The deadly truth about a world built for men - from stab vests to car crashes

[obamanut2012]

When broadcaster Sandi Toksvig was studying anthropology at university, one of her female professors held up a photograph of an antler bone with 28 markings on it. “This,” said the professor, “is alleged to be man’s first attempt at a calendar.” Toksvig and her fellow students looked at the bone in admiration. “Tell me,” the professor continued, “what man needs to know when 28 days have passed? I suspect that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.”

Women have always tracked their periods. We’ve had to. Since 2015, I’ve been reliant on a period tracker app, which reassures me that there’s a reason I’m welling up just thinking about Andy Murray’s “casual feminism”. And then there’s the issue of the period itself: when you will be bleeding for up to seven days every month, it’s useful to know more or less when those seven days are going to take place. Every woman knows this, and Toksvig’s experience is a neat example of the difference a female perspective can make, even to issues that seem entirely unrelated to gender.

For most of human history, though, that perspective has not been recorded. Going back to the theory of Man the Hunter, the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall. When it comes to the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence. And these silences are everywhere. Films, news, literature, science, city planning, economics, the stories we tell ourselves about our past, present and future, are all marked – disfigured – by a female-shaped “absent presence”. This is the gender data gap.

https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes


Great read!

[uppityperson]

1. K&R

[Arkansas Granny]

2. K & R

[nini]

3. Smartphone size?

The article has a lot of good info but some of it is a bit strange. Smartphones? Now.. buy one that fits your hand better than. It's a balancing act of size and ability to use the screen easily.. No one is forcing a particular phone on you.

I'm female and 5'10". I'm taller than a lot of men I know. Aren't they also at risk of these bad designs?

I agree there are way too many things that need to be improved for women, but i'm not sure it's just men vs women as much as size, height, weight etc.. I think the need to find an average for things we all use does hurt those taller and shorter than that average.

[obamanut2012]

4. Pocket size and hand size

[mbusby]

5. The phases of the moon...

...are 28 days total.

[nolabear]

7. Did you read the article? What do you think of it?

[nolabear]

6. I posted this too. Amazing article, isn't it?

It really makes me think about how much we put up with without question!

[lostnfound]

8. A great article. Another issue is repairability. Torque / strength is often too high

If you want to do work to repair household equipment, you may find you don’t quite have enough strength or it feels like everything is just beyond your limit. It used to make me think, “well that’s generally a man’s job”, but I recently realized if women designed the stuff, the design might well consist of components that are just a little smaller / lighter / easier to disconnect. Duh.