[parl_match]

A large part of that is that there aren't a lot of astronauts, and those who were selected for a substantial part of the space program had external forces selecting for men.

A big requirement was someone who was an experienced pilot, likely from the military, with a proven track record of unusual planes. Women were explicitly prevented from that on-ramp. It wasn't until the 80s, 20+ years into the program, that the first truly civilian (no military experience) astronaut was selected.

Maybe women are predisposed to qualities that make them less likely to be selected as astronauts? I don't think that's true, but even if it was... the selection size of astronauts to inspect from is simply too small to come to any good conclusion.

[roryirvine]

Sure, there may well be various structural factors which may explain some or all of the disparity - but it's worth noting that whenever there's an attempt to fix this, we hear endless complaints along the lines of "it's wrong to change selection procedures, there just aren't enough women or minority candidates applying, it's a pipeline problem".

Well, these comic books are an attempt to fix the pipeline problem.

In reality, there are likely multiple factors in play. But if you believe that, after removing "anything specifically targetting women" from their communications, NASA are going to alter downstream selection criteria in order to compensate then I suspect you are going to be disappointed.

[IAmBroom]

You mean like: women are smaller and therefore require less life-support reservoirs? An all-female astronaut corps was investigated in the Mercury days for just that reason.

Oh wait, no, that's the opposite of what you are looking for.