Of all the facets of the Cold War, the Space Race is perhaps the only one that is fondly remembered. A battle between the capitalist USA and the communist Soviet Union to prove their military, technological - and by extension ideological - superiority, it led to huge advances in technology and a greater emphasis on teaching science in schools. Plus, anything to do with space is always just kind of cool.
With the competition having been bubbling under the surface since the 1940s, the Soviet Union shocked the world when they pipped America to the post by launching the satellite Sputnik 1 into orbit on 4 October 1957. Attached to an intercontinental ballistic missile, it was the first ever man-made object in space, a feat that would have been unimaginable just 20 years earlier. Fast forward four years and Soviet Yuri Gagarin became the first person to enter space and in 1969 Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong claimed victory in the race to be the first to step foot on the surface of the moon. But while everyone remembers the achievements of Aldrin, Armstrong and Gagarin, the enormous impact of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, is often overlooked.
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Having grown up in a capitalist age, it’s easy to assume that astronauts must come from privileged homes, but Tereshkova’s background is in fact refreshingly humble. She was born in a small village close to Yaroslavl, Russia, on 6 March 1937, to a tractor driver father and a mother who worked in a textile plant. She started school at the age of eight but left by 16 to work, continuing her education via correspondence courses. At the time she was selected to take part in the space programme, she was employed not as a pilot or engineer, but a factory assembly worker.
At the request of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who was keen to portray communism as promoting equal rights for men and women, five individuals were selected to be trained as part of its “women in space” programme. Tereshkova was chosen from over 400 applicants, partly because of her proletariat background, but also because of her unusual hobby: parachuting. She had made her first jump in 1959 as part of a local paramilitary flying club and by the time of her selection, had a further 90 jumps under her belt. Months of tough training followed, before Tereshkova was finally deemed the most suitable candidate for the space flight. According to Russia Today, Nikolay Kamanin, the leader of the programme, described her somewhat cruelly as: “Gagarin in a skirt”.
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On 16 June 1963, the then 26-year-old Valentina blasted off from a base in modern-day Kazakhstan, in a spacecraft named Vostok-6. As she lifted off, she shouted gleefully: "Hey sky, take off your hat, I'm on my way!" Until that moment, the operation had been completely classified; Valentina's own mother only discovered the truth about her daughter's double life when she heard about it on the radio. For the following 70 hours and 50 minutes, she sped through space, completing 48 full orbits of the earth.
The mission was not only an enormous PR win for the Soviet government, but also allowed scientists to test the effects of space travel on the female body. Despite reporting that "all systems are working perfectly", it would be almost 20 years before the USSR sent another woman into space, having decided that the process was too dangerous for a female after all. Tereshkova protested this decision, writing a letter to the central communist party committee. She later told the BBC: “On Earth, men and women are taking the same risks. Why shouldn't we be taking the same risks in space?" To this day, she is the only woman - of any nationality - to have completed a solo space flight.
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On her return from space, Tereshkova instantly became a Soviet sensation - and still is to this day. After being taken to hospital for the obligatory tests, she was driven heroically through Moscow in an open-top limousine to stand triumphantly upon Lenin’s mausoleum, next to the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. She received the Hero of the Soviet Union award - the USSR’s highest award - and popular culture dedications to her, including postage stamps and monuments, appeared all over the country. She even has a crater on the moon named after her. However, the fame is not something she has ever been entirely comfortable with: “We all have a personal life and being a public figure disrupts that” she told interviewers in 2013. She was married to fellow cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev in 1963, completing the fairy tale Soviet space story in almost suspiciously perfect style.
In later years, Tereshkova also became a political figure, partly owing to her high public standing, and was appointed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. With a particular focus on women’s issues, she represented the Soviet Union at UN conferences all over the world. She also was the first female general in the Soviet armed forces, as well as receiving the United Nations Gold Medal of Peace. Today, she is still involved with space programmes, is a huge fan Putin - who personally celebrated with her on her 70th and 80th birthdays - and serves on the Russian State Duma. Proving that she’s not done exploring yet, she’s also offered to take part in a one-way trip to Mars.
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The Soviet Union may have had many faults, but by putting a woman in space at a time when countries such as Switzerland still did not give women the right to vote, it forced the rest of the world to question the limits they imposed on the idea of what was “appropriate” for women. Since Tereshkova’s space flight, more than 50 women have made space journeys and, directly or indirectly, countless little girls have grown up not even thinking to question that they could one day be an astronaut. For her part, she remains modest about it: "One cannot deny the great role women have played in the world community. My flight was yet another impetus to continue this female contribution." To the rest of us though, she is, undoubtedly, the thought-leading, way-paving girl power icon who the west forgot about. 
