The Deadly Truth About A World Built For Men – From Stab Vests To Car Crashes (Caroline Criado-Perez,

The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes (Caroline Criado-Perez, The Guardian, Feb 23 2019)

“The formula to determine standard office temperature was developed in the 1960s around the metabolic resting rate of the average man.

But a recent Dutch study found that the metabolic rate of young adult females performing light office work is significantly lower than the standard values for men doing the same activity.

In fact, the formula may overestimate female metabolic rate by as much as 35%, meaning that current offices are on average five degrees too cold for women. (…)

Over the past 50 years, breast cancer rates in the industrialised world have risen significantly – but a failure to research female bodies, occupations and environments means that the data for exactly what is behind this rise is lacking.

“We know everything about dust disease in miners,” Rory O’Neill, professor of occupational and environmental policy research at the University of Stirling, tells me.

“You can’t say the same for exposures, physical or chemical, in ‘women’s work’.” (…)

All Tufekci’s photos from the event were unusable, she wrote, and “for one simple reason: good smartphones are designed for male hands”.

Voice recognition could be one solution to a smartphone that doesn’t fit your hands, but voice-recognition software is often hopelessly male-biased. (…)

When Apple launched its health-monitoring system with much fanfare in 2014, it boasted a “comprehensive” health tracker.

It could track blood pressure; steps taken; blood alcohol level; even molybdenum and copper intake.

But as many women pointed out at the time, they forgot one crucial detail: a period tracker. (…)

When Apple launched their AI, Siri, users in the US found that she (ironically) could find prostitutes and Viagra suppliers, but not abortion providers.

Siri could help you if you’d had a heart attack, but if you told her you’d been raped, she replied “I don’t know what you mean by ‘I was raped.’”

From smartwatches that are too big for women’s wrists, to map apps that fail to account for women who may want to know the “safest” in addition to “fastest” routes; 

to “measure how good you are at sex” apps called “iThrust” and “iBang” the tech industry is rife with other examples.

While there are an increasing number of female-led tech firms that do cater to women’s needs, they are seen as a “niche” concern and often struggle to get funding. (…)

Women tend to sit further forward when driving. This is because we are on average shorter. 

Our legs need to be closer to reach the pedals, and we need to sit more upright to see clearly over the dashboard.

This is not, however, the “standard seating position”, researchers have noted. Women are “out of position” drivers.

And our wilful deviation from the norm means that we are at greater risk of internal injury on frontal collisions. (…)

Designers may believe they are making products for everyone, but in reality they are mainly making them for men. It’s time to start designing women in.”