@tszzl Ahh, it's larger than gender of astronauts- post-WW2 was "men are back from war / women should get out of the factories and back to feminine fussing abt fashion and cooing at babies," and there was gender imbalance so lots of women competing to marry the surviving men...
@tszzl the suburban housewife ideal get promoted in the blossoming ad industry (derives from war propaganda and spread of TVs in homes) ... Much classic sci fi is written and space race milestones in a time when it was a heavily gendered "boy" interest.
@tszzl And then we kinda had a NASA winter where it went from "beat the USSR" to more of a niche "geek" interest, esp with rover missions and Hubble telescope, didn't really convert a lot of women to the cause... And the gendered history still shows up in Boomer poll responses