts’ wives had the same concerns about husbands sharing cockpits, spacecraft, and travel with women. Pundits and psychologists warned of the sexual tension that would arise with both sexes in close quarters. How would that complicate crew relationships and doing the work of a mission successfully? Would men be distracted by and attracted to women crewmates? Would the onus be on women to keep things professional? Military leaders had a further concern about women aviators; military pilots were not allowed to be on medication. What about women on birth control pills? Would an exception for them be necessary when there was an aversion to making gendered exceptions? These are just some of the instances of women’s femaleness seen as an inconvenience in the world of men.

  The perception of women as “Other” too often has led to their treatment as other-than-men. Whether justifications were based on biology or temperament, the idea of women as incapable and unwanted where men were in charge ultimately arose from ignorance of their basic femaleness. Menstruation is a natural part of life for women, and although their experiences may differ, most healthy women find it does not affect their ability to perform their jobs or other responsibilities.

  Cultivating Women Scientists and Engineers

  More women began to pursue higher education in the 1950s, but in a limited range of fields, many preparing to become teachers, nurses, librarians, home economists, or social workers—the “softer” professions deemed appropriate for women. During this prosperous decade, when it was atypical for middle-class white women to work outside the home, if they did so, their primary options without an academic degree were secretarial and office work, retail and customer service work, hairdressing, and other service jobs.

  As women aspiring to professional careers headed to colleges and universities, those students with technical abilities aimed for the fields matching their interests that had elevated men to professional status: medicine, science, and engineering.[52] During the 1950s increasing numbers of collegiate women sought to enroll in undergraduate programs that would prepare them for graduate studies in these fields, but their percentage of bachelor’s degrees awarded was small, less than 1 percent. The sciences were marginally friendlier turf for women than engineering and medicine but still tough to enter, especially physics. Although rare compared to men, enough women scientists had already gained a foothold, even if overshadowed by the men with whom they worked, that there was somewhat less resistance to newcomers in astronomy, mathematics, and chemistry—foundational sciences for aerospace work.

  Engineering and medicine were another story altogether. Women were denied admission to classes and programs based on assumptions that they couldn’t handle the rigorous work, wouldn’t be committed to completing the degree, would marry and have children and thus waste their education, would take a position that should go to a man, would “undermine” the quality of technical education, and on and on. Women faced both social and intellectual discrimination. If women did manage to enroll in engineering or pre-med courses, they all too often were ignored, harassed, mocked, discouraged, and treated as intruders. Many left under such hostility.[53]

  Even worse, at the graduate level, women engineers in training were disadvantaged by lack of restrooms, student housing, laboratory space, financial support, mentors, women professors, honors and awards, and other resources available to men.[54] As if these indignities were not enough, women suffered being called “gal engineers,” “girl engineers,” or “engineeresses” and mocked as unattractive for having “manly” interests. For years, most engineering and medical schools were unwilling to make space for women. The tide finally began to turn when they needed the revenue boost that women’s tuition could provide.

  As historian Margaret Rossiter noted, sexism wasn’t yet a word, and patterns of discrimination were not yet widely recognized.[55] It was easy to exclude, exploit, or marginalize women in technical professions until these inequities were identified, protested, and reformed. Raising consciousness to effect change was the hard work of the 1960s, aided by new and extant organizations.[56] The American Association of University Women (AAUW) was an established, longtime advocate for women’s opportunities in higher education. The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) became an important early force in response to these academic conditions. Founded in 1950 as a networking community for professional and student engineers, the society rapidly established chapters on campuses to support collegiate women and advocate for changes in their treatment. SWE began to recognize common patterns of discrimination and inequality in engineering education and eventually became active in the political struggle for equal rights. Likewise, the National Organization of Women (NOW), founded in 1966, brought attention and critiques to discriminatory attitudes and practices more broadly in society, reinforcing the consciousness of sexism in education and the workplace. The Association for Women in Science (AWS) formed in 1971, engaged in networking and advocacy, fought discrimination, and promoted equal pay and recognition for women scientists.

  The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 established as a priority the education of scientists and engineers to ensure US technical strength in the Cold War era. This national security mindset prompted an uptick in government reports and bulletins encouraging women to seek careers in the physical sciences and engineering. As a largely untapped resource, women in theory could fill shortages in the technical workforce and become essential to the nation’s defense. Women received a share of NDEA graduate fellowships in some fields, but their share in physics and engineering was paltry. Universities and employers were slow to welcome or recruit women, so their status in the technical labor force did not readily change. Women remained almost invisible in the science and engineering community well into the 1960s, with the number of degrees awarded to women a miniscule fraction of the number awarded to men.

  Arising in the context of the civil rights and women’s movements, momentum built toward the passage of laws in the 1970s that gave women a more equitable chance to earn advanced degrees and find employment in the sciences and engineering. What amounted to a legal revolution in women’s education occurred in 1972 when Congress passed and President Richard Nixon signed two landmark laws. The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 amended and extended the reach of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination. Implementation had been slack, and the EEOA provided for necessary enforcement, making it possible to file complaints and win remedies. Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 banned sex discrimination in any program in any educational institution receiving federal funding. Now remembered largely for its effect on women’s athletic programs, Title IX had a profound effect on women’s education by preventing discrimination in admissions and curriculum. It opened the doors to the academic disciplines and schools that had excluded women, empowering female students to take the courses and pursue the degrees they wanted and increasingly engage with women faculty members and mentors as barriers to their employment fell.