Women In The Cold War Essay

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were in a race to who would reach space first. While the United States is often thought of as the best in many ways, the Soviet Union was able to get to space first with Sputnik. This was scary for the United States because the Soviet Union was able to send people and missiles into the air and the United States could not do that same. There was an urgency for the United States space program.

Up until this point, women had only played “supporting roles” with the space program such as computresses, which was the female version of an engineer, secretaries, and wives. People were starting to figure out there could be benefits to having women actually participate in the NASA program. They thought

Lovelace secretly had women going through the same testing. Women pilots were not allowed in the military, so Dr. Lovelace had to women who were eligible. The findings from the testings done were that women did better and were able to tolerate the tests. Dr. Lovelace wanted to continue testing but NASA would not support this. Jerrie Cobb and Janie Hart took this case to congress because they found that it was discriminatory to not allow any women in the program. President Eisenhower made the decision that only jet test pilots could be astronauts. Women were not allowed to be jet test pilots so they were automatically ineligible. Women battled this for many years. Lyndon B. Johnson did not help the situation the women were in because he thought the advancement of the space program was more important than helping women get into the space program.

When Apollo 8 was going up, Poppy Northcutt was a vital part of the return back to Earth. She was the first women to be in that position and so involved with the mission. She had to work harder than the men to be where she was and it ended up benefiting her because knew the programs better than the men she worked