The Canadian Space Agency recently announced its list of finalists for the astronaut program.
Readers of the blog may know that I applied to the program and while I got out of the first round, I didn't get much further. This is probably a good thing, since based on what I've read about the final testing, I would have found it challenging. I'm glad I applied, and while I'm disappointed, I'm not heartbroken by the end result for me. There's always Virgin Galactic if I can scrape together enough pennies :-)
But what bothers me about the final list is that out of 16 candidates, there is only one woman on it. It would seem things haven't changed very much since the Seventies. This is a worse female to male ratio than my undergraduate engineering class at McGill back in the late 80s. How uninspiring to all those little girls lying in their backyards staring up at the stars.