ThinkHer

For decades, the image of flight has been quietly gendered. Little boys are handed toy aeroplanes and told to dream of the cockpit, while girls are more often nudged toward the aisle—graceful, composed, and smiling as flight attendants. Even today, when we speak of aviation, the figure of the pilot still carries a certain masculine weight: authority, control, technical mastery. Women, when imagined in the skies, are often placed in roles defined by appearance rather than command. But what happens when a woman decides to subtly change it, redefine it in her own terms?  Wang Zheng ©Wikipedia That quiet defiance sits at the heart of Wang Zheng’s story. As a child, she too imagined becoming a flight attendant, drawn by what she later described as a kind of “beauty” associated with the role. And to be fair, being a flight attendant is far from just about appearance, it demands precision, care, emotional intelligence, and the ability to manage people and emergencies at 30,000 feet. But ...

Recently, I found myself in a conversation about the concept of private experimental labs—spaces where individuals, with some training, could pay to conduct experiments. On the surface, it sounds liberating, but I couldn’t shake the unease that this would make science even more of an elite pursuit than it already is. After all, science thrives on collaboration, shared knowledge, and rigorous training. Yet, history reminds us that not all contributions to science have come through formal institutions or collective laboratories. Some emerged from solitary searches, driven by individuals whose curiosity and persistence overcame the absence of public spaces or recognition. Jiang Hui, a 19th-century Chinese woman who made her own star charts, was one such figure. Jiang Hui, Made on Canva @Thinkher Born in 1839 in Sichuan province, Jiang Hui grew up in an intellectual household. Her father, Jiang Hanchun, was a writer and recluse with wide-ranging interests in alchemy, astronomy, an...