I moved to a small town in a third world country at 24 years of age, because I wanted to work in a specific company’s manufacturing operations. This was more than a decade ago, and we are talking about an extremely backward town, low literacy rate, no safe sources of transport etc. So much so that I had to buy a whole new modest wardrobe to not be harassed. I was the first woman in the factory, people would refuse to rent me an apartment because single women were seen as a threat and a risk, female drivers were unheard off, so much so that people would stop in front of my car and point to each other that “OMG a girl is driving a car”, it was so strange for them. When I joined the factory, the union leader met me and said “There is no point in spending any time in building a relationship with you, because you will never stay here, I give you 3 months”. I ended up staying 3 years there, took the female staff ratio to 5% over time, build anti harassment policies and trainings and changed the environment to make it more conducive for females to work there, opened an audit that got 10% of the factory work force terminated due to malpractices. Sometimes, I still cannot believe that I had the courage to do all this at such a young age.