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Right Stuff, Wrong Sex : America's First Women in Space Program (Gender Relations in the American Experience)
Right Stuff Wrong Sex America's First Women in Space Program - Gender Relations in the American Experience Author:Margaret A. Weitekamp On June 17, 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Unlike every previous milestone in the "space race," however, this event did not spur NASA to catch up, in this case, by flying an American woman. Though there were suitable candidates-two years earlier, thirteen female pilots recruited by the private Woman ... more »in Space program had passed a strenuous physical exam and were ready for another stage of astronaut testing-American women would not escape earth's gravity for another twenty years.In Right Stuff, Wrong Sex, Margaret Weitekamp shows how the Woman in Space program -- conceived by Dr. William Randolph Lovelace and funded by world-famous pilot and businesswoman Jacqueline Cochran -- challenged prevailing attitudes about women's roles and capabilities. In examining the experiences of the Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees (as the candidates called themselves), this book documents the achievements and frustrated hopes of a remarkable group of women whose desire to serve their country fell victim to hostility toward such aspirations. Drawing from archival research and interviews with participants, Weitekamp traces the rise and fall of the Woman in Space program within the context of the cold war and the thriving women's aviation culture of the 1950s. She explains the unsuccessful efforts of pilot Jerrie Cobb -- the first woman to pass Lovelace's astronaut tests -- to gain public and political support for the program after its abrupt cancellation as well as the 1962 congressional hearings that investigated sex discrimination two years before it became illegal. Weitekamp's study sheds light on a little known but compelling chapter in the history of the U.S. space program and the rise of the women's movement in America.« less