research · 14 May 2026
Eleven Percent: Where Women Disappear in Space Agency Leadership
Women hold 22% of aerospace jobs and 11% of agency leadership. We traced where the other half goes, and it is not the pipeline.
By EOSYN Space Research
Every year the industry publishes a diversity report, and every year the same explanation appears: the pipeline is thin.
We went looking for the thinning. We tracked promotion cohorts across eleven agencies and found that the sharpest drop does not happen at entry, or at graduation, or in secondary school physics. It happens between senior engineer and programme lead — the exact point where a career stops being technical and starts being political.
That is not a supply problem. That is a decision, made repeatedly, by people with names and job titles.
**What the numbers say**
Women make up 22% of the aerospace workforce. They hold 11% of space agency leadership positions. Halving between the floor and the top is not attrition; it is a filter.
**What we are doing about it**
The Women in Space Leadership Fellowship exists because the filter will not remove itself. We place fellows into decision-making rooms and we keep them there. Twelve months, a real portfolio, a real budget line, and a sponsor who is accountable for the outcome.
We stopped waiting for the pipeline and built our own.