Gender and the Race for Space: Masculinity and the American Astronaut, 1957-1983

by Erinn McComb

Overview

The American astronaut image was informed by early Cold War ideals of masculinity that helped mold a distinctly American (anti-communist) masculinity, which appeared—on the surface anyway—to resolve not only an American “crisis of masculinity” but helped win the Cold War on an ideological and popular level. This American image focused on strict gender binaries of man as the protector, controlling technology and containing communism, while woman was the passive actor with spaceflight technology—left behind in the home waiting for the return of the astronaut husband. Allowing women to fly into space would have represented a lack of individual control with spaceflight technology. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839987175
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	06/10/2025
Series:	Anthem Intercultural Transfer Studies
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher