Keith’s note: Several weeks ago I posted some commentary “Marsha Ivins Opines On Gender Diversity At NASA: “Enough Already!“ With regard to an opinion piece in Time magazine by former astronaut Marsha Ivins wherein she takes issue with comments by Dr. Saralyn Mark who testified before the National Space Council. Time magazine has declined to respond to her comments so I have offered to post them here.
Saralyn Mark: “As Ms. Ivins states in her TIME editorial (“I’m a Retired Female Astronaut and I Can’t Understand the Obsession with ‘Gender Diverse’ Space Crews”), she did not fully listen to my 8/20/19 National Space Council testimony on sex/gender-inclusive design and innovation nor the related questions and comments from the Vice President and the Administrator which is unfortunate.
Please see the links to the actual C-SPAN coverage of this National Space Council meeting and to a Space.com article which accurately reflects my testimony. I’ve attached my written testimony (below) which had to be shortened in its delivery to 3 minutes due to time constraints.
Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that it is not about a “numbers” game when we discuss equity regarding women in professional positions. There is equity when everyone is given the tools, resources and opportunities to do their jobs well and safely on Earth and in space.
I hope that this discussion will continue in a constructive manner inspiring all of us to reach for our individual stars.”
TESTIMONY BY SARALYN MARK, MD, NATIONAL SPACE COUNCIL, AUGUST 20, 2019
Mr. Vice President, Members of the National Space Council and distinguished guests, thank you for the invitation to speak to you today.
Gender and sex impact every aspect of our lives on Earth and in space. It is more than spacesuits not fitting female astronauts. We see the impact from the shoes and clothing we wear, the electronic devices we use, the cars we drive in, and even the medications we take. Modifying appearances or the “pink it or shrink it” approach for gendered innovation will never work in any environment including space, battlefields, hot zones and in our homes.
The National Academy of Medicine defines “gender” as a person’s self-representation as male or female based upon social interactions and “sex” is based upon one’s genes. We now know that the environment can modify gene expression, which is called epigenetics, thus, the definitions are more nuanced.
Today, I will predominately focus on the impact of gender and sex on space exploration. As NASA plans for long duration spaceflights to the moon and Mars, the health and safety considerations for astronauts grow increasingly complex.
Men and women adapt to space differently where even small differences significantly impact the quality and safety of life, including astronaut work performance. It is imperative that NASA and its commercial space partners address these differences in how they plan and conduct missions, how they develop products such as spacesuits, high performance clothing including liquid cooling and ventilation garments, tools, hardware and machine-human interfaces, and how they establish extravehicular activity or EVA training protocols and medical guidelines for countermeasures and precision medicine.
In several reports from The National Academy of Sciences, it was recommended that NASA fully evaluate the influence that gender and sex have on the physiological and psychological changes that occur during spaceflight. Many of these reports including “Exploring Biological Contributions to Health: Does Sex Matter?” published in 2001, followed that year by “Safe Passages: Astronaut Care for Exploration Mission” and the 2011 National Academy of Sciences’ Decadal Survey, “Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration: Life and Physical Sciences for a New Era” emphasized the need to fully examine, understand and address this impact.
In response, NASA launched 2 decadal reviews assessing the impact of gender and sex on adaptation to space in 2002 and in 2012. In my capacity as the Senior Medical Advisor to NASA, I had the honor to co-chair and lead these reviews, working with many outstanding colleagues from NASA, the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, agencies and academia. In 2014, the second decadal review was published in the Journal of Women’s Health. In this collection of manuscripts, six workgroups investigated and summarized human and animal research related to gender- and sex-based differences in the areas of cardiovascular, immunological, sensorimotor, musculoskeletal, reproductive and behavioral adaptations to human spaceflight.
