Historically, men always had a dominant role in our societies, as women were encouraged to perform housekeeping and child-caring tasks. The XXth century, and especially its second half, has seen a lot of progress in that area. Today, an female astronaut or engineer doesn't surprise anybody, it becomes common, even though there are more males than females in those technical jobs.
It was quite different in the 1950-60's, the timeline of BASPM Episode 1. An astronaut women was more an attraction than anything else. In fact no female astronaut flown before the Space Shuttles. Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to reach space during Vostok 6, the 16 June 1963. She achieved 48 orbits in 3 days, but was stricken by "space sickness", a trouble similar to sea-sickness that still strikes randomly astro/cosmo-nauts (regardless of their gender !) aboard the ISS today. That problem is still not well understood, but it tends to get better with time and appropriated medicine. She even met Vostok 5 piloted by Valery Bykovsky in orbit, approached by 5 kilometers and had a short-waves radio chat with him.
Notice on the pic that she is dressed like a man, has a short haircut and displays absolutely no signs of her feminity. That was the spirit back then, and that pic is from 1969...
But Soviets planned the operation as another "first" and another "proof" of Soviet technology (and people) superiority, as they showed they could even send women in space without risks with obviously propaganda in mind. In fact, Valentina sickness was taken seriously and it took 19 years until the second woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, flew into space aboard a Soyuz.
Now, in BASPM, there are as much women than men applicants in the recruitement screens, and that seems a bit odd for Episode 1 timeline. I really don't imagine a woman flying the X-15 in the late 1950's and becoming an international heroïn, that's anachronical.
In the original BARIS, the question was quite realistically answered by the "female astro/cosmo-nauts" events, that allowed to recruit women on a random basis.
So I think that something should be done about this, while keeping in mind the GSA context, if the developpers stick to it : I can imagine USA, USSR, or even Europe providing several female recruits, but it is difficult to conceive to imagine female middle-eastern 'nauts on that timeframe...
