Why Gender Bias In Design Is Dangerous
From mobile phones to resuscitation dummies, women are often neglected in design due to gender bias. Caroline Criado Perez, a journalist and the author of Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, writes, “This is just what happens over and over when it comes to what we design. We are so used to thinking of men as the default and women as the sort of niche — a variety of man.”
Why Cell Phone Size Matters
Take, for example, the gender bias present in designing the size of our mobile phones. It’s been a running joke that they keep getting bigger and, according to Medium columnist Álex Barredo, 80% of the smartphones being introduced have screen sizes larger than 4.5 inches. With women’s hands on average being around 1 to 2 inches smaller than men’s, it’s difficult to hold let alone use a device that barely fits in one hand to begin with.
“While smaller phones are still an option, they’re often not as powerful,” Criado Perez says in an interview with Digital Trends. “I don’t want to get the smaller one because it’s not as good. I want good tech the same way a guy does. I want to be able to hold it and not have to put [an accessory] on it just so I can hold my phone.” So why isn’t it obvious to the people creating and designing these devices that these phones are too big for the average hand size of a woman? Simply put, there are not enough women involved in the designing process. According to Criado Perez’s book Invisible Women, “Most of the people who’ve been designing the phones are men, so they’ve been designing for the male hand size.”
Why Women Are Being Chilled Out Of The Workplace
Apart from objects, spaces and environments can also be gender biased. For instance the office space, more specifically its temperature, is based on the male experience.The calculations for the standard US office temperatures are based off of a formula that references the metabolic rate of a 40-year old man weighing 145 pounds (70kg). While this was the demographic of the workforce in the 1960s, this information is now dated as women make up 47.7% of the global workforce. According to a study done in 2015, the female metabolic rate can be 35% lower than the male rate used in those calculations, resulting in a five-degree difference in temperature preference.
Why Women May Be Less Likely To Receive CPR
While phone sizes and office temperatures are inconvenient and uncomfortable at most, other forms of gender bias can be life threatening. The lack of training and exposure to the female anatomy during CPR training puts women in danger. ‘Womanikins’, manikins with attachable breasts, are being used in order to address the gender disparities in CPR.
With women being 27% less likely than men to receive CPR from bystanders in public, it’s apparent that the woman’s body needs to be normalized for emergency situations. By practicing on a woman’s physique, it can make people feel more comfortable and prepared if a woman nearby ever goes into cardiac arrest. However, with most CPR still being taught on the ‘manikin,’ this may be perpetuating gender bias.
Why Gender May Influence How Safe You Are In A Car Crash
Seatbelts, they keep everyone safe…right? Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, according to a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). A female driver or front-seat passenger who is wearing her seatbelt is 17% more likely than a male to be killed in the event of a crash. Another study from the University of Virginia found that a female occupant’s odds of being injured in the event of a frontal crash are 73% greater than the odds for a male occupant.
This may have a lot to do with the crash test dummies we use.
The lack of crash test dummies that adequately represent the average female body leads automakers to design vehicles targeted to protect the 50th percentile male, currently represented by a 171-pound, 5-foot-9-inch dummy that’s used in the majority of crash tests. All crash test dummies are male. The “female” dummies the government requires in tests are smaller versions of male dummies. Despite the common belief that all that matters is that the weight of the dummy accurately represents the average woman, there’s something that this logic does not consider: weight distribution. The masculine frame tends to have weight distributed in the upper body, while the feminine tends to have weight centered in the lower body.
How To Solve For Gender Bias In Product Design
While women contribute to 85% of all consumer purchases, more than 50% feel that various industries do not understand them or design products to fit their needs.
With the understanding that women have started to gain positions of power and have their say only within the last 100 years, it’s no wonder that most things are designed for men. So what can we do?
The answer is simple: ask women, listen to women and include their voices. In another interview with Criado Perez says, “Collect data for women, figure out what our needs are… and design for that.”
In writing this article, I’ve had conversations about how women are left out of the designs of things such as crash test dummies and CPR mannequins. At first I was met with reactions like, “Does that even matter?” and, “That’s kind of pointless.” What surprised me? These comments were said by women, and maybe I would’ve reacted the same before doing more research. Maybe I would think that adding breasts to CPR mannequins was pointless and weird, but after learning about how often women are neglected in design, it pointed out the obvious to me: Leaving out women in design is seen as ‘normal.’
In a world where men remain in the majority of leadership and thus, decision-making positions, we can expect most things to be built for men. Now we, as women with voices, get to rebuild this world in ways that benefit us, too.
“Men have been given the chance to rule the world, but ladies our revolution has begun. Let’s build a nation, women everywhere, run the world!”
– Beyoncé
