Surround Sound

By Emma Bassett

Images Credits: Wikimedia Commons

While we have made some steps towards gender equality, there is still very far to go. Despite making up half of the global population, the gender data gap has hardly improved at all. The large majority of data that we’ve collected represents predominantly white men. This perpetuates inequalities, as the interpretation and use of this data leads to biased outcomes. Some of these consequences may seem inconvenient at most; for example, the size of smartphones was designed to fit perfectly into one male hand, while women’s comfort has been neglected by not taking into account their smaller hand dimensions. However, the data discrepancy certainly has harmful effects, which may even be fatal.

The “Reference Man”

Created in 1975 to calculate safe radiation exposure levels, the “Reference Man” is a model that represents an individual with ‘normal’ traits. Its influence has reached much further than its initial purpose, however, and is still used today. From the models of people that are used in biology lessons to deciding on dimensions of seats, it is the “Reference Man” that is central. The problem arises from the fact that the ‘normal’ characteristics of the “Reference Man” are based on young white men. In the words of its creators, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, he is “20–30 years of age, weighing 70 kg, is 180 cm in height, and lives in a climate with an average temperature of 10°C to 20°C. He is a Caucasian and is a Western European or North American in habitat and custom.” 

This being deemed the norm is exclusionary of many men as well as women. It completely disregards variance in race, height, weight and age, as well as gender. On a more positive note, reforms to the model were made in 2021, which finally introduced a “Reference Woman.” Yet the driving force behind these changes were increases in overweight and elderly individuals. Women continue to be sidelined, which has had devastating impacts in women’s daily lives.

Women’s Health

The lack of representation for women in healthcare is an unfortunate reality that dates back to Ancient Greece. The philosopher Aristotle believed that the female body was simply a “mutilated male.” This idea carried forth into the Renaissance, when women were thought to be inside-out men. Even up until 1991, women were seen as small men, just with different reproductive organs. 

Women still suffer from the long-term ramifications of being considered anatomically similar to men for centuries. For example, clinical trials are dominated by men, meaning drug dosages are based on male needs. A study carried out by Irving Zucker and Brian J. Prendergast found that women had negative reactions to drugs almost twice as often as men due to their underrepresentation in drug trials. Period products, used almost solely by women, are extremely understudied. Only in a 2024 study conducted by the Pesticide Action Network UK were tampons found to contain glyphosate levels at 40 times the amount allowed in drinking water. This herbicide was declared as “probably carcinogenic to humans” by the World Health Organisation in 2015, yet the UK government does not plan on investigating this issue, according to The Guardian. 

Clearly, women’s health is still being neglected. This is the case outside of the healthcare sector, as well as within. Everyday essential products are rarely designed with women in mind, exposing them to greater risk of harm.

Work

Work is one such sector where women are an afterthought. Even the design of the workplace leaves women disadvantaged: the average man’s metabolic resting rate was used to determine the ideal temperature of the office, yet women’s metabolic rates are different. A study undertaken by Boris Kingma and Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt found that this standard temperature was too cold for women to work at optimum efficiency – it overestimates women’s metabolic resting rate by up to 35%. Women’s comfort again goes out the window.

Necessary items for many jobs put women in harms way, particularly in already riskier roles. The lack of properly fitting equipment affects female soldiers and firefighters, to name a couple. The use of unisex boots increases the chance for women to become injured, as much as four times the liklihood in the case of female firefighters. Another strike from the “Reference Man,” differences in male and female anatomy are ignored, such as women having higher arches in their feet. 

Transport

Women are much more likely to sustain injury on the road. The introduction of the crash-test dummy came in the 1950s, with dimensions that are unsurprisingly similar to the “Reference Man”: 1.77m in height and 76kg in weight. It was only in 2011 that the US started using female dummies. However, these were far from representing the average woman, with only 5% of women fitting its measurements. This dummy is also another example of women being treated as small men, as it disregards variations in fat distribution and bone structure between both sexes. It doesn’t take into account the different driving positions for men and women; due to being shorter in the legs and in height, women have to sit closer to the pedals and more upright. As a result of forgetting these details, women are more likely to be seriously injured in car crashes, with young women being 20% more likely to die than men of the same age in identical scenarios. 

Final Thoughts

We hear a lot about the fight for equal rights and equal pay, but not enough about equal data representation. Women must stop being an afterthought for designers. The products we use, many of which we have come to rely on, should never harm us. We deserve to be able to pick up our phones in the morning without stretching our hands, use a tampon without the fear of getting cancer, work without shivering and, after all that, drive home feeling safe behind the wheel. The words of James Brown’s well-known song from the 1960s unfortunately still hold true: “This is a man’s world.”

For more information on how the gender data gap affects women, I would recommend Criado Perez’s award-winning book Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.