Feminist Approaches to Outer Space

This chapter aims to demonstrate that feminist approaches to theory, method, and analysis can provide useful contributions for the social studies of outer space. Beyond tracing the history of women within the space sciences and engineering, feminist approaches unveil how intersecting social hierarchies—including gender, race, and class—have been affected by and reinforced through the space sciences, engineering, and space-related popular culture. This chapter particularly focuses on three areas in which explicitly feminist work on space exploration has substantively intervened: labour, technology, and the environment. Finally, it highlights the resonances of feminist frameworks with the greater body of space literature.