There are no jobs specifically for men or women, so flying to space is also women's work, former Soviet female cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya told Xinhua in an interview.
Savitskaya, 63, who flew to space in 1982 and 1984, is the world's second woman in space following Valentina Tereshkova, also from the Soviet Union. She was the first woman in the world to perform a space walk in 1984.
"I don't believe there are jobs specifically for men or for women, nor are there people who are capable or incapable of performing certain tasks," Savitskaya said after Liu Yang, 33, became China's first female astronaut.
"Working in space depends on a person's training, psychological and physical status, self-command, personal aims, and so on. If a person is a professional, the gender makes no difference," Savitskaya said.
"There is a large number of men unable to be the cosmonauts, and there are enough women who are. Women can fly to space even better than men," she said.
China launched the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft with Liu and her two male crewmates Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang aboard from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China at 6:37 p.m. (1037 GMT) Saturday.
The Shenzhou-9 will take the three astronauts to the orbiting Tiangong-1 space lab module, where they will perform the first manned docking with the module. An automatic docking with the unmanned Shenzhou-8 spaceship was made late last year.
Savitskaya recalled that, in Russia, an opinion had prevailed in past times that the space mission was a man's work, even the founding father of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolev, once believed flying to space was not women's business.
"We (Savitskaya and Tereshkova) in Russia have already shaken that misconception, and the Americans followed us," Savitskaya said.
In 1983, the first American female astronaut, Sally Ride, successfully completed her mission in space, and Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space in 1984.
"If a woman prepares herself for the space mission, like the Chinese female astronauts, she has to pass certain selections, overcome hardships and men's prejudice," Savitskaya said.
She said she believed China had fully prepared for the Shenzhou-9 mission and the spacecraft's crew members "will face nothing unexpected."
However, she stressed, "the sky is the limit."
"Overall, mental stability is a key thing for a successful cosmonaut to work in stressful situations like in a spaceflight. A space vehicle is not a hotel," Savitskaya said.
"But my Chinese colleague is a professional pilot, so I believe she has already been trained well to work in the emotionally stressful environment," Savitskaya said.
"I am sure her mission will be successful. This will destroy the opinion that space missions are not a woman's work," she said.
Joining the Chinese Air Force in 1997, Liu Yang was a veteran pilot with 1,680 hours of flying experience and the deputy head of a flight unit of the People's Liberation Army before being recruited as a prospective astronaut in May 2010. She is now an Air Force major.
