Thread On How Our World Was Not Built For Women Proves We Need More Inclusivity In Our Engineers, Scientists And Testers

Indian parents and grandparents love to plaster that “Yeh toh duniya ka dastur hai, beti!” dialogue on us women. Whether it is over girls having to change everything their homes and last names and signatures and a million documents after marriage. Or conforming to gender norms like unequal pay, curfew, and non-pleasurable sex. But what if I told you that the world was just rigged in a way that was beneficial to men and not women? Not just societal customs, but also actual physical contraptions that we’ve been using for years are made keeping men’s bodies, comfort and pleasure in mind. At least that’s what this one Twitter user’s thread points out—our world was not built for women. Would it hurt for it to be more inclusive of, like, half of its population?

Twitter user @kbarley66 wrote a 20-tweet thread (ballpark) explaining how various things, from cars and mobile phones to voice recognition in AI and drug dosages are all designed keeping men and their needs and behaviours in mind. And what she says, makes sense! In fact, it actually makes you think if the reason women are said to be not as good at certain things as men is because the game’s rigged against us!

Our world was not built for women. Someone could probably write a book about this, but here are a few examples I've been thinking about recently: 1/

— Karly (@kbarley66) January 15, 2021

Take, for example, driving cars!

account for differences in center of mass, different organ placements, etc. In addition, protective equipment doesn't account for seating differences (e.g. women typically sit closer to the wheel because of shorter legs). 3/

— Karly (@kbarley66) January 15, 2021

Not that PPE kits aren’t already a hassle for female doctors and medical professionals, especially during periods. But turns out, they aren’t even built keeping women’s body sizes in mind.

PPE was not built for women. Coats, goggles, and boots that are too large for female bodies are more than just an annoyance: loose gear means tripping in labs with dangerous materials and risking clothing getting caught in moving machinery. 5/

— Karly (@kbarley66) January 15, 2021

Smartphones not being built for women might have more to do with the fascination for a bigger screen size than gender. However, that doesn’t negate the fact that they are often too big for the average woman’s hands, and of course, our jeans pockets also! Which reminds me, pockets are not made for women either! But also, military equipment.

Military equipment was not built for women. In 2016, the US military began recruiting women for previously male-only combat roles, but most armor was still designed for men. Women had to remove protective panels on armor to not crush their chests, fit around their hips, etc 7/

— Karly (@kbarley66) January 15, 2021

The COVID-19 vaccines are going to have some precedented and some unprecedented effects on people’s healths. But women, with our hormonal complications, we cannot fathom how it will impact something like fertility.

Men's and women's bathrooms are given equal floor space despite different needs. Women take up to 2.3x as long as men to use the bathroom (think periods, bringing children or elderly family with them), leading to much longer waiting lines 9/

— Karly (@kbarley66) January 15, 2021

Seriously, though. Why do men’s loos need the same amount of space as women when they women spend more time inside and therefore, we’d need more stalls? Most bathrooms forget to provide hooks or shelves to place women’s handbags when it is evident that women usually have something or the other, even a small wallet or their phones, with them. Plus, we don’t have pockets to shove it all in. Can you imagine the discomfort of having to change your pad or tampon in a cramped up bathroom that has no place to keep your stuff?

Artificial intelligence is supposed to be neutral, right? But no! There’s gender bias there too, apparently! Hey Siri, tell me why?

Female voices are less likely to be accurately processed by AI, because they're trained on male-biased data. 11/

— Karly (@kbarley66) January 15, 2021

Also Read: Twitter User Points Out How ‘Women Mature Faster’ Is Used To Excuse Problematic Behaviour In Men. Twitter Concurs.

Whether it is walking on glass floors or training for CPR, it’s a man’s world and we’re just gliding on it, hoping it works!

Men are 23% more likely than women to survive when requiring CPR in public. CPR training is always done on male torsos, and as a result, data indicates people are less comfortable delivering CPR to a woman because they're uncomfortable touching the chest. 13/

— Karly (@kbarley66) January 15, 2021

This particular one is something a lot of working women will feel vindicated about! We’re always made to feel like we’re being overdramatic about the air-conditioner’s temperature in the office! But no sir, that thermostat is meant to serve you, and it is indeed the Tundra for us in there!

The standard office temperature (calculated in the 1950s based on the metabolic rate of an average man) is comfortable for men but too cold for women. It's hard to be productive when you're not comfortable first. 15/

— Karly (@kbarley66) January 15, 2021

And the list goes on, but I'm going to bed. The sad part about all of this is that the male body has always been considered the default: there's always this excuse that "female bodies are too complicated," but instead of doing more research, we just ignore 50% of people. 16/

— Karly (@kbarley66) January 15, 2021

What @kbarley66’s also mentions at the end of her thread is why all the above things indicate that we need more inclusivity in our teams of designers, engineers, scientists, and testers so that we can conduct a more expansive research that incorporates women’s bodies, needs and comfort too, as well as anticipate any issues that might arise from their lifestyle. They also pointed out that the same lack of inclusivity applies to other differential factors, such as race. And the solution to that, my friend, is also more inclusivity!

I also want to add that gender and sex are complex constructions, but I've used "men" and "women" here according to how data has historically been collected. 18/

— Karly (@kbarley66) January 15, 2021

The thread garnered a lot of attention on Twitter, with some agreeing and some pointing out some errors in judgement in the OP’s (Original Poster) musings. However, the fact that the thread got everyone to examine their world in a new light, and really look at how everything is optimised for one half of the population, thereby negating the needs of the other half, is really crucial. Is this out of laziness to really put in the hard work? Is it because of gender bias? I’d like to think both.

Someone pointed out to the OP that what she was talking about has actually been written into a book called ‘Invisible Women: Data Bias In A World Designed For Men‘ by Caroline Criado Pérez.

Here’s a book that was written about this https://t.co/KlUH50viQN

— Kendal (@ByKendaLight) January 17, 2021

Personally, I see a lot of that in very tiny, inconsequential things in my routine life. We don’t give this much thought but when something like this comes up, you can’t help but think about it. For example, I am a huge pop-culture nerd who loves fan merchandise. As a journalist, I get lots of fan merch too, most of which includes t-shirts. And almost always, they never account for the fact that women have breasts of varying sizes. Most pop culture merchandise clothing items are tailored to men’s bodies, and it is lowkey disappointing that there’s no inclusivity for women’s sizes.

So yes to this Twitter thread opening our minds. And yes to having more inclusivity in our thoughts, practices and designs!

https://thehauterfly.com/lifestyle/study-shows-that-women-are-judged-on-more-dimensions-in-a-job-interview-as-compared-to-men-even-the-selection-criteria-is-biased-against-women/