Sandra Day O’Connor specialised in breaking into male bastions

That Arizona sun was hot, and Sandra Day, then a teenager, was in the high desert alone. She had taken the disreputable old Chevy pickup on a two-and-a-half-hour drive to where her father, and the cowboys of his 200,000-acre Lazy B ranch, were branding cattle. The chuck-wagon box held the lunch she had packed for them herself, coleslaw and potatoes and applesauce cake. But now the left rear tyre was totally flat.The desert was an empty and dangerous place, so silent that you could sometimes hear an ant running on a leaf. Anything there could scratch or sting you. If something went wrong, you had to fix it yourself. So she climbed out, jacked up the truck, and struggled to get the lug nuts off. It took a while; they were on tight. After an hour she got the tyre changed, reached the men, made a brushwood fire for the coffee and spread out lunch. No one thanked her. This was her allotted job, and she was late.