Gendering multi-voiced histories of the North American space industry: the GMRD White women

Abstract

Purpose The authors focus on “writing women into ‘history’” in this study, embracing the notion of cisgender and ethnicity in relation to the “historic turn”. As such, the authors bring forward the stories of the US Pan American Airway’s Guided Missile Range Division (GMRD) and the White women who worked there. The authors ask what has a Cold War US missile division to tell us about present and future gendered relationships in the North American space industry. Design/methodology/approach The authors apply Foucault’s technology of lamination, a form of critical discourse analysis, to both narrative texts and photographic images in the GMRD’s in-house newsletter, the Clipper, dating from 1964 until the end of 1967. They meld an autoethnography to this technique, providing space for the first author to share her experiences within the contemporary space industry in relation to the GMRD White women experiences. Findings The authors surface, in applying this combined methodology, a story about a White women’s historical, present and future cisgender social reality in the North American space industry. They are contributing then to a multi-voiced, cisgender/ethnic “historic turn” that, to date, is focused on White men alone in the US race to the moon. Social implications The social implication of this study lies in challenging perceptions of the masculinist-gendering of the past by bringing forward tales of, and by, women. This study also brings a White woman’s voice forward, within a contemporary North American space industry organization. Originality/value The authors are making a three-fold contribution to this special issue, and to an understandings of gendered/ethnic multi-voiced histories. The authors untangle the mid-Cold War phase from the essentialized Cold War era. They recreate multi-voiced histories of White women within the North American space industry while adding an important contemporary voice. They also present a novel methodology that combines the technology of lamination with autoethnography, to provide a gateway to recognizing the impact of multi-voiced histories onto contemporary and future gendered/ethnic relationships.

Historical Organization Studies

“…The White men involved in this Cold War race have been accorded an almost exclusive voice in space organizational histories and in the popular media (De Groot, 2006;Launius, 2005;. We contend, along with others (Ruel, Mills and Helms Mills, 2019;Ruel, Mills and Thomas, 2018;Shetterly, 2016), that these histories cannot and must not be solely about and by these White men, that there had to be many complex 3 individuals involved in the global Cold War space race. Notably, the Canadian Cold War experience made important contributions to space and its exploration.…”

“…We build our understanding of silences in this study as one that embraces Olsen's (1978) hidden and censorship silences. These hidden and censorship silences are influenced by life happening (Olsen, 1978) -in the sense of time and lack thereofalong with various life experiences, such as the cultural domination of, and systemic discrimination against, North American women during the Cold War era (Ruel et al, 2019;Runté and Mills, 2006), that are involved. These individuals who 'struggle for existence' (Olsen, 1978: 11) can and do leave traces via tales and myths, or antenarratives.…”

“…Focusing on antenarratives and critical sensemaking leads us to reveal constraints the individual may face and incites them to 'seek out familiar solutions that have worked in the past […] [that] maintain the social status quo' (Helms Mills and Mills, 2009: 175). These familiar solutions can be influenced, in part, by institutional and cultural rules and meta-rules , such as women leaving work to marry and raise children (Ruel et al, 2019), and by social values (Unger, 1987a;1987b), such as the historical belief that women were not technically/scientifically inclined (Hacker, 1989). These rules and social values are an integral part of the influences on the complex individuals within organizations and in their storytelling (Boje et al, 2016).…”

Developing critical organizational history: Context, practice and implications

“…There are excellent examples of historical denaturalization in CMS. These include Mills (1995) who problematizes the historical treatment of gender at British Airways, Shaffner et al (2019) who surface problematic (non-)representations of women and aboriginals at Qantas, Ruel et al (2019) who reveal the marginalized experience of women in the space industry, Rowlinson (2002) who exposes slavery at Cadbury as well as Booth et al (2007) who illustrate the role of Bertelsmann in the Holocaust. These researchers rely on creative methods and draw on theorized uses of the archive to expose silences.…”

“…Coller et al (2016) explain the process of surfacing gender at British Airways in their ANTi-History inspired archival ethnography. Ruel et al (2019) supplement their archival-based history with an autoethnography that draws on Ruel’s experience as a space flight manager.…”