Default setting: male
“This is a men’s world” is a phrase that takes on a new meaning after reading your book. You write explicitly: our world, cities, workplaces, streets, public toilets, furniture, cars, temperature in offices, CV selection algorithms and heart attack diagnostics, doses of drugs and millions of other solutions have been designed with men in mind. Not people in general, but exclusively men.
We tend to think that the world is arranged as it is today, because that’s just “natural”, “objective” and it just has to be like that. And that’s not true. The world we live in looks the way it does because it was shaped to meet the needs not of mankind as a whole, but only of its very specific segment, which is “typical males”.
How come?
We don’t think about it on a daily basis, but the truth is that whenever we say: “a man”, we think of “a male”. This is how most of us – including women – visualise a human being. Or a doctor, driver, patient, etc. And although we do not do it deliberately to exclude women and thus harm them, this is the outcome. We don’t think of people as they really are – sometimes men, sometimes women, almost perfectly half-and-half. Instead, we are used to thinking of the male as the universal human, as if devoid of gender. In this view, the woman is only a certain “subtype” of man, a deviation from the gender-neutral norm. This is reflected in language, where the masculine form is basic and generic in almost every latitude. It also has a very long tradition and history dating back to Aristotle and earlier. You can see it at first glance when it comes to talking about biological or gender issues – we say: “gender”, we think: “women”.
As if men did not have a social or cultural gender or any gender at all.
Male gender is usually not subject to reflection or problematisation. Femininity, in turn, is not treated as an equal variant of humanity, but as a deviation from the norm. Therefore, in almost every area, one thinks and speaks of the male experience or body as if it were universal. This is why, when designing solutions that are supposed to be neutral, the result is something that perhaps works well for an average male, but often does not completely meet the needs of women.
And here it starts to get not only uncomfortable, but also dangerous. Let’s consider the first example that comes to mind: uniforms for various professional groups, including all types of protective pads and vests.
Bulletproof vests, which are theoretically designed to be unisex, are actually just for men. The very idea of universality of something both men and women are supposed to wear over their torso is simply ridiculous. For the simple reason that men do not have breasts. The human body is not unisex – it is mostly either male or female. And yet we decided that a body without breasts is universal, and the one with breasts is… non‑standard. Nobody ever thinks of designing clothes that are suitable for bodies that have breasts and calling them unisex. For bodies that do not have breasts, it’s a whole other story. The conviction that the male body is neutral and universal is so deeply ingrained in us that until we point our finger at specific examples demonstrating that it is false and absurd, we simply fail to see it.
Or we deliberately ignore it. You write a lot about researchers or designers who openly admit that they test their hypotheses and solutions on men only because women’s “otherness” – physiological, hormonal, behavioural – is “difficult to control” and “complicates” the picture too much.
And I’m not saying that these researchers hate women and consciously want to harm them. They themselves are sincerely convinced that they do everything by the book, and they have nothing to be ashamed of – otherwise they wouldn’t have admitted it so openly. They firmly believe that they have very rational reasons for excluding half of the population from their research and analysis. How come? Because these unconscious assumptions and beliefs about men as the “gender‑neutral” half of humanity are so influential and ingrained. Designers, scientists, architects and developers therefore assume that men are gender‑neutral and that eventually, they will adapt their solutions to the needs and realities of women. Yet it is absurd to assume that half of humanity is too complex to be included in research. As is the belief that one can ignore this half of humanity and still consider the results of such research adequate.
This nonchalant approach to data regarding women has far‑reaching consequences, to put it mildly.
The results can be both relatively harmless and deadly. Too low air temperature in offices or the standard top shelf, which is too high for most women to reach freely, are irritating, but you don’t die of it. At the same time, it doesn’t hurt to know that the right ambient temperature affects productivity, so companies that optimise working conditions to increase efficiency should really take into account the fact that women who are cold work less efficiently.
However, when we look at how life‑saving solutions are tested in car crash tests or how the doses of drugs that patients later take, regardless of gender, are determined, we begin to talk about a real threat to health and life. There is no doubt that the reason why women die of heart attacks more often is the lack of sufficient data on the specificity of the female heart and the symptoms of heart attack in women. And they are different than in men. One of the first truly basic and fundamental studies on the differences in the physiology of male and female hearts will be released literally any day now. It’s 2020. Men’s hearts have already been really well examined, while women’s hearts are just beginning to be tested, because here too, it was incorrectly assumed that the results of research on male groups are directly transferable to women. Well, they are not.
Neither are the results of car crash tests.
The assumption that the behaviour of a dummy representing the body of an average man can be applied to the body of an average woman is shocking. It doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s hard not to notice how much female and male bodies differ from each other. And unfortunately, even where allegedly female dummies are used, they are simply scaled down versions of the male ones. And yet women are not smaller men! There are many other anatomical differences between us – it is not only about breasts, but also about the structure of the neck: with a much smaller proportion to the head than in men. We also have differently shaped pelvis and spine. Therefore, it’s not enough to scale the information obtained from the study of men in order to obtain reliable data for women. Meanwhile, this is what is assumed: that a woman’s body is simply a smaller male body, but with breasts. By the way, even breasts in these dummies are not modelled well, they neither look nor behave like real ones. They’re about as realistic as the idea a very inexperienced teenage boy would have about female breasts – two stiff, immovable balls stuck to the torso.
This belief in the objectivity of certain well‑established criteria is, as you write, omnipresent. And the more shared, the more harmful. You say openly: meritocracy is a myth and those who believe in it are more sexist than others.
There is not only strong empirical, but also common‑sense evidence to support this claim. Because think: if you are deeply convinced that you are objective, you do not question the motives of your decisions. You don’t wonder if you are influenced by some other, non‑substantive factors. And that’s when you succumb to them more, because pretending they’re not there doesn’t make you immune to them.
