About this ebook
Outer space is celebrated as humanity’s next great frontier, yet not everyone is set to have an equal share in its future. Once imagined as a global commons of scientific cooperation and cosmic discovery, space is increasingly framed as a ‘warfighting domain’, fuelled by (para)militarism, privatisation and patriarchy. It is concentrating wealth and power in the private sector, dominated by a ‘broligarchy’ of space entrepreneurs obsessed with starships and galatic conquest.
Elise Stephenson led a world-first research study of gender and diversity in space, involving more than 70 countries. In Space XX, she unpacks the findings and speaks with almost 1000 pioneering women, men, trans and non-binary people, from astronauts to engineers to ethicists – including Australia’s first female astronaut, Katherine Bennell-Pegg, and Space Agent One, Megan Clark. She reveals a story of inequality, exclusion and denigration of women in STEM. And she imagines better ways forward, including practical, evidence-based ideas that allow all humanity to flourish, informed by First Nations, feminist and futures thinking.
Back in the 1960s, a group of elite American women pilots excelled in astronaut training – but their training was abandoned, and so the Moon landing became ‘one small step for man’. Sixty years later, it was announced that no woman would fly in Artemis III, a critical voyage in the ambition to return humanity to the Moon. Compelling and urgent, Space XX exposes the stakes of our extraterrestrial trajectory and argues that a more inclusive future can – and must – be fought for.
'Both meticulously researched and deeply practical, and driven by a passion for change, Space XX is a powerful contribution in the ongoing fight for gender equality and women in leadership.' – Julia Gillard
About the author
Dr. Elise Stephenson is an award-winning researcher and the deputy director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at Australian National University, chaired by Australia’s first (and only) female prime minister, Julia Gillard. Stephenson is the Gender, Space and National Security Fellow at the ANU’s National Security College, an adjunct at Griffith Asia Institute and a Fulbright Fellow of the University of Washington. She was the lead researcher of three Landmark Studies on Gender Equality in the Global Space Sector (2024–26) published by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, containing world-first data on gender representation and policy uptake in over 100 space agencies and organisations globally, including NASA and the Australian Space Agency. Her book The Face of the Nation (2024) won the International Studies Association Bertha Lutz Prize and the Australian Political Science Association Crisp Prize commendation, and her research appears widely, including in the Hague Journal of Diplomacy and European Journal of Politics and Gender. Elise was recognised by Deloitte, Google and Energy Australia as one of Australia’s Top 50 Outstanding LGBTIQ+ leaders, and her Fulbright research on diversity in space was funded by Monash University.