Every system in the body changes in the microcosm of space. For example, it has been observed that some male and female astronauts experience spaceflight associated neuro- ocular syndrome, or SANS, in which there is visual impairment and increased intracranial pressure. Interestingly, the signs and symptoms are more severe in male astronauts. Orthostatic intolerance, or the inability to stand without fainting, is more prevalent upon landing in female astronauts than in their male counterparts. Additionally, radiation presents a major hazard for space travel. It has been reported that female subjects are more susceptible to radiation-induced cancer than male subjects, hence permissible exposure levels (PEL) for radiation are lower for women than men astronauts which could impact their ability to participate in long duration spaceflights.
In 2014, it was noted that there has been progress on several fronts including assessments of the design of new spacesuits based on anthropometric measurements and movement in which sex can have an impact. This was an optimistic development that spacesuit limitations, which astronauts, especially female astronauts, endured for over 40 years would finally be addressed.
In early 2017, NASA supported a challenge competition to assess the impact of gender and sex on innovation and technologies. Ironically, the winning submission by a NASA engineer focused on a modular space suit design which took into account sex differences as the body adapts in space. Unfortunately, leadership priorities, compounded by financial constraints, have hampered spacesuit development over many years. Perhaps, the recent heightened focus on spacesuit issues for female astronauts will finally catalyze efforts to advance new product design not only for the grandeur of space but for all environments.
During a roundtable hosted by my nonprofit, iGIANT® (impact of Gender/Sex on Innovation and Novel Technologies), which is an accelerator for gendered innovation, it was disheartening to hear from one of our nation’s top female fighter pilots that she experienced physical, emotional and spiritual harm trying to do her job. She said that she wasted much time retrofitting her equipment to carry out her duties. In over 60 roundtables and summits since 2017, countless stories have been shared by women and men about how a “one-size-fits-all” approach for design elements such as products, programs, protocols and policies does not work.
I want to be crystal clear. This is not about who is faster, better or smarter, just different. We have the capability, such as using artificial intelligence, computational modeling and even 3 dimensional (3D) printing, to develop the tools and resources to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to live and work well and safely on Earth and in space.
Most of us in this room were influenced by the Apollo program. The Apollo effect changed the direction of our careers and the course of our lives. We need to ensure that there will be an Artemis effect. I want to believe that the next boots on the lunar surface will be worn by a woman. They will not only fit her, but will also inspire the next generation of explorers. It is time for NASA, as well as all agencies and organizations, to ensure that their programs and policies have a focus on human systems integration using a gender- and sex-based approach from research to operations. All offices within NASA, such as science, medicine, engineering, education, human resources and outreach, need to be involved. Therefore, there should be a centralized entity within NASA to coordinate these efforts.
It’s time for the private sector to also evaluate their design elements to determine that they meet the needs of all customers and clients.
It is time to see the world through a gender/sex lens. When we achieve this goal, we are taking a major leap toward mission success for everyone that will enhance space exploration and our daily lives on Earth.
Thank you for your time and attention today.
Thank You Keith.
Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that it is not about a “numbers” game when we discuss equity regarding women in professional positions. There is equity when everyone is given the tools, resources and opportunities to do their jobs well and safely on Earth and in space.
Says it all.
Well, sure. And no.
Sure: In some future, every citizen is contributing and functioning in whatever capacity chosen. In that future, anything else is unthinkable.
And no: In a fairly long life, I’ve learned that by and large people want universal fairness. Excellence is extolled. That ‘people’ are equal. At the same time we know that social goodness remains measurably, painfully, out of reach.
That’s the thing: measurable. Counting people by ‘type’ is rightfully considered distasteful. It’s how way we measure progress towards a goal that is very widely held as desirable.
And so we hold our noses, and we count, all the while imagining a world where counting is a thing of the distant past, and that one day soon counting won’t be needed.
Soon.
There are two problems with simply counting. First, some people do take it “simply”. If the number of women in a given job is increasing and approaching 50%, or the number of African-Americans approaching 13%, then some people tend to declare victory and stop at that. Unfortunately, the part about “given the tools, resources and opportunities to do their jobs” involves more than just having the right statistical balance of gender and ethnic background. Second, the focus on statistics can backfire, in the sense that people get the impression someone was “just” hired for that reason, or is somehow less competent, or the token [insert group here.] Achieving real diversity and inclusiveness means methods that aren’t directly focused on just getting the numbers right.
