Today, I’m going to speak about the movie « HIDDEN FIGURES » inspired by true facts. It speaks about the place of women, and more particulary about black women in science.

The film focus on the life of 3 women : Dorothy Vaughn, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson.

Those three women are really brilliant, Katherine Johnson, is also probably the most brilliant computer person who controled the analysis geometry in the NASA in Virginia. Katherine Johnson was finally the choosen one, not only for her talent but because there was no white person who was so brilliant than her. She had the chance to integrate the space task group to confirm calculs and coordinates the launch and landing site of the spaceship. She also helped people to calculate the orbital trajectory.

Mary Jackson wanted to became an engineer. She had to do a training program because usually  NASA didn’t take women to become engineer because they didn’t have a degree course high enought. So, she  studied to complete her degree course at Virginia University but, she was a woman and what’s more, she is black ! She had to fight to succed but she did it and went to the courthouse and faced up the judge !

I let you discover the history of Dorothy Vaughan…

But don’t think that it was really easy for our scientist women…

The colored ladies room were at 800 meters of the place where one of them work, the library didn’t have very intelectual books for black people, like for exemple a book which speak about the International Business Machine… So, our 4 women were not helped!

The NASA is special because there is a lot of women who works for the « space program » even if it was in 1961, they hired more women than other company. We could think white women would help black women (women solidarity), well no. The worst is that they didn’t even realized that it would be helpfull and it would change a lot of things for those women if they start to fight by their side. In consequences, our 3 women are going to fight to change the society and the world of science by themself !

Now, if you want to see the movie stop reading now !

Because, finally :

« Mary Jackson became NASA’s… and America’s first female African-American aeronautical engineer. In 1979, she was appointed Langley’s Women’s Program Manager, where she fought to advance the cause of women of all colors.

Dorothy Vaughan became NASA’s first African-American Supervisor. As a Fortran specialist, on the frontier of electronic computing she was regarded as one of the most brilliant minds at NASA.

Katherine Johnson performed calculations for the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and the Space Shuttle.

In 2016, NASA dedicated the Katherine Goble Johnson Computational Building in honor of her groundbreaking works in space travel. At the age of 97, Katherine have been awarded of the « Presidential Medal of Freedom ».

For me, this movie was really interesting and shows us the big gap of the past between white and black people. Inequalities were present between men and women but much more between black women and white men. This movie shows us that the color of our skin don’t reveal the intelligence of someone and that people can be really stupid when they are convinced of something.

To finish I just want to say that we admire all of those women who fought for their rights and for justice !!

From left to right this is : Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan.

We tried to find some other movies which speak about scientist women but there is not a lot excepted some who speak about Marie Curie : Marie Curie the courage of knowledge and in the serie Genius Season 1 episode 5 and some other moment in the series but it’s fast…

I just wanted to say there is enormous inequalities between men and women and not only in the world of science, it is everywhere. We can see it in the movie: On the Basis of Sex.  It speaks about the history and the fight of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1950-1980). Inequalities are also mention on the movie : Desert flower. When does those things will stop all is the question…

If you have some ideas of movie about the subject don’t hesitate to tell me in the comments! Have a good day!

Maud