Amanda Nguyen: The first Vietnamese woman in space is rewriting the rules on earth

The second one, on women’s health, was conducted with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Nguyen brought the prototype of a wearable ultrasound breast patch designed by an engineer and materials scientist from that institute, and wore it under her spacesuit. The goal was to test how breast cancer can be monitored under extreme conditions.

The final project was an experiment looking at menstruation in space, with the Philippine Space Agency and MIT. “The majority of female astronauts are put on birth control to stop menstruation,” Nguyen says. “There are a lot of symptoms that come with birth control. Is it sustainable for long-duration space missions when you’re flying in space not only for weeks or months but for years? And what does it mean [to bring sanitary towels that] have different materials that may be less toxic or have better moisture-wicking fibres?” She is also hoping that she can extend the project to research the hormonal changes that can affect bone density and cause osteoporosis, which may be useful for future space missions. “It’s an issue that female astronauts are [facing], especially after they come back to Earth” and have to readjust to gravity.

Back on solid ground, Nguyen is continuing her research into women’s health. But she is more than a scientist: her other identity is a civil rights activist fighting gender-based violence. And it’s personal: Nguyen was raped during her final term at Harvard.

“Like so many survivors, it was completely life-altering,” she says of the attack. And it only got worse: after being forced to pay for a rape kit—the set of tools and documents used during a sexual assault forensic exam to collect evidence—she learnt that the state of Massachusetts, where Harvard is located, routinely destroys kits that have not been tested after six months. But many cases take far longer than that to be prosecuted. “I felt absolutely betrayed by the criminal justice system. There’s no reason that justifies the destruction of evidence before it’s tested.”

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She says that in the American criminal justice system, it is up to the prosecutors to decide what issues to prosecute. “It truly is that the law has a gender, and the gender isn’t female, because if you look at the types of crimes that are the most underreported or have the [lowest conviction] rates, it’s sexual violence and domestic violence; these two crimes inordinately affect women,” she says. “The conviction rate for [the cases women] do report is one per cent. Ninety-nine per cent of them will fail [to obtain] a conviction. What incentive does a survivor have to even go forward, then?” She cites Chanel Miller, a friend and a fellow sexual assault survivor who has also publicly shared her experience, as an example. Miller’s attacker Brock Allen Turner “got a conviction but only got three months. We know that the impact of sexual violence and rape lasts much longer than three months. So what does that even [redress]?

“I had cared about these issues before, but I had no idea how horrible the process was until I became a survivor myself,” Nguyen says. When she started publicly sharing what had happened to her, she received many messages from survivors and their loved ones telling her about the atrocities that they had faced while seeking justice within the criminal system. “I realised, then, that I had a choice: I could accept this injustice or rewrite the law. So, I rewrote it.”

In 2014, she set up Rise, a non-governmental civil rights organisation to protect the civil rights of rape and sexual assault survivors. “Most people don’t know [how to navigate the legislative system],” she says, explaining that when considering how to instigate change, most people only think of marching, running for office or voting. “But there exists another [way], which is to be a diplomat, to sit at the table and negotiate your rights and be part of the legislative process. That is a direct way to have an impact on your community and pen your own rights into existence.”

With her team at Rise, she has been involved in the passing of more than 100 laws and creation of civil rights protections in the US. Then in 2022, Rise engineered the adoption of a United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution called the Universal Survivor Bill of Rights, which serves as guidance for the treatment of sexual assault evidence in all United Nations countries. This was the first UNGA resolution focused on sexual violence survivors’ rights.

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The first bill Nguyen and her team passed in 2016 remains the one she’s most proud of: the Survivor Bill of Rights, which states that the survivor has the right to informative rape kit procedures and notification, among a list of other rights. The bill was signed into law in October 2016 by President Barack Obama.

Nguyen talks about many of these experiences in Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope, The New York Times bestseller published in March this year. The book is partly a work of magical realism: in one part of the narration, Nguyen imagines meeting five differently aged versions of herself and taking a journey with them to process their trauma and grief. She says, “Oftentimes, art metaphors give us the ability to explain an emotional truth in a way that can reach more of a depth than a straightforward telling.” She hopes the book’s honesty will inspire others who have experienced grief to find the motivation to get back up again.

“I want folks to know that no matter who you are, where you come from or what you’ve been through, your dreams do matter,” she says. “Even if they’re as wild as going to space, they can still come true.”

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