International Women’s Day: Honouring the Women Who Paved the Way

This is my piece for International Women’s Day, and I would like to start off with an acknowledgment. 

I want to express my sincerest gratitude to all feminists (of all genders) who fought so fiercely and bravely before me. The privilege of being born in an era and geographical location where a woman can have an opinion, an education, and become an engineer, without being restricted to the options of being a housewife, stay-at-home mom, or looking for a suitor, is not one I take lightly. I hope to have even half the courage and defiance they had to further the mission of increasing the number of women in STEM.

On that note, this International Women’s Day, let me bring to light one such powerhouse that paved the path for us women in STEM: Katherine Johnson, a fierce black woman in STEM – a combination of words that was unheard of during her time.

Showing strong mathematical ability at a very young age, Katherine Johnson eventually landed a job at the National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics (NACA), which was what NASA was called at the time. Not long after her appointment in 1961, she was tasked with hand-calculating the trajectory for the mission Freedom 7, America’s first human spaceflight, which she did so, successfully. Later, she also co-authored a report on the equation for a spaceflight’s landing position; this was the first time a woman in the Flights Return Division had received credit on a report at NASA (note – emphasis on ‘receiving’ credit as I assume she wasn’t the first woman to write such a report, but rather given credit for…).

However, she is mostly known for her work on John Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission. It was the start of the transition to computer programs, and a program calculated the spaceship’s trajectories from liftoff to splashdown. The astronauts, including Glenn, did not trust computers. Glenn tasked Katherine to double-check the calculations by hand. Only after her approval was he confident enough to begin his mission to become the first American to orbit the Earth, a true testament to her ability.

Her math also paved the way for the infamous Project Apollo, which sent astronauts to the moon and made the moon landings a reality. From Katherine’s point of view, she considered her contributions to Project Apollo as her greatest achievement.

This was what I found on the official NASA website. 
However, there were a few missing parts to the story.

The president of the US, Woodrow Wilson, introduced racial segregation laws. This meant African American women in the computing pool at NASA had separate areas to work, eat, and use the restroom; laws that were in effect up until 1958, a mere 60 years ago. Katherine Johnson, despite these circumstances, mentioned that she didn’t really feel the segregation. Rumour has it that she and her fellow black colleagues defied these rules and ate wherever they wanted. That was who she was – known for not being afraid to question. While recollecting her past, she mentioned this quote, which I love:

“We needed to be assertive as women in those days – assertive and aggressive – and the degree to which we had to be that way depended on where you were. I had to be”

Fun fact – the 2016 film “Hidden Figures” was based on the life of Katherine Johnson, portrayed by Taraji P. Henson; a must-watch!

After many, many amazing contributions to space exploration over a 33-year career at NASA, Katherine passed away in 2020 at age 101. She may have passed, but her legacy is one that will leave a ripple effect for many years to come.

Women’s voices have been suppressed for a very, very long time; often forgotten, hardly recorded in the history books, and rarely respected. Although the path has been long, there is much further to go; but I am a strong believer that change is possible. 

So Happy Women’s Day to all the incredible women out there, and power to you in all that you’re doing; and hope you do so by choice of your own.

Sources:

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/langley/katherine-johnson-biography/

https://www.space.com/katherine-johnson.html

Written By:

Shashindi Vithanage