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The purpose of this paper is to reveal a qualitative researcher’s journey into finding her sense of self during a trial she faced while conducting her dissertation research.

Indigenous research methodologies (IRM) mixed with an autoethnography were used. A critical reflexivity position, with respect to being in the field, was adopted, melding in the Universe, the Sun and the Earth as objects that the author can talk and interact with. This reflexivity was captured within the letter to the Universe.

Three outcomes are discussed. Notably, the implications of this work with respect to power-relations and gender. The issue of being in the field is then discussed. Finally, untangling the practical implications of using IRM/autoethnography as a combined method is presented.

The letter to the Universe offers a guide of sorts to other qualitative researchers, via one person’s experience in the field. The letter is, in the end, a cautionary story for others, acknowledging that the author can respond to a trial in a gendered fashion, that one needs to be humble along with being persistent, flexible and resourceful toward achieving “good” research.

As a Western, White woman scholar, who circles Indigenous influences, the author demonstrated (through this letter) one possible way of embracing, and acknowledging, IRM without appropriating it.

The authors focus on “writing women into ‘history’” in this study, embracing the notion of cisgender and ethnicity in relation to the “historic turn”. As such, the authors bring forward the stories of the US Pan American Airway’s Guided Missile Range Division (GMRD) and the White women who worked there. The authors ask what has a Cold War US missile division to tell us about present and future gendered relationships in the North American space industry.

The authors apply Foucault’s technology of lamination, a form of critical discourse analysis, to both narrative texts and photographic images in the GMRD’s in-house newsletter, the Clipper, dating from 1964 until the end of 1967. They meld an autoethnography to this technique, providing space for the first author to share her experiences within the contemporary space industry in relation to the GMRD White women experiences.

The authors surface, in applying this combined methodology, a story about a White women’s historical, present and future cisgender social reality in the North American space industry. They are contributing then to a multi-voiced, cisgender/ethnic “historic turn” that, to date, is focused on White men alone in the US race to the moon.

The social implication of this study lies in challenging perceptions of the masculinist-gendering of the past by bringing forward tales of, and by, women. This study also brings a White woman’s voice forward, within a contemporary North American space industry organization.

The authors are making a three-fold contribution to this special issue, and to an understandings of gendered/ethnic multi-voiced histories. The authors untangle the mid-Cold War phase from the essentialized Cold War era. They recreate multi-voiced histories of White women within the North American space industry while adding an important contemporary voice. They also present a novel methodology that combines the technology of lamination with autoethnography, to provide a gateway to recognizing the impact of multi-voiced histories onto contemporary and future gendered/ethnic relationships.

The purpose of this paper was to provide a plausible answer to how there are so few science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-professional women managers in the Canadian space industry.

The author showcased one such individual and her experiences of the exclusionary order in this industry, by focusing on her discourses and those of her former supervisor. The author applied the critical sensemaking (CSM) framework to unstructured interview data and to various collected written documentation. To guide the author’s application of this CSM framework, the author asked and answered the following questions: what is the range of identity anchor points associated with, and available to, a STEM-professional woman within the Canadian space industry? What is the relationship between these anchor points and organizational rules and social values? And, how do these anchor points and their relationship with rules and social values influence the exclusion of STEM-professional women from management positions within this industry?

The author surfaced a STEM-professional woman’s range of ephemeral identities, captured within her range of attributed anchor points. The author also revealed some of the rules and social values of the organizational context she worked in. The author then analyzed the how of her exclusionary social order, by studying the relationship between these anchor points and these rules and social values.

In addition to addressing the lack of STEM-professional women in management and to filling a gap in the literature, this study made a contribution to our understanding of social-identities, represented by anchor points, and to their discursive reproduction within organizational contexts. The author also suggested micro-political resistances to undo this social order for one particular individual.

This study’s value can be measured by its contribution to the postpositivist cisgender and diversity literature focused on intersectionality scholarship, specifically in the area of identity anchor points and their (re)creation within social interactions.