I’ve just read “Invisible Women” by Caroline Criado Perez, and I wanted to recommend it. She wrote a newspaper article that summarises a lot of the issues.
But my (inexpert)) summary is: the world is mostly designed by men, for men – not necessarily because women are specifically excluded, but because it just doesn’t occur to those making decisions (mostly men) that women’s needs might be different. Men are treated as the default human, and women are a variation on this. In a world where collection of huge amounts of data is key to the way we make decisions, there is a gap in the data that is collected on women. E.g. things like stab vests don’t properly fit female police officers, women are routinely excluded from clinical drug trials, and unpaid care work is ignored in just about everything.
But the bit that really upset was around car crash tests. When a woman is involved in a crash she is 47% more likely to be seriously injured than a man, and 17% more likely to die. Women tend to sit closer to the steering wheel and more upright, which is a deviation from the “standard seating position” i.e. we’re doing it wrong. Crash test dummies are based on a male body. None of the mandatory EU crash tests are required to be carried out on an anthropometrically correct female crash test dummy. There is one EU regulatory test that requires a female crash test dummy…but only for the passenger seat. That really upset me. I had no idea. I feel so let down. Anyway, it's a fantastic read. Very eye-opening.