You know how things such as PPE, seatbelts and car safety and medicine are based on the default human, being a man?
Well good news! I have found things that are based on women being the default human.
It’s cleaning equipment! I am 6 ft 1 so unusually tall for a woman. Not particularly tall if I was a man, but there you go. I’ve been on a 5 hour back-breaking cleaning bender before my in-laws arrive for Christmas (I’m in Australia , thread-stalking Covid Stasi) and it has brought home how mops, dusters and vacuum cleaners don’t telescopically extend nearly enough for someone of man height. They could- they should be able to extend double the retracted wand length but the manufacturers have kindly made them extend only about a third extra, just enough for a 5 ft 8 woman to comfortably use them.
Now I think about it, prams had the same problem back when I used them. You really had to search hard and pay premium dollar for a pram that a man or a man-heighted woman could use, to avoid looking like the hunchback of Notre Dame.
So next time you feel angry about how safety equipment and medicine is designed to work most effectively on man-sized people, you can at least feel glad cleaning equipment is designed just for us girls. Yay.
Been breathing in bleach, I think. Time for wine.