Single Women Not Mature Enough to Be Astronauts

I've been writing regularly about sexism and singlism in China, not necessarily because China is more sexist or singlist than all the hundreds of other countries I could be writing about, but because I lived there once. This week I was determined to post on a non-China-related topic, but then the government banned unmarried women from becoming astronauts, and BAM, I'm back to blogging about China again.

Yay: China's Ministry of Defense included two women in its manned (now womanned) space program. They are aero-transport pilots from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force.

Boo: Although the Chinese government is afraid that their women are having too many babies (see the One Child Policy), they don't want the women to damage their precious reproductive organs by exposing their ovaries to space radiation.

Once the women are married with children, fine, their wombs have served their purpose and they can be astronauts, because the space mission will no longer "affect their family planning", according to Pang Zhihao, a supposed expert from the Beijing-based China Academy of Space Technology.

Does the government's decision represent real, albeit paternalistic, concern for the welfare of women (who apparently all want to have children at some point), or is it sexist tripe? Maybe neither: to me it sounds like matrimania, meaning the mystical belief that marriage somehow imbues people with special powers and insight.

See this quote from Zhang Jianqi, a former deputy commander of the country's manned space program according to AP and XinHua news services: "In the selection, we had almost the same requirements on women candidates as those for men, but the only difference was that they must be married, as we believe married women would be more physically and psychologically mature."

I can't quite wrap my head around this preference for married taikonauts. I just finished blogging about Chinese businesses that prefer to hire single women, because they ostensibly have no personal life and can therefore commit more fully to the job -- whereas married women would supposedly be constantly distracted by thoughts of their husband and kids back at the house (or back on Earth, as the case may be).

So which is it? Are married women less or more reliable than singles? If Chinese government and Chinese business culture want to dabble in sexism and singlism, they should at least try to be consistent.

Photo credit: Altemark