So far what we know about Netflix’s newest documentary, Mercury 13, is that it’s bound to detail a very serious injustice done to the women that did their best to prove that they were worthy of the chance to be the first Americans in space and possibly the first Americans on the moon. The only problem was that this was during the early 1960’s when their program, that over half of them passed no less, was conceived of. What this means is that they weren’t accepted by NASA, as women still didn’t have every right that men did across the nation and were therefore thought to be unqualified no matter how well they did.
The documentary is set to go into a great amount of detail and will be interviewing those women that signed on for the program to give their account and tell their story so that people can hear from their point of view just what happened back then. Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 women were still being treated as second-class citizens in the US, and as a result those women that had done everything they could and worked harder than some of their male counterparts were attempting to become astronauts in the hopes that they would be recognized and sent into space to fulfill a dream that would unfortunately not be realized. They were denied, again and again as the world didn’t seem ready to give way to women just yet. Obviously that problem is being remedied in the current day as women are now being seen as capable of doing anything that men can do, within reason regarding some things obviously.
The sky is only the beginning of the limit however as women from this era have showed despite the fact that they were effectively shut down. They wanted to prove that women could do everything that men could and in some ways do it more efficiently. There’s absolutely no doubt that women are just as great as men when it comes to applying themselves to anything, but some of the women back then were actually out-performing their male counterparts and still weren’t recognized as being good enough to take part in the NASA programs. They were the secret that when let out was squashed and sent back to the shadows again so that the good ol’ boys club could reap the glory and pretend that women had never bothered trying to compete with them. There have been instances that of that same thing in the modern age but more often than not it’s been called out on account of being erroneous and discriminatory towards women. This world runs by the grace of both men and women, which is something that needs to be realized and recognized by everyone. Women are just as important as men, sometimes more so, and need to be granted their place when it’s rightfully earned.
This documentary will show the pioneering spirit of the thirteen women that wanted to go into space and were unfortunately denied. But regardless of that their continual fight for equality and fairness didn’t go unheeded.
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