Women Encountering Design-Based Gender Discrimination: Man's World Navigation Challenges for Females
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In today's world, gender bias in design significantly impacts various aspects of daily life for women, creating challenges and safety concerns by failing to accommodate women's needs.
Clothing
Gender bias leads to functional problems such as extremely small or decorative pockets in women's garments that cannot hold essential items like smartphones, unlike men's clothing, which prioritizes utility with larger pockets. This reflects a design choice that overlooks women's practical needs in everyday wear.
Transportation
The bias manifests in vehicle and safety design. Seatbelts tested primarily on male body types may fit women poorly, sometimes tightening dangerously across the neck rather than the chest. Crash test dummies historically modeled on male physiology increase risks for women in accidents, though some improvements are underway with advanced test methods.
Medical Care
Medical care is deeply affected by gender bias since clinical research and practice have traditionally focused on men. This results in poorer understanding of sex differences in disease symptoms and response to treatments. Women may experience lesser pain relief or inadequate care during medical procedures because "male" symptoms and body responses have become the default standard.
Technology and Design
Systems, tools, and products often reflect a male-centric perspective, requiring women to adapt continually. This extends from digital interfaces to workplace tools and beyond, reinforcing exclusion and inequity when female users or workers are not part of the design process.
Beyond Clothing, Transportation, and Medical Care
The impact of gender bias extends beyond these areas. In technology and broader design, women face challenges that require constant adaptation. This includes voice assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa struggling to recognize female voices or accents as accurately as male ones. Facial recognition software has shown higher error rates in identifying women, especially women of color, due to biased training data sets.
Office temperatures are often calibrated for the average male metabolic rate, leaving many women uncomfortable and cold. During COVID-19, healthcare workers reported that PPE designed for male faces left women at risk. Urban planning often overlooks women's safety needs, with poorly lit streets, lack of surveillance, and inadequate public transport options during night hours disproportionately affecting them.
Profession-Specific Challenges
Safety equipment issues affect many professions, with female police officers, firefighters, and soldiers often struggling with poorly fitting gear. The seats in cars are designed with male proportions in mind, which can create problems for shorter drivers who may not be able to reach the pedals properly or keep a safe distance from the airbags.
Professional tools in various industries are often sized for male hands and strength levels, causing issues for women in construction, medicine, and laboratory work. The design of women's shoes prioritizes appearance over foot health and functionality, leading to a higher rate of foot problems and workplace injuries.
Medical Interventions and Drug Development
Medical interventions for women often come with minimal or no pain management, despite causing significant discomfort to patients. Drug development and testing have historically excluded women, leading to the production of medications with different effects or failure to work effectively in female patients.
The Struggle for Inclusive Design
The FDA has stated that women of reproductive age should not participate in drug trials, resulting in most medications being created and tested only on males. In India's growing manufacturing sector, female workers say their tools are too big and heavy, causing accidents and lowering productivity. Women take longer to clear Ambien, a sleeping pill, from their systems, leading to increased risks of next-day drowsiness and accidents.
Women often face longer queues for restrooms due to equal space being allotted for men and women without accounting for the time women typically need or the presence of caregivers/children.
Moving Towards Inclusive Design
Progress is being made as industries increasingly recognize the need to include diverse perspectives and design inclusively. For instance, medical schools are starting to incorporate information about sex differences in disease presentation into their curriculum. A new prototype of the vaginal speculum, called "Lilium," was recently designed by women engineers to address the discomfort experienced by about 35% of women during exams.
Car companies are coming up with more advanced methods to conduct test crashes. Clothing companies are experimenting with functional designs for women's clothing, aiming to provide practical solutions that meet women's needs without compromising on style.
However, significant gaps remain that affect women’s comfort, safety, and representation across sectors. It is crucial for designers, policymakers, and industry leaders to prioritize inclusivity to create a world where everyone, regardless of gender, can live comfortably and safely.
Fashion industry often overlooks women's practical needs in everyday wear, as demonstrated by the minimal functionality of pockets in females' garments compared to male counterparts.
Technology and design continue to present challenges for women, with voice assistants and facial recognition software showing errors in recognizing female voices and faces, respectively, due to biased training data sets.
