Long but well worth it - bookmarked
Get thee to the greatest page

Definitely a must read.

We really haven't come a long way baby. Thanks for the post nolabear. ❤

and in high heels or barefoot and pregnant.

Great read. While this talks about the disadvantages for women of design not taking their physiology into consideration, the article doesn’t mention the missed opportunities too. I work in aviation, this is a field that from he start should have been designed for women. In its early stages cutting weight off from everything on an airplane was the main focus, much of modern technology is based off from designs for aircraft to be lightweight. Women being smaller on average should have been a no brainer, they should have made up the bulk of early pilots.

And even today, most small aircraft have quite small cockpits. Just this weekend I was in a light aircraft and between me and the pilot we weigh close to 450 lbs. If you drop something, you might as well wait until you land to try to find it. We were constantly squeezing around each other to pull levers for trim or flip switches. Come to think of it, that cockpit is basically designed for 2 average sized women. It would have been much easier and safer for the average woman. And military aircraft goes doubly, they’re getting those pilots into those cockpits with a shoehorn. Bigger men aren’t even options, so why aren’t most military pilots women?

Not only are things designed poorly for women to use, they’re designed poorly to take advantage of women’s physiologic strengths, and even if they are we still don’t employ women enough in those spaces.

Now and then that is taken good advantage of, but not as often as it should be.

So many missed opportunities for improvement and better efficiency. There are cognitive differences on average between male and female too that could have been taken advantage of and weren’t because so many things were only designed with men in mind. We’ve basically spent 140 years since the industrial revolution missing out because things were designed with only half the population in mind. It’s as much about missed opportunities as it is about inconveniences and slights.

The society today that best recognizes how to design to take advantage of both sexes’ strengths can really realize a competitive advantage.

and he had to deal with issues like this all the time, particularly in manufacturing facilities. Most times, things are designed to accommodate an average size man. (Think the design of a seat etc. for a bus driver.) Employers are often loath to provide adjustments to their equipment so that women can work, even though it's frequently fairly simple and inexpensive.

commercial and military?

3% globally.
7 % of US pilot licenses are held by women
4.4% of airline pilots are women.

Those numbers are pathetic. It should be 50%, and given that women should have been the majority of pilots when air travel was being developed, it should be even higher. It's a profession that from the start should have been dominated by women.

And women pilots have been a thing almost since the birth of flight so there's no taboo or shock value here...

Sexism.

I know a couple of women with PPLs and neither of them said sexism stood in the way of flight school....

But keeping track of the Moon. That's a calendar; but it's also helpful to keep track of when it's going to be bright enough to hunt at night or dark.

Or perhaps there's something religious involved--that's the usual fallback for anything we can't otherwise explain. On the other hand, I find it eerily coincidental that the word for the constellation in Europe just happens to be "the wagon" in just the areas where wagons occupied a rather large portion of the burial rite, and that the Pole Star figured in some myths about where you'd go after you died. Wagons weren't always around; but when they spread, they didn't just spread to those particular areas. So there was something religious going on--it's not always a fool's explanation.

Note that we can adapt Toksvig's question: What man needs to know when there's going to be an eclipse? But "we" invested a lot of effort into predicting such things. But note that everybody always has to see themselves in what they're looking at. I liked Jakobson's view: Don't let your personal history dictate your research. That's the problem when many men investigate something; it's not like it's a cognitive defect associated with just the Y chromosome.

(Personally I always found this a bit sketchy. But at least they tried to correlate the way that the 28 days were broken up into something useful--in some cases, the length or thickness of the marks correlates not to menstrual flow over the course of 28 days but to the brightness of the Moon. I always have wondered about what's not reported--how many bones are found with 20 or 35 marks, and are they just noticing those with 28 because of cognitive bias?)

Then there are strange things like this, which would, for a disproportionate few, make the point moot. However, note that while a woman's cycle may be irregular for reasons other than pregnancy, the Moon's cycle has been pretty consistent part from the occasional eclipse.

And, we all know, the lunar cycle isn't actually 28 days. Any more than the menstrual cycle is, for most women.

Just read this to my husband who said well, men need to know when it’s Friday.

It had me saying, “holy shit!” Out loud a few times. At the most superficial, I know why the women in our family keep dropping their large smartphones. As a woman, I just hadn’t thought about a lot of the things brought up in this article. It’s time to change that.

Only 30.8% of speaking characters are women; 

28.8% of women wore sexually revealing clothes, as opposed to 7% of men; 

26.2% of women actors get partially naked, while 9.4% of men do; 

10.7% of films feature a balanced cast where half of characters are female. 

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=532148

I had never thought about this before.

My wife did laugh, though, when I told her that according to the article, she spends 2.3X more time on the toilet than me, she laughed and said, "Yeah, right."

Still, the part about auto safety is quite sobering. This is why we need regulation imposed by a strong government - as long as CEOs of publicly held companies have to act with the primacy of the shareholder in mind, corporations will have to be forced to do the right thing for worker, consumer and environmental safety.

The problem is that even WITH those strong government regulations, we're only really putting a bandaid on the real problem. If nations forced publicly held companies incorporated within their boundaries to expand fiduciary responsibility beyond mere shareholder earnings to encompass the welfare of workers, consumers and the environment, it would solve a huge number of problems - because instead of trying to put regulatory bandaids on the real problem, we'd be addressing the root cause.

Interesting that Elizabeth Warren, a woman, introduced legislation, called 'the Accountable Capitalism Act' that would do just that. Of course the Republicans are ridiculing it and Wall Street is saying that (gasp, shudder) it will destroy capitalism. But, no, it would merely make those doing business a bit more accountable to their communities in which they do business as well as their labor force.

