Nasa cancels first all-women spacewalk; shows disregard for women at workplace

Nasa cancelling the first-ever all-women space walk has at its root an institutionalised disregard for women at the work place

Nasa, Nasa first all women spacewalk, International Space Station, gender justice, right sized spacesuits on the ISS, male astronaut, space exploration

NASA had announced earlier that the two women currently on board the ISS, Anne McClain and Christina Koch, would embark on the first all-female spacewalk in history. (Reuters)

Earlier this week, two women astronauts from the US should have suited up and headed outside the International Space Station for a spacewalk—it was touted as a big win for gender justice—but that didn’t happen. NASA had announced earlier that the two women currently on board the ISS, Anne McClain and Christina Koch, would embark on the first all-female spacewalk in history. But, thanks to some last-minute logistics issues and, crucially, the non-availability of the right-sized spacesuits on the ISS—Koch and McClain both needed medium-sized spacesuits, but NASA only had one—a male astronaut, Nick Hague, is taking McClain’s place. News that NASA cancelled the spacewalk—and the fact that it has only one spacesuit available for a size more likely to be worn by women astronauts—did not go down well with observers. Many saw it as proof that women are still not thought of as equal partners in space exploration.

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The Atlantic quoted NASA spokesperson Brandi Dean as saying that the ISS houses six space-suits, two each in medium, large, and extra large. One medium and one extra large are spares, and require hours of work in order to be used. In addition, today, astronauts wear 40-year-old space suits. While the failure to upgrade old equipment can be blamed on funding cuts NASA has had to suffer since the 1990s, NASA’s present embarrassment has a lot to do with the fact that it simply didn’t provide for its women astronauts, even when they were part of such a thoroughly advertised excursion. The first size to go was extra small, followed by small—two sizes that are likely to fit, on average, to a larger number of women better than men. Although space-suit engineers had assumed that women could fit into the same suit sizes as small men, as per Elizabeth Benson, a NASA design engineer also quoted by The Atlantic, this didn’t account for differences in the body shape of men and women, even when they are at the same height and weight. Peggy Whitson, a NASA astronaut who helped build the ISS and who holds the American record for time spent in space, said that the average female body would find it difficult to conduct spacewalks in the suits as they are sized larger. That NASA chose to junk space-suits that would have fit women better in the face of shrinking budget is emblematic of the institutionalised disregard for women across professions. On Earth and off it, this needs to be battled.

This article was first uploaded on March thirty, twenty nineteen, at thirty-eight minutes past twelve in the am.