Women are 73% more likely to be injected in a front-seat car crash. Yet, the dummy used in vehicle tests by the us highway traffic safety administration is modelled almost “Entrely off the body of a man”.
The crash test dummy, Reports Associated Press (AP)Has a name, Hybrid III and has, Since Its Birth in 1978, Been Built as a 5-Foot-9, 77.5 Kg Man (In the Years Since, the average average average american man’s weight has gone up by 13 kg). To be sure, there is a female dummy that is a “smaller version of the male model with a rubber jacket to reeepresnt breasts”. She is usually tested in the front passenger Seat or the back Seat trust, well, women don’t drive do they?
Crash dummies for cars aren’t the only ones to follow a male default.
If your smartphone feels too big for your hand, if the air-conditioning leaves you wishing for a sweater –unles you’re menopausal, in which case it can never be cold enough enough, the male Out Caroline Criado Perez in Her 2019 Bestseller Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.
Entre Cities, Streets, Parks, Markets, Public Transport, Are Built Around the Male Default, Despite The Fact that when you put together people, transgender people, transgender people, differently ablas Children, Adolescents, and Senior Citizens, Able-Bodied men are in a clear mine. This LOP-Sided by Design Arrangement Sends A Clear Message: Only Men Matter.
What would an inclusive city look like? It’s “where a wide group of women loiter and spend time in public spaces-a marker that the public spaces are safe, accessible, responsible, responsible, responsive, and women have the time for self-care,” Founder, the urban catalysts.
So, street lighting that works, benches in parks, adequate play area, unoccupied footpaths, buses and rickshaws driven by women to create a sense of confidence and safty. And, Most Certainly, More Loos. When we build the same number of toilets for women as we do for men and wonder with a long line outstide the women’s, perhaps it’s because the planners Especially when they menstruate.
Earlier this week, new Delhi’s Municipal Council Greenlit “Pink Toilets” in 37 Markets in New Delhi’s Swishast Area, Lutyens’ delhi. At present there is six such toilets that have a woman sanitation worker and guard, facilites for baby care and sanitary napkin dispensors.
By Law, toilet facilitations must be provided for all. Yet, on the groundLarge Sections of People, Women and Men, Don’T Have Access. Men can go anywhere, but on construction sites, for instance, women must hold it in till they get off work.
We know what Haappens when a traditional design bias is fixed. The building of more toilets in schools LED to Fewer Girls Dropping Out. Today, India has bridged the gender gap in school enrollment. Coincidence? Perhaps not.
Life and Death
The assumption of the male default is not just a question of increase the but can, especially in health in health, be a matter of life and death.
There is an inordinate Amount of Recent Research. A 2020 study By the University of Chicago and UC Berkeley Found that Women Tend to Be overmedicated because Drug Dosages are recommended for a male default. These include sleeping pills that impair functioning in the morning.
Then there’s a 2016 study By the university of leads and the british heart foundation, which found women are 50% more likely to be wrangledly diagnosed following a heart attack sense they can preserve Breath and nausea, raather than the acute pain experience by men. What Haappens when women are misdiagnosed? A 70% Increased Risk of Death, Found the Study.
This bias pops up even in gynecology and women’s health where you want women are not by doctors the pain that they feel during menstruation or associateed with endometriosis is all in their head.
That of us who’ve undergone a pelvic examination will be famous with an instrument that looks like it’s designed for Mediaval Torture. The Cold Metal Speculum was designed by a man (of course) James Marion Sims, In the Mid 19th Century and Little has changed in either form or function. In January this year, there was somewhat heartening reports of a new design by two dutch women, Ariadna Izcara Gual and Tamara HOOOVELING MADE of Semi-Flexible Medical Grade Rubber.
The release of un population fund’s ReportThe real fertility crisis: the pursuit of reproductive agency in a changing world on June 10 calls for a reframing of the debate over dwindling numbers. The issue isn’t the numbers, the issue is reproductive agency and the “ability to make free and informed chooses about sex, contraception and starting a family,” The report finds.
But the report raises an old question, albeit oblique: who bears the burden and responsibility for contraception? Across the world, it is women with one in three facing unintended pregnancies. In Fact, An Earlier 2023 Unfpa Brief Found 83% of Married Women Bore The Responsibility of Contraction, Among these 67% Had Opted for Sterilization.
With entrenched notions of masculinity, men fear loss of virility. In contraception the standard default is stubbornly female. After 60 years of hormonal birth control for women, there is still no effective, revered contraceptive for men in the market, despite breathless reports of Imminement Changes Emminement Chan The “male pill” and injectables.
By design
Designing with the male default isn’s just about gender stereotyping-Pink for Girls, Blue for Boys-or even the under-Reporantation of Women in Practically Every Field from POLILD from POLILD from POLITICS to English. This is more insidious in a way, because it invisibilizes women.
We are not smaller men. Men and women clearer have different physiologies and assuming a male default can be fatal for women.
Fortunately, Things are changing.
In a colorful corner outdoors at the holy family hospital in new delhi is a sensory playground designed for all child. “It’s a gift from the special needs children to all children,” Says Madhumati Bose, Head of the Early Intervention Department.
The playground, perhaps the first of its kind anyware in delhi, fills a much-needed gap for children with special needs. But, Says Bose: “Everybody waits for their turn. Sometimes, if a child needs more time to do something, the other child
When Children Come Togeether and Play, Regardless of Ability, they become aware that the world consists of different types of people. That everybody belongs.
