Not-so-hidden secret
It’s essential that we open more space for women and girls in the STEM fields.
On Feb. 20, 1962, John Glenn was suited up and ready to climb into the Mercury capsule Friendship 7 for its historic launch. He would be the first American to orbit the earth, the first to be propelled atop the Atlas LV-3B rocket, the first whose trajectory into orbit and the coordinates that would get him safely home had been calculated by an IBM computer rather than a human being. With all those firsts, it isn’t surprising that there was a last-minute glitch in the re-entry calculations, and Glenn, as the man in the hot seat, made a very special request. He wanted a human being to verify the computer’s calculations, and the human being he requested was Katherine Johnson, an African-American woman who was also a mathematics wunderkind.
Johnson was one of the “human computers” whose math and engineering skills were essential during the early, pre-electronic computer days of the space program. Many of these specialists were women; some were AfricanAmerican. It was late 1950s, early 1960s, and NASA, known then as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), was one of the few places where diversity wasn’t exactly the same as equality, but people of skill and talent could work. Now over half a century later, these women and the many who followed are emerging from the historical shadows and beginning to receive the recognition they deserve.
“Hidden Figures,” a new film that tells the story of Johnson and two of her human computer colleagues, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, is an unexpected box office hit and awardsseason favorite, garnering three Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. And twice during his administration, President Obama acknowledged the contributions of NASA’s female scientists by awarding the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Johnson in 2015 and to Margaret H. Hamilton in 2016. A computer scientist and systems engineer, Hamilton led the team that created the on-board flight software for the Apollo moon missions that got Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin safely onto the lunar surface in 1969.
But the real hidden story here is the contribution NASA has made over the years in diversifying its staff of scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians, and how its efforts have been essential to the increased inclusion of women in those fields, known collectively as STEM. At a time when educators are struggling to recruit young women for science and technology careers, NASA is already a leader in gender equality, with women serving at all levels. Ellen Stofan is the chief scientist, for example, and engineer Teresa Vanhooser heads the unit that is developing the launch vehicle that will deliver astronauts to Mars and beyond. But it’s not just a handful of women in high positions. Women made up about a quarter of the 200-member team that guided the New Horizons probe to within 8,000 miles of Mars in last year’s successful flyby, and half of the newest class of astronauts is female.
The news from other realms is not as good. In 1970, a meager 7 percent of STEM jobs were held by women. By 2000, the number had climbed to about 25 percent and has been stuck in that neighborhood ever since, even as women hit 47 percent of the total workforce. Women earn more college and graduate degrees than men but earn only about 25 percent of physical science and techrelated PhDs. It is clear from NASA’s experience that when given the chance, women excel in these professions. And the agency has set a course to make its success universal through extensive outreach to schools and tech communities, through internships and collaborative incubator programs. Most important, NASA makes all of its scientists and astronauts available to describe for youngsters what they do. Perhaps the person who knew best how important the women of NASA are as symbols for potential young scientists was our first female astronaut, Sally Ride. “Young girls need to see role models in whatever careers they may choose,” she said “You can’t be what you can’t see.”
Opening up more opportunities for women and girls in STEM fields isn’t just the right thing to do. It is also essential if the U.S. is to continue to grow as an information economy. Five of the top 10 jobs for millennials will be in tech. Filling them will be hard enough without sidelining half the population. John Glenn didn’t ask that Katherine Johnson double-check the IBM computer’s work because he was a feminist. He asked because she was the best at what she did.