Why I'm a Transit-Loving Feminist

This post is sampled from a speech I gave at the Women & Public Policy Program's Women's Leadership Board  at Harvard University on November 7th, 2013.


Early in the morning of May 14th, 1946, a woman named Nalini Nadkarni walked to Bandra train station. Hopping into the ladies' compartment of the suburban rail line before its open doors sped off to the next stop, she traveled to Victoria Terminus in South Bombay. Her final destination was Bombay's Municipal Corporation Building, where she had recently begun a job as a clerk---one of the few women in the whole, regal building.

Municipal Corporation Building, Bombay, India

Her husband wasn't very happy with her new occupation. Neither was his family---or hers for that matter. Her high school education had been terminated so that she could marry a good man and be a good wife: one that kept the house clean and prepared good meals for her hardworking husband. She willingly took care of these responsibilities quite well. 

But one thing she would not do, she insisted, was be financially dependent on anyone else---not her husband, not her uncles, nobody. She had relied on others for far too long growing up, and while she was grateful to those who helped her, she realized that this reliance often limited her own abilities---including the ability to continue her schooling. Nalini's skills were limited, but she was very opinionated, and very, very adamant. She would make the absolute best of whatever she had. And so, in spite of her family's protests, she boarded that train every day, held her head high as she facilitated the running of that Municipal office, and stood even more proudly as she came home with her own paycheck.

(All this may sound normal, even cliche today, but remember, this was India...in the 1940s!) 

Nalini and her baby daughter

A few years later, Nalini had a daughter. Nalini was insistent that her daughter's potential not be stifled by anything---not social norms, not sexism, not financial constraints, nothing. 

So by the time her daughter was in her teens, Nalini "Tiger Mom'd" her, signing her up for dance classes, advanced tutoring, internships at advertising firm, modeling jobs, even the navy cadets!---so she could earn confidence, discipline and strength, and start to be financially independent too. She shuttled her daughter between appointments by that same suburban rail line she took to get to work. 

(Again, remember that this kind of schedule was unheard of for any middle class youngster in 1960s India, let alone for a young woman, to say nothing of today's America). 

Nalini's Daughter in an ad for Afghan Cold Cream

Anything the family couldn't or wouldn't pay for, or for which scholarships were unavailable, Nalini would subsidize by putting in a few more hours at the office. 

"My daughter is one of the most talented people in the world," Nalini would later tell me. "I will not let her talents be hidden. She needs to fight. And she needs to succeed."

And Nalini's daughter did succeed, moving to New York City and setting professional and personal precedents that (I'd say) were unimaginable to most women of her background. When her husband first proposed to her in Bombay, you know what her response was? "No. My career as a copywriter in an ad agency comes first." When she moved to New York, she financially supported her whole extended family when her husband was still in medical school (the US didn't recognize his Indian credentials, so he had to redo all of his certifications). She was an exceptional mother that seamlessly blended the unrelenting love and engaged strictness of India with the enabling, empowering independence of American culture in how she raised her children. And all the while she excelled at a sometimes 6am-2am career as an advertising executive. All this was only after being forced to re-start her professional life when she arrived in New York with a job packing incense into boxes.

Nalini's granddaughter, in turn, was raised demanding nothing but the absolute best of herself, and for other women and people---and working to realize that. That granddaughter was a counselor at Sakhi, an anti-domestic violence organization that works with New York's South Asian community; one of Eve Ensler's key aides in bringing "The Vagina Monologues" to light and later to London and to V Day Celebrations in New York; and the author of the forthcoming, and I'll predict best-selling, novel "Where Earth Meets Water." (Go ahead and pre-order a copy). To say nothing of her successes as an athlete, advertising star and sister. 

If you haven't guessed, Nalini Nadkarni is my granny; I was lucky enough to be born her grandson. And thanks to her, these are some of the true stories and truer heroes that I grew up blessed to take for granted, and to learn from, subtly but profoundly; stories that demonstrated to me that, when enabled---and, very often, even when not enabled---women truly kick ass. 

