Ellen Stofan, NASA’s chief scientist, saw her first rocket launch at age 4. Her father worked at NASA as an engineer, and the thrill of space exploration captured her imagination from an early age.
New Delhi has a taxi service, driven by women, which picks up only women passengers. Mexico City has women-only buses. And Rio de Janeiro’s subway has a “pink car” that is exclusively available to women at peak travel times. Just this month, Thailand reintroduced women-only train cars.
The received wisdom these days is that we’re always findable. With our smartphones in our pockets and near constant use of GPS, we think we can always discover where we are, and in cases of emergency, we assume the authorities can, too.