Applying ‘future think*’- as I think you are doing – to current affairs won’t work, for the reasons you cite, amongst others.
Counting opens a door to a community, allowing them the chance. This is an often-lost point, especially among those like me on the left. It is nothing more or less.
But counting has an awful downside, partly described by you, but even more insidiously can create entire communities dependent on the artificial ‘leg up’.
If there is a better way, we haven’t found it.
* Future think, as I am imagining it: it’s the way we’d assess the participation of minority communities in some far distant future when impartial workplaces, and generally, has found from footing. At such a time the questions we’ve ben batting about will be seen as what they are: miserable, wretched steps a society takes as it moves towards universal fairness.
A bit beyond the subject of Keith’s blog, I admit 🙂
It also well to remember that cultural change is a generational activity and so moves at that rate so although progress may seem very slow in terms of the present you only have to look at the past to see that it is happening.
That’s true but it can cause mistakes in both directions. On the one hand, some people can say we’re on track and the problem will solve itself in a few generations. There is plenty of evidence that isn’t true. On the other hand, ignoring that inevitably time lag can make people think current efforts aren’t working or misidentify existing problems. The fact that current tenured faculty, for example, are far less diverse than the starting class of graduate students, has been interpreted as a “leaky pipe”. That women and underrepresented minorities are dropping out along the way. But I don’t agree. We need to compare the diversity of tenured faculty with the diversity of the people who entered graduate school ten or fifteen years ago. That’s the pool of candidates the current faculty were drawn from.
A better way to count would be to look at the number of applicants and what groups they come from, to ensure that hiring is equitable. If you just say we need 50% women, and you have a pool of 150 men and 5 women who applied for the job, choosing a woman from the group of five is going to guarantee, over time, a sub-par workforce. The best talent will be forced to work elsewhere because of stupid, artificial hiring practices.
NASA, of all places, where people’s lives are on the line, should ALWAYS be choosing the most qualified candidate. Otherwise, YOU can get in the rocket made by the people chosen based on their skin color and genitalia, and I’ll ride in the one made by the best scientists and engineers available. We all know that the sciences are pursued more heavily by men.
Women make great scientists. I’m not taking away from that. I’m just saying, there are fields of study dominated by men, because of their interests, and there are field of study dominated by women, because of their interests. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s only wrong if qualified candidates are getting turned away because of their skin color or genitalia. Our focus shouldn’t be a numbers game, it should be a talent game.
It’s not enough to say you’re hiring policies are equatable. In your example of 150 male and 5 female applicants, if you hired 20 of them, that’s seven or eight men and only one woman. You aren’t going to get a diverse workforce if you say both genders are hired at the 20% level and stop there. You need to go beyond that, by figuring out why 30 times as many men are applying than women. It’s a symptom that something about your organization is discouraging female applicants. And whatever is causing that needs to be fixed.
I’m still trying to understand what you mean by “future think.” I’m not imagining possible problems which could occur in a hypothetical future. Those are problems which have actually occurred. Yes, in an ideal future, that would no longer be a problem, but I’m more concerned with how to get to that future that how wonderful it would be. And, yes, counting is important. But it isn’t the be all and end all, and getting the count right isn’t the only goal. It’s a necessary way to measure how we are solving (or not solving) on aspect of the problem. But thinking exclusively of the demographics and not the workplace environment can be harmful.
Maybe there is a reason for the former astronaut not fully listening to your testimony, and that is because like the majority of US citizens she is sick and tired of leftist political discourse ramming its way into every place it has no business being involved. Unfortunately now, even science has been sullied by revolting leftist antics and fake news tactics. Pathetic at best. My favorite science web sites are too polluted to even be tolerable lately due to a poisonous ideology.
And you are afraid to use your own name. More like “scared puppy” if you ask me.