A World Designed For Men |
04/03/19
In honour of international women’s day this Friday I thought I’d dedicate a post to the role of women in design. Last year, the Design Museum found that women make up just 22 per cent of the design workforce. Can a male-dominated field be expected to create design that works for women? Does it really matter? It matters when a world built around men is putting women at risk. When we are told of great design it may well be great for men, but have women been considered?
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My initial plan for this post was to explore some of the influential women in design; celebrate the likes of Ray Eames, Margaret Calvert and Zaha Hadid. Then my mum sent me an article in the Guardian titled ‘The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes’, and I realised this was much more important. Those female designers don't need a dedicated blog post to be mentioned; they should appear in a great design blog anyway. The article shines light on a hidden fact. We don’t need more women in design just to even out the gender gap in the industry. It goes much further than that. We need to actually start designing for women. For their safety.
Throughout history the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall. When it comes to the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence. And these silences are everywhere. Films, news, literature, science, city planning, economics, the stories we tell ourselves about our past, present and future. The impact can be fairly minor – struggling to reach a top shelf set at a male height norm, for example. Irritating, certainly. But not life-threatening. Not like crashing in a car whose safety tests don’t account for women’s measurements. Not like dying from a stab wound because your police body armour doesn’t fit you properly. |
The average smartphone size is now 5.5 inches. While the average man can fairly comfortably use his device one-handed, the average woman’s hand is not much bigger than the phone itself. My hands are no longer big enough for effective one-handed use of my phone. I can’t type one-handed. I can barely scroll one handed. And forget about the 40% of my screen to the top left out of reach. As a woman, we’re slowly been written out of the phone market. That extra “.2" inches of screen size on each upgrade simply we that I can no longer check messages one-handed while carrying a bag; or type a quick note while on a moving bus or a train while holding on so as not to fall. But surely they are becoming too bug for men too? Will they stop growing when they reach the limit of men’s hand size? In the tech world, the implicit assumption that men are the default human remains king. Samsung's Gear 3 smartwatch has a face so huge it's impractical. When Apple launched its health-monitoring system with much fanfare in 2014, it boasted a “comprehensive” health tracker. It could track blood pressure; steps taken; blood alcohol level; even molybdenum and copper intake. But as many women pointed out at the time, they forgot one crucial detail: a period tracker. I was most shocked when reading the articles stats on road incidents:
“When a woman is involved in a car crash, she is 47% more likely to be seriously injured, and 71% more likely to be moderately injured. She is also 17% more likely to die.” And it’s all to do with how the car is designed – and for whom. Women tend to sit further forward when driving in order to reach the pedals and see over the dashboard, increasing the risk of internal injury on frontal collisions. Crash test dummies are based on the 50th percentile man. Where female dummies have tried to be introduced they are in fact just scaled down male dummies, not based on anthropometric data, and are not required for most regulatory tests. |
I’m not sure where this leaves me in relation to great design. I suppose to recognise great design you have to study that which is not great – which in this case is a result of disregard for women. Great design should be great for everyone. I am left wondering whether the designs which I, as a privileged white women, consider great are actually neglecting someone else.
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Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes
https://medium.com/technology-and-society/its-a-mans-phone-a26c6bee1b69
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes
https://medium.com/technology-and-society/its-a-mans-phone-a26c6bee1b69