Am I a bad feminist?

I heard about The Calculating Stars on the Galactic Suburbia podcast, the place where I get my education on feminist thought through sci-fi.

I listened to the preview on Audible and was instantly hooked, I ran and got the book before the preview was over, it was so appealing. A smart couple figuring out what is going on during a cataclysmic event through science and yes it's the lady that does the calculations.

This is my first Mary Robinette Kowal novel.
I did get a bit worried that her books may not be for me when I went to look at her other titles and saw many covers that made me thing, Romance Novel.

The Calculating Stars is not a book about a global cataclysm, that is just the background for a book about an extremely talented woman facing a heap of Male Chauvinism with Anti Anti Semitism and some racism against blacks to boot.

In short, The Calculating Stars hits all the correct points as we look back in horror at 1950s America.

The problem is that there is very little subtlety, we keep getting hit in the face with these points and they keep getting explained to the readers in case they don't get it on their own. It is an education in Feminism 101, but is it good writing?

In a world facing such a cataclysm, would a woman deserving of a Nobel Pries for calculating the future implications of the disaster, take so long to be recognized?

In a book about feminism, I guess yes. In a Sci-Fi NOvel, perhaps not.

After about 4 chapters I found myself putting this novel aside in favor of other books, and occasionally returning to it.

When I was still reading the early chapters I recommended The Calculating Stars to a student of mine that doesn't read much Sci-Fi, a retired CEO she is amazed at how bad things were for women in the 50s. But she too as set this novel aside for now in favor of a better written novel about life in South America.

The title of the series and the opening sequence set up a different expectation from the emphasis we get in this novel and this results in some frustration, the fact that rocket launches and the language surrounding them are mentioned almost exclusively as horrible sexual innuendo, and we hardly get to witness the space program in action, defies my expectations of a sci-fi novel. Are these expectations from a mail point of view. Does a book about a scientist that wants to be an astronaut not supposed to deal more with her work? Have those novels already been written and now it's time to place the emphasis on other perspectives?

I would like to see more reactions from women to this novel. Will they too find the middle section too long and the writing too simplified?