When women are an afterthought
I have never liked going to gas stations. When the hybrids with their high fuel economy were introduced, I got one mainly to reduce the number of times I had to fill gas. I was very excited when the Tesla S was launched in 2012 and after giving them a couple of years to get the early bugs ironed out, in 2014 I bought one. I could charge it at home and I have never gone to a gas station since. The car was essentially a mobile phone on wheels, big screen, all features controlled by touch, a bit spare but I liked that.
The most convenient interior feature of the car for me was the space between the front seats. Finally someone thought about women and their need to put a purse somewhere in the car. These days I use it to put my handbag, sanitizers, masks, and other small things I want to keep handy. Yes, I love the autodrive and most of the fancy upgrades but this continues to be one of my favorite features.
The car is now 7 years old and my husband has been encouraging me to buy the latest model. In the new version unfortunately the space between the front seats has been filled by a console leaving no room for my purse. When I pointed this out to my husband, he said you can always put your purse on the passenger seat or in the back. I don’t want to do that — the current configuration works really well for me. I don’t want to give it up so I am postponing buying a new car. Also the steering wheel is being replaced with something called a yoke like they have on race cars and I am not sure I want that. So my husband suggested I buy an older model but why should I have to settle for that?
In 2002, Buick had introduced the Rendezvous, which among other family friendly features, provided a center console with storage space and power points for a laptop as well as separate spots to hold a purse, and other small things. Notably the interior was designed by a woman which may have had something to do with it. It has now been discontinued and according to a Chicago Tribune headline from 2017 — New cars offer no good space to store a purse.
Women buy 62% of all new cars in the US and influence the decision in more than 85% of the purchases. And most of us carry purses. If car companies redesigned the ungainly console to make some place to set it down, not only would the front seats feel more open, it might even decrease the manufacturing costs and increase sales.
In October 2019, NASA celebrated a first in its long history of space exploration — two women astronauts, Anne McClain and Christina Koch performed a space walk. At first glance, there is nothing new about women doing spacewalks. While the number of women who have done it is very low, only 15 compared to 227 men — Kathryn Sullivan had done one back in 1984.
NASA had originally planned an all female spacewalk for March but at the last moment, they had to replace one of the women with a man. The explanation is somewhat convoluted, and the decision was pragmatic, but essentially the reason was that there wasn’t a second fully equipped medium Extravehicular Mobility suit ready on the ISS for the second woman astronaut. Getting one outfitted would have added a 12 hour delay so they decided to change the personnel.
The space suits that are being used for these missions were designed in the 1980s. Due to cost and other constraints, in the 1990s, NASA decided to reduce the space suits sizes available on the International Space Station to medium, large and extra large. While most astronauts fit into these sizes, this ruled out the option of a space walk for some women.
NASA learned its lesson and decided that they are not going to constrain who can go to space for any reason, least of all the availability of suits. The new exploration EMU suits for the Artemis generation of missions, are being built to custom fit individual astronauts and will allow them to conduct a range of activities on extraterrestrial surfaces.
While this was a very visible example, there are many other situations where age-old biases, decisions and conceptions about women still continue to constrain what we are able to do. In this month of March, women’s history month, while acknowledging the women whose shoulders we stand on, let’s keep our sights focused on the future. Let’s stop compromising and accommodating, recognize the assumptions that limit our opportunities, and take a leadership role in changing them.
