Gender and the Race for Space

Erinn McComb, PhD, is Associate Professor of History at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. She researches the intersection of gender with foreign policy, science, and technology.

“McComb explores the construction of a masculine U.S. astronaut image based on rugged individuali-ty, self-determination and control as a Cold War counter to Soviet collectivism, even as NASA straddled conservative and progressive understandings of gender roles by allowing women to hold traditionally male jobs as engineers, computer programmers and technicians.” — Alan D. Meyer, author of Week-end Pilots: Technology, Masculinity, and Private Aviation in Postwar America (2015).“McComb sheds new light on the storied space race and its aftermath through a sharp focus on gender and astronauts. Her historical scholarship traces in vivid detail how a culture of masculinity was estab-lished within U.S. aerospace but challenged by daring women including Jerrie Cobb, Sally Ride and Ei-leen Collins.” — Jordan Bimm, University of Chicago, US“McComb offers a fresh perspective on how women were publicly accepted as members of the astro-naut corps. Accordingly, technological changes that shifted spaceflight from being viewed as a dan-gerous endeavor to a routine one markedly changed perceptions of who could participate in space-flight.” — Monique Laney, Auburn University, USA“This exhaustively researched book, prepared by an experienced space studies scholar, is likely to be received enthusiastically by historians of technology, women’s and gender studies scholars, and space history enthusiasts.” —Matthew H. Hersch, JD, PhD, Associate Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

• Acknowledgments; Introduction: Who Can Fly? Gender and the American Astronaut; 1-Early Cold War Gender Roles in the Public and Private Discourse; 2-Light This Candle: Project Mercury and Cold War Masculinity; 3-The First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLATs); 4-Refreshingly Human and Winning: Pilot Control and Project Gemini; 5-It’s Hip to Be Square: Democratic Manhood and the Apollo Program; 6-What Made It Possible for Sally to Ride?: The Shuttle’s Domestication and Democratization of Spaceflight; Conclusion: To Infinity and Beyond; Bibliography; Index