In 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space. The same year, Gloria Steinem (who is making headlines with her comments about Bernie Sanders voters) interviewed her about her path to becoming an astronaut, and the sexist questions the media plagued her with. According to Tech Insider, a recording of the interview was found by PBS Digital Studios in the archives of Smith College and they transformed the interview into an animated video (below) for its "Blank on Blank” series, posted last week.
“Really the only bad moments in our training involved the press,” Ride said. “Whereas NASA appeared to be very enlightened about flying women astronauts, the press didn’t appear to be. The things that they were concerned with were not the same things that I was concerned with.”
“Everybody wanted to know about what kind of makeup I was taking up. They didn’t care about how well-prepared I was to operate the [space shuttle] arm or deploy communications satellites.”
According to Ride, the most patronizing question she ever got was whether she cried when something went wrong. “Without a doubt, I think the worst question that I’ve gotten was whether I cried when we got malfunctions in the simulator. [laughter] No.”
Ride went on to say that she was asked about bathroom facilities in every single interview, and that in one interview, the press completely made up an entire conversation about whether she would wear a bra in space or not.
You may be thinking, "wow, good thing it's more than 30 years later!" The sad thing is, even though it's 30 years later, female astronauts are still dealing with the exact same questions today.
A few months ago, it was announced that six female astronauts would live in a mock-spacecraft in Moscow for eight days. Igor Ushakov, the director of Moscow's Institute of Biomedical Problems, where the experiment is taking place, actually [said] this during a Q&A:(http://phys.org/news/2015-10-all-female-russian-crew-moon-mission.html), "I'd like to wish you a lack of conflicts, even though they say that in one kitchen, two housewives find it hard to live together."
To listen to Sally Ride's interview in full, check out the video below:
Related: Gloria Steinem on Female Empowerment And Fashion
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