How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Like all his colleagues, Bowman was unmarried; it was not fair to send family men on a mission of such duration. (17.26)
Why couldn't they send married couples into space? And why is it all "family men"? The assumption seems to be that women wouldn't want to go, or wouldn't be fit to go. Again, the gender relations of what is supposedly 2001 seem mired in the '60s, or even the '50s. Clarke likes to imagine changes in technology and whooshing spaceships, but changes to gender norms seem much harder for him to manage.
Quote #8
Though numerous ladies had promised to wait until the expeditions returned, no one had really believed this. At first, both Poole and Bowman had been making rather intimate personal calls once a week, though the knowledge that many ears must be listening at the Earth end of the circuit tended to inhibit them. Yet already…the warmth and frequency of the conversations with their girls on Earth had begun to diminish. (17.26)
The women are not only irrelevant to space travel; they're also fickle. Or perhaps it's that, to be real adventurous space travelers out among the stars, you need to cut yourself off from the distractions of those ladies and girls bound to earth.
Quote #9
It was true—indeed notorious—that seamen had compensations at other ports; unfortunately there were no tropical islands full of dusky maids beyond the orbit of Earth. (17.27)
This is the second reference to sexualized non-white women (after the dancing stewardess from Bali) in the book. The book is almost completely sexless, but it seems significant that the times when sex is almost/sort of mentioned, it's in the context of "exotic" women providing various services for space travelers.