It's a mental and moral dodge to say that some social advance could not have happened any earlier than it did because it wasn't acceptable. That's a tautology and it doesn't really explain anything at all. The reason changes happen is because people make them happen, because people force them to happen, and because some people suffer the consequences for being the first to challenge the "mores" of their day.
While I appreciate Blackstar's sentiment that women could have easily flown in Apollo or AAP / Skylab, and totally agree with it, the real issues had nothing to do with whether women could do the jobs.The real issues had to do with sticking two or three people into a Gemini or Apollo capsule that was the size of the front seat of a VW beetle, or of a station wagon, and expect them to all change their clothes, go to the bathroom, and do all sorts of other very personal things with no ability to go somewhere else to do them.IIRC, Mike Collins sort of summed it up at one point in "Carrying the Fire", when he made a comment in re Gemini of it being bad enough to use his sticky-bag to have a bowel movement while bumping his arms (and other things) into "ugly ol' John Young sitting beside me"; it would have been nearly impossible to do so next to a woman, no matter how good of a friend she was, or how capable she was at her job.While you could disappear into the LEB in Apollo, sort of, you weren't really out of view. There just wasn't that much room in an Apollo; there was no way at all around having to use the waste management system within view of the rest of the crew.Not only did the men in the astronaut corps at the time find the idea unappealing, their wives found it even less so, and NASA management just shied severely away from explaining how ol' Bill over here just whips his penis out to empty his bladder, right in front of shy little Mary.... (And yeah, I know, Skylab had a private toilet. But if you had to go during the day or so after you docked, but before you could inhabit the workshop, you've got the same issue.)Besides, the astronaut corp was composed of hot-shot test pilots. Even after Jack Schmitt spent 53 weeks learning to fly jets, the entire corps laughed (behind his back) to the joke "If God had meant Man to fly, he would never have made Jack Schmitt." They didn't like anyone who didn't conform to their idea of what a test pilot should be like -- and that didn't just include the scientist-astronauts, that included some of the actual test pilots. People like Al Bean, Rusty Schweickart, Bill Anders and Walt Cunningham felt cut out of every one of the various cliques in the corps, to the point where they formed their own "Why is everyone but us getting flight assignments?" clique.They tended to see women as people you married and had kids with, or cheated with behind the backs of the wife and children. Women would have been fine astronauts, I think, and been able to perform just as well as, if not better than, the men who flew early missions. But the guys who made up the corps at the time would never have accepted them, I don't think.It was the mores of the late 50s and early 60s that did in any chance of women crew on American spacecraft before Shuttle.
Blackstar seems to be holding up the "If just one person Steps Forward and Does the Right Thing" theory of history.
Saying "Society isn't ready for this" doesn't really explain anything, but I am at a bit of a loss trying to understand what does. Sometimes jobs become less dangerous, or less strenuous, or more pleasant, and they appeal to a different population. Sometimes ideas just become more or less fashionable. Whatever it is, it is a general shift in attitudes and not specific to astronauts, and I don't think actions by NASA alone would have made much difference one way or another.
Whatever it is, it is a general shift in attitudes
I'm pointing out that it is worthwhile to examine exactly what happened and to whom it happened. And I raised a point that I still think somebody needs to dig into--did any women apply for the early rounds of scientist astronaut selection and who were they and what happened to them?