Nalini is certainly a very, very special person; a driven woman with a serious, rough exterior whose love for her family, concern for their welfare, and resulting motivation and efficiency for getting things done are literally unparalleled in my experience. A woman who, even today, gets more done from the confines of her little apartment in Bandra East with just her land line telephone, a pad and pen, and her audacity than most people can even think about. (Seriously, put this woman in charge of healthcare in the United States, and we will surpass the Swedes within days).

And yet this is a woman whom society---even her own family---tried (and, by some measure, sadly succeeded) to hold back. Imagine---imagine!---what women, and people of all hues, classes, and backgrounds can do when fully enabled. As Hillary Clinton famously put it, "every woman deserves the chance to realize her God-given potential."

* * *

Very often that chance, that access to opportunity is enabled by something that has been at the heart of my WAPPP-funded research this summer: mass transit.

Churchgate Station, Bombay, India

What if Nalini had needed a car---which she and her family couldn't afford---to get to her office? Well, she probably wouldn't have been able to get to that municipal building in the first place to develop the financial independence that lay underneath all of her other successes. (To say nothing of the emotional toll that the stress of driving takes on working commuters; stress that the authors of "Poor Economics" argue indirectly restricts economic mobility).

Similarly, when moving to New York City, my mother would have had a much, much more difficult time traveling between her home and family, and upwardly mobile job opportunities without the subway and bus systems of NYC. The same goes for my sister, and most others who succeed in urban economies. 

Union Square Station, Manhattan, New York

Transit is infrastructure that is so fundamental to the effective running of life, that connects so many people with the places they need to go---but that most of its users don't even think about. And ideally, people shouldn't have to think about it: transit should be of such good value that it doesn't make a noticeable dent in riders' wallets; transit should simply and efficiently connect different places where different people need to be; and transit should be comfortable enough that people can travel without worrying about their physical, emotional or sexual safety.

Of course, these are still 'shoulds' in too many cases. All too often, transport is prohibitively expensive; all too often, it doesn't efficiently connect those who need it most with the places they need to go, with ease (think of those who need to drive a car to a bus to a train to another train, all the while lugging a bag or stroller); and all too often, it's not physically safe, particularly for women, as we recently saw in the New Delhi gang rape case.

And it's women that account for a greater share of transit trips than men, with three women taking transit to work for every two men---women who take transit because it's the only financially viable option when they're getting paid less for what's usually more work. 

In fact, transportation has had a historical role in both giving and restricting access and opportunity, from Rosa Parks' bus, to the literal "other side of the tracks", to highways constructed through poor neighborhoods, and White Flight that was enabled by interstate highways. 

Making access the norm will be one of the great challenges for the world as its people converge into cities, from India to China and even the United States. The only way we'll be able to do that effectively is if we study, learn, and adopt lessons from what happens to different people in different places.

US Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx recently wrote that, "sometimes the way we build bridges is by actually building bridges...and roads and transit."

So this is where those bridges connect: we enable awesome people to do the awesome things they're capable of, by physically connecting them to the places they need to be to do them. Anything less, which both the left and right would agree with, is both unjust and inefficient.

I've learned so much from my time in China, lessons that I have taken throughout my work and life---and will continue to. And I really cannot thank Harvard's Woman and Public Policy Program enough, for this opportunity to bring together what I do---study and make urban policy---with who I am: a very proud feminist; certainly someone who believes with all my heart in equality of opportunity.

And if you ever meet this feisty little lady who is, in many ways the reason my family and I are the way we are---certainly many of the good things---you will see that she has more chutzpah in her little finger than most people have in their entire bodies; you will see that there is literally nobody else like her on the face of this earth.

Nalini Nadkarni with her Grandchildren

So here's to making sure that the Nalini Nadkarnis of China, India, America, and the rest of the world get---safely and efficiently---to where they need to go; to where they can realize their God-given potential.