Actually NASA’s All-Women Spacewalk Getting Cancelled Is A Sexist Issue. Here’s Why.

Actually NASA’s All-Women Spacewalk Getting Cancelled Is A Sexist Issue. Here’s Why.

For everyone, who ever underestimated the importance of a good and perfect fitting of clothes, here, this article is for you and you alone. For all the mothers, the neighbouring aunts, mothers-in-law and friends who dismissed the role of a good master ji or gave a reassuring nod for that choli that was too loose, maybe now the severity of it shall get to you.

Except what we want to talk about is far more important. For the uninitiated, we are talking about the recent news where NASA was planning on hosting its first of all female spacewalk on 29th March which got cancelled. This due to a technical glitch – one that NASA has claimed has nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with how life is in space – the spacesuit didn’t fit.

Earlier this month, after NASA had announced that astronauts Christina Koch and Anne McClain shall walk outside the International Space Station on March 29 to install new batteries. This was historic because this would be the first time both the astronauts would be female. Earlier missions had been either all male or male and female. Of course, the cancellation meant that Anne wouldn’t be walking and instead male astronaut Nick Hague would be taking her place.

The first thing that came to our head is that surely, this is a sexist issue? That they don’t have spacesuits at the International Space Station to fit a female astronaut. So we did our research. The previous week Anne did her first spacewalk, she did it in her medium space suit. For the spacewalk on the 29th, she was supposed to suit up to a larger suit for the all-female spacewalk, Christina was to wear the medium size. Anne’s medium suit was more comfortable for her so she wanted to stick with it.   With no other medium-sized suit available, she had to back out from the mission and the all-female spacewalk was nixed.

Is it sexist? Perhaps. As they revealed in this piece by the Wired, Saralyn Mark, was a senior medical advisor to NASA for 18 years, and studied and reviewed space suit design for both the genders and realised that the suits are not designed to fit women. She says, “I was concerned because of my knowledge about how spacesuits do not properly fit women, female astronauts. And with the spotlight shining on the space program and an all-female spacewalk, I wanted to be sure that the spacesuits fit properly so they could do their jobs well and safely.”

Several other articles point out that sizing is a real concern for female astronauts and with male sizing and preference kept in mind, women astronaut’s issues are often not taken into account. With time being a constraint for the fitting to happen, the spacewalk will probably happen next month.

And we get it, spacewalks can be tricky, with all you growing taller in height and all, but we do wish it weren’t the case when we were so close to creating history. Size, clearly, does matter here.

Sadhika Sehgal

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