“It was designed for the typical male breadwinner to take the train to the office and then come back – that 1950s lifestyle.”
Tell me you have an anti-rail bias without telling me you have an anti-rail bias.
We all know that railroads, and specifically their local passenger operations, weren't invented until the 1950's. We also know that the demographics of the working classes has changed since then, and that neither males nor females need to commute from their home to a downtown office anymore. As a daily rider of the commuter rail, I can attest to this. My AM and PM trains are full of leisure riders who have nothing better to do than to ride trains all day.
It's also pretty telling that the quoted individual is the head of the MIT Mobility Initiative (MMI). The MMI's global advisory board are almost all affiliated with automakers or concerns owned by them (Ford, GM, Hyundai), EV and/or autonomous vehicle transportation related concerns (Schneider Electric, Cintra, Motional). Even more telling is the number of occurrences of terms like EV, autonomous, vehicle, and rail in the Initiative's annual report. (hint, it's zero for rail).
tl;dr: This individual has an agenda, which they try to strengthen by somehow making trains sexist and patriarchal. Of course, when one has to resort to those types of statements, it only highlights the weakness of their position, otherwise they'd come out with something a bit more objective and factual.