This semester, I am taking a women’s studies class. At only a little over halfway through, I already feel like I have learned more than I ever expected. Before this class, I really felt like I knew a lot about feminism. I now know I had only scratched the surface.
Recently, we have been discussing the book, “Invisible Women” by Caroline Criado Perez. This book describes the biases that women face in a world that is designed for men.
The book describes things I had never even considered to be made for men.
Medicine and Healthcare
Up until very recently, medicine and education were based solely on the average male body. The drastic differences of the male and female bodies were not known or acknowledged until the 1990s and 2000s.
Men’s and women’s bodies can react to drugs very differently. However, studies have mainly focused on male subjects. Therefore, there is a lack of information and data about the female body and healthcare.
Women are often misdiagnosed because their symptoms differ from those of men. This often leads to inadequate care for women and women’s healthcare is 30 years behind that of men.
Work and Business
Women face all kinds of biases when it comes to unpaid work. Women do over 60% of household chores and 75% of unpaid work. This work has negative effects on women’s health and income.
Women often face gender bias in most male-dominated fields. In the United States, women make up 50% of those with undergraduate degrees but make up only 25% of tech employees and 11% of executives.
Perez also describes the safety standards that are also put in place in many workplaces. These safety standards often do not take women into account at all. Women are sometimes fired before they give birth because they will otherwise need to be given time off. Women also experience more sexual harassment and violence in the workplace than men.
Product Design
Most products are designed with men in mind. This includes things like pianos and smartphones that are made for the larger hands of men compared to women’s which are often smaller.
A woman is also 47% more likely to be seriously injured and 17% more likely to die in a car crash. This is because car crash tests are mostly done using male test dummies.
Even though women have made so much progress in recent years, there is still a long way to go. This Women’s History Month, we must work together to continue pointing out these inequalities in an effort to truly be equal.