Women’s History Month: Spotlighting the Women of NASA

From programming software to providing deeper insights to breaking barriers and making social change, women have made a huge impact throughout the history of technology. For Women’s History Month, let’s take a look back at women who played a pivotal role in advancing technology and technology career opportunities for the women who have followed them. This week, we’re highlighting the work of women throughout history who made a difference at NASA.

Since the 1920s, women have been integral to advancements and operations at NASA, filling roles such as mathematicians, computers, engineers, supervisors and, in later years, astronauts. There are a few women in particular who used their time in this field to not only make technological contributions but also went against norms to create equal opportunities for women during a time when so-called women’s work was mostly isolated to computer programming and didn’t extend to several of the other functions.

During the 1960s, Macie Roberts was appointed to a supervisory role at NASA. While in this position, she made a point to intentionally hire women for her team, believing that having men on her team would undermine the cohesion and contributions of the rest of the team and that men would be reluctant to accept directions from a woman. Following her lead, Helen Ling became a supervisor and prioritized hiring women, more specifically those who didn’t have the experience or education that had been previously expected. She also advocated for a form of maternity leave; although unpaid, Ling would rehire women who had to leave their positions after giving birth.

Janez Lawson was one of the women that Roberts saw potential in. Although highly qualified, her race and gender would make it challenging for her to attain an engineering role. After graduating with a chemical engineering degree in 1953, Janez Lawson was the first African American to work in a technical position at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. With encouragement from her supervisor to continue her education, Lawson was one of two people selected to attend an IBM training school for operating and programming computers.

A group of African American women working at NASA in the 1950s broke down racial barriers. Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson joined NASA when there were still segregated computer sections for them to work in. Vaughan was the first African American manager at NASA’s Langley Research Center, where she also prioritized hiring women. Jackson became NASA’s first African American engineer, conducting wind tunnel and flight experiments. Johnson was a physicist, space scientist, and mathematician who conducted vital calculations that were instrumental in sending astronauts into orbit and the moon in the 60s. The stories of these three women were shared in the film Hidden Figures (2016).

These women were not just first in their respective fields, and they did more than just advance technology. They kickstarted social change by giving women opportunities that they wouldn’t have had and boldly broke barriers for women of color in technology.