{"id":519240,"date":"2010-04-07T11:25:13","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T15:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogs.rj.org,2010:\/rac\/\/2.2641"},"modified":"2010-04-07T11:37:50","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T15:37:50","slug":"breaking-the-cloud-ceiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/519240","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the Cloud Ceiling"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are thirteen human beings in space right now, four of whom are women.<\/a> <\/p>\n

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This is awesome. I’m not sure why it has become humdrum, from a technological and space-exploration point of view, that there are people orbiting the Earth at hundreds of miles, who achieved a velocity sufficient to escape the inexorable tug of our planet’s gravity, and who are now hanging out (get it? “hanging?” because they’re still experiencing micro-gravity!) in the human-built International Space Station. <\/div>\n
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What is certainly not mundane is that four of the thirteen astronauts are women, and that’s more women than have ever been in space before at the same time.<\/div>\n
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The technological hurdles of launching thirteen humans into the cold and hostility of space notwithstanding, I cannot help but reflect on the enormous social challenges that have been overcome in order for four of them to be women. From Valentina Tereshkova<\/a>, who 47 years ago became the first woman in space, to Peggy Whitson<\/a>, current NASA chief astronaut and former commander of the International Space Station, women are participating in space exploration. This serves as a powerful reminder of the progress women have made in the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, and the other nations which have sent women into space as well as the opportunity space presents as a burgeoning frontier. Yes, perhaps this is precisely the sort of “distraction” Jessica Valenti believes is pulling our attention from the ongoing “epidemic of sexism”<\/a> in the United States. But let’s think about what this might mean to different people. <\/p>\n

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To young American and Russian girls, this is inspiration and motivation to study sciences and to achieve excellence in historically male-dominated fields. For women living in less equal and even repressive regimes, women flying shuttle craft and commanding space stations provide a dream that they or their daughters might experience a world without male entitlement, where they too can achieve at the very apex of excellence. <\/div>\n
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And to those regimes which repress women solely on the basis of their gender, this sends a clear message: If you want to participate in the existing international space program, you’re going to have to let women play too.<\/div>\n
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There are thirteen human beings in space right now, four of whom are women.  This is awesome. I’m not sure why it has become humdrum, from a technological and space-exploration point of view, that there are people orbiting the Earth at hundreds of miles, who achieved a velocity sufficient to escape the inexorable tug of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}