Let's be clear. This was a private venture on the part of Lovelace--NOT NASA. It received neither funding nor endorsement from the agency, which was unaware of the whole thing. While the women involved were subjected to many of the same tests the male astronauts endured, and many passed with superior marks, that's where it stopped. They were led to believe it would lead further, but not by NASA! Whether NASA should have involved women is another issue entirely. But we have to recall that it was an era in which such a notion was alien, to put it mildly. So let's stop cooing over the story and recognize it for what it was: a private venture, strictly done by Lovelace, who withdrew the whole thing when the Navy (where he was going to send the women for more testing) asked NASA for a charge code and the agency said "hunh?", at which point the good Dr. Lovelace quietly called the experiment quits. Start reading beyond the web, people.