Long walk to equality

太空也有“玻璃天花板”？

US astronaut Mae Jemison was only a little girl back in the 1960s. But she was old enough to know there was something strange with the Apollo astronauts as she watched them go into space on TV: They were all men – no women could be seen.

上世纪60年代，美国宇航员梅·杰米森还只是个小女孩。但她已经懂事，看到电视上阿波罗计划的宇航员们前往太空时，她感到有些奇怪：宇航员都是男性 ——没有女性的身影。

"That was the most absurd thing in the world," Jemison, now an astronaut herself, once told The Atlantic. "I just thought, would the aliens actually think this is all there is to humanity?"

“那是世界上最荒谬的一件事，”如今已经成为一名宇航员的杰米森在接受《大西洋月刊》采访时表示。“我只是在想，外星人们会不会认为这实际上就是全人类的样子？”

Fortunately, the past five decades have seen the world becoming a less "absurd" place. From NASA's first astronaut class in 1959, which was all-male, to its 2013 class, in which half of all eight members were women, we can see how things are changing.

幸运的是，在过去的五十年间，世界已经渐渐没那么“荒谬”了。美国航空航天局于1959年举办了首届宇航员训练班，当时班中成员均为男性，而到了2013年，训练班的8名成员中已有一半是女性，我们由此可以看出情况正在发生改变。

And on March 29, another history was about to be made when an all-female team – Anne McClain and Christina Koch – was scheduled to make an "all-women spacewalk" since all previous spacewalks were done with at least one male astronaut.

而今年的3月29日原本也要创下另一项历史：一支由女性组成的队伍 —— 安妮·麦克林与克里斯蒂娜·科克 —— 计划进行一次“全女性太空行走”，此前，所有的太空行走都在至少一名男性宇航员的参与下完成。

But that plan was eventually canceled, due to "spacesuit availability", which means NASA doesn't have two suits that fit women.

但这项计划最终因“宇航服供应问题”而被取消了，这意味着美国航空航天局没有两件适合女性的宇航服。

The world is still pretty "absurd" after all.

这个世界终究还是相当“荒谬”。

In fact, tests have long proved that women are not at all less competent than men when it comes to space tasks. But apparently, test results are not enough to fight off the world's long-existing biases against women. According to Atlas Obscura magazine, female astronauts were sometimes asked sexist questions during news conferences – examples include how they would live for a week without makeup, or how they could leave their children behind to go on space missions – when male astronauts were never bothered by such questions.

事实上，早已有试验证明，女性在完成太空任务方面的能力并不比男性差。但显而易见的是，试验结果并不足以对抗世界长久以来对于女性的偏见。据《阿特拉斯奇妙之旅》杂志报道，女性宇航员在新闻发布会上有时会被问到性别歧视的问题 —— 比如她们要如何一周不化妆，或者她们要如何撇下子女在家而去执行航天任务 —— 而男性宇航员却从不会被这些问题困扰。

Hopefully – give it another few decades – we'll be able to see a world that's fully grown out of its absurdity in terms of gender equality. And hopefully, when aliens do come visit one of our space stations, they'll see humanity the way it should be.

希望几十年之后，我们能够看到一个在性别平等方面完全不再荒谬的世界。也希望，当外星人们真的来造访我们空间站之时，他们会看到人类应有的样子。