On the other hand, people who are aware that they share certain underlying assumptions about men and women are more vigilant and consciously make allowance for their prejudices. This should probably come as no surprise to anyone: people who uncritically believe in their own objectivity and refuse to recognise that the human brain is not objective because it cannot function this way, are more prone to cognitive and judgemental errors, which consequently affects their decision‑making. This is one of the most important goals of my book: I want to get people to become aware of the prejudices that are in all of us. And not to feel guilty about them, because there is nothing more human than a lack of objectivity.
Although we are aware of the existence of systemic barriers, for example in the labour market, the way in which companies or governments tackle them is sometimes so ill‑considered that it becomes counter‑productive. You give the example of Google which started the equalisation of opportunities for promotion by instructing their female employees to... ask for it more often.
I was indeed perplexed that a company like Google, which after all bases its entire business on obtaining and processing information, in this particular case turned out to be reluctant to collect and analyse it and incapable of doing so, because otherwise, there is no way it would have concluded that women are the source of the problem and that it is with changing their behaviour that it should go about solving it. The data at our disposal leave no room for doubt – it is not women who are the problem, but all the different systems in which they must function and which have been designed by and for men. If this were taken into account, there would be solutions to relieve women from unpaid care and domestic work, which is one of the greatest obstacles to the development of their careers. Ways to improve the care of children or elderly parents and facilitate access to kindergarten, laundry or shopping, on which women spend much more time than their male counterparts, would be thought through.
But in fact, the ultimate number one factor when it comes to providing equal opportunities for men and women is always transparency. And Google doesn’t include it in its plans at all. But the data are clear: if the wage gap is known and the promotion criteria are clear, inequalities disappear much faster. Openness forces you to reflect on the processes and motives of decisions. To ask yourself directly: why am I giving this job to Marek and not Monika? If you don’t do it, you are relying on your subjective feelings. You think, “Oh, what a nice guy, I was like him a few years ago”. If managers had to justify their choices, such motivation would not be sufficient. So why doesn’t Google want to do this? Why does it insist on fixing women rather than fixing structural, systemic barriers women face?
Why?
Unfortunately, when you confront hard data with deep-seated beliefs, it’s really depressing how often people choose to stick to the latter. How to change it? The million dollar question. I think about it every day.
Because there are data and data. You have yours, someone has theirs. How do you know your data are better?
Data to rely on are those that are carefully collected from accurately selected and representative groups. I am not saying that the data from studies conducted on men are wrong. I am merely saying that they should not be transposed onto women without reflection.
This is also a challenge for people who work for equal rights and opportunities. How do you deal with the allegation of essentialism and that your focus on gender differences is playing into the hands of sexists?
There are two types of differences between men and women: biological (sex) and socio‑cultural (gender). The first is the specific anatomy and physiology of women – having breasts or ovaries, the way our hearts work. The second is socio‑cultural differences, and I obviously don’t believe they are innate, which doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. We are socialised differently than boys. There are countless studies documenting that children who have penises are treated differently than children who have vaginas, and this is the very reason these children act differently later. Not due to the fact that they were born with one organ or another, but due to the way we treat them because of that organ.
I spoke to a researcher who is trying to figure out why girls and women develop more severe concussions than boys and men. And it turns out that it is only partly biology’s fault, and the difference is also due to upbringing. In a nutshell, boys learn how to fall well from an early age. Unlike girls, they are encouraged to play games in which they can bruise themselves. Thanks to this, they learn how not to get hurt by falling. And girls do not, so when they fall on their head, they hit the ground with all their momentum. This is an example of how sex and gender influences intertwine. Boys are not born with the ability to fall, they acquire it thanks to the way we treat them.
Which does not change the fact that many women bristle and take offence at emphasising even these biological differences between the sexes.
And I understand it perfectly well because these differences have always been an argument justifying the oppression of women. One cannot disregard the fact that for centuries men have exploited these differences to keep women out of all sorts of fields: education, certain professions, power, and privileges. So I understand the temptation to say that men and women are the same and can do all the same things, but I find it dangerous for at least two reasons. Firstly, women are in fact not exactly the same as men, and they literally die because of neglecting these differences. Secondly, it only strengthens the conviction that masculinity is the norm, and that women should live up to it. This is not what we should focus on. We are over this. Now, we should finally begin to see men and women as full and equal humans, two different variants of human beings, neither of which is better or worse. Pretending these differences do not exist does great harm to women.
You also say that instead of getting better, it can get worse, because new technologies are not as objective as we once thought they would be.
Artificial intelligence gives me sleepless nights. From what we know about machine learning, AI not only duplicates our underlying assumptions, but, worse still, multiplies them. And the automation of all processes – in medicine, finance, security systems, which is taking place literally in front of our eyes, usually doesn’t take gender differences into account. If we don’t consciously code these processes, also taking into account the gender criterion and bearing in mind how imperfect these tools are, if we don’t try to remedy this, we will soon find ourselves in a much worse situation than we are in today. And this worries me a lot, especially since the IT industry insists on not recognising the gender problem.
Caroline Criado Perez - a journalist and feminist. She has conducted numerous campaigns for the equality of women, including on a more representative presence of female experts in the media, placing images of women on the reverse of British banknotes (thanks to her in 2013 the portrait of Winston Churchill on the ten‑pound note was replaced with the image of Jane Austen), the prosecution of perpetrators responsible for assaulting women in social media, the erection of the monument of suffragist Millicent Fawcett in front of the British Parliament building on the centenary of women’s suffrage. In 2015, she published the first book “Do It Like a Woman”
Author: Anna Kowalczyk
Illustration: freepik.com
The text was published in wysokieobcasy.pl on 24 July 2021