Corporations are NOT people and dollars are NOT free speech.

I remember being taught that businesses were given the ability to incorporate and enjoy tax advantages on the condition they include responsibility for the common good. It was to be included in the articles of incorporation. I guess we were lied to, especially after Jack Welch became the guru of American business. Not that it was not done before, but he instilled the notion that business is only for profit and the greater good is the "shareholder."

Henry Ford developed an assembly line at his plant and dramatically raised the wages of his workers, reasoning that in order to sell cars, people had to be able to afford them.

However, the Brothers Dodge weren't having it, and they sued because raising worker wages cut into their profits as shareholders. It went all the way to the MI Supreme Court, where the Dodge brothers won. In 1919, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that Henry Ford "had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a charitable manner for the benefit of his employees or customers."

So there you have it.

I looked more into this, and read some current articles, one of which maintained the the 'primacy of shareholder' doctrine is pretty ensconced in American business law. Here's an interesting educational link on its pros and cons: https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/business-law/chapter-shareholder-primacy-theory-summary-law-essays.php.

This is why I really like Elizabeth Warren. A lot. As economist, I can tell you she totally gets it, and we can judge her by the quality of her enemies, and the Wall Street greed-lizards both hate and fear her.

But yeah, I see the shareholder primacy doctrine as the root cause of much of the evils and inequities that beset our society. Expand that (and enforce it) and you cure a lot of ills.

The market has long superseded any notion of society - really sad.

This is incredible that the courts ruled this way. Ford was planning long term and the shareholder primacy is short term. To me this is why China will assume first economic position in the world. They are long term planners and have patience to see it through. Americans doing business there see that as a weakness but they will be surprised and whine like babies when their cheap ride comes to an end.

By Dodge brothers, they were shareholders and not owners of Dodge auto manufacturing I assume. I got a 404 on the link but I will look around the site for the pro and con essay.

Yes, Elizabeth Warren sees how the economy works against the middle and lower classes and wants to protect them (us) from the ongoing raid. If she can get a national audience people will respond well to what she has to say. Now it seems it is all about her DNA, which is ridiculous.

It is infuriating that not only is that not common knowledge, but we are doing nothing about it. We simply do not value women. As the article also points out, women "do 75% of the world’s unpaid care." We take care of others, for free, but society does not take care of us.

humans are doomed to authoritarianism and paternalism, despite efforts at democracy

as humans began delaying the age of reproduction sex on the wrong brain took over. anatomical differences mean men get more of it, increasing the general relative need for certainty and all the other symptoms. with less symptoms women came to represent uncertainty and unpredictability - a threat to be controlled

This is just a start. Everything is designed for and about men. I struggle to find children’s books that feature girls as often as boys. Another thing is the incredible media deluge of sports on TV and the worship of testosterone driven sports events and the money spent on them. If events were designed for women we would have many cable TV channels devoted to Women in Technology, Healthy Child Development, Fashion and Art Decor Trends, Womens Psychological Dramas, How to Balance Family Life and Work, Caring for your older parents. These are women’s interests that are hardly extant. Instead we have sports, sports, hunting and cars all the time 24/7. And how about a national child care program like in France?

It’s stunning not only how far we haven’t come but that we had to come at all. Original designs that exclude women are insane.

That diagonal strap across the upper body feels more like a dangerous hazard to me. I’m too short and my breasts are too large so the strap constantly moves up to rest across one side of my neck, rubbing against it painfully and if it stayed between my breasts it wouldn’t be too bad, but it doesn’t so I have to constantly pull and adjust it while I’m driving. I’ve never seen a man have to adjust their seat belt!

An X design would eliminate that problem. Similar in concet to baby seats. That design would benefit men too.

And who the hell can reach the top kitchen cabinets?!

I always feel like in the case of an accident it is more likely to strangle me than to protect me.

And I can't reach my top kitchen cabinets either!

I'm asking my builder to install a couple of these in my new kitchen to at least give me an extra 4". Those top cabinets are one of my pet peeves, and a footstool is inconvenient and gets in the way.

We have done a lot of renovation on our old farmhouse. Siding comes next. But I am already thinking about the kitchen.

I am almost 5'1" tall. I agree about the footstool. When I get to the kitchen, the most expensive part of our renovations, I will keep your idea in mind.

Post pics of the finished kitchen, if you remember.

and chose to install only two upper cabinets that didn’t go all the way to the ceiling because at 5’2” reaching them is frustrating. I did large drawer banks instead and I love them. The kitchen designer that drew up my plans said that his women clients are increasingly choosing to forego upper cabinets.

That extra few inches would make a huge difference.

thanks for that photo. I love it!

I'm in your boat: short and busty. If the seat belt doesn't injure me, the air bag likely will since I have to pull the seat so close to the steering wheel.

And I had to buy a free-standing cabinet for my kitchen since half my cabinet space is almost useless to me. I'm just not getting out the step stool every time I want to get something. And how I wish my kitchen counters were a little lower!

I'm still reading. 👍😁

From a review in the Times of London:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/review-invisible-women-exposing-data-bias-in-a-world-designed-for-men-by-caroline-criado-perez-its-a-mans-world-and-women-dont-fit-rlxw8dl3m

First I'm seeing this - thanks

would have to pay extra for it, unlike men who get their Viagra covered by almost all insurance plans.

I checked out the ingredients of two deoderants (same brand and name) but one was marketed for women. The only difference was the color and scent and for that the women's type cost $1 more.

If men had periods they would get free tampons and be given a week off each month with pay. If men had to have babies population growth would go down to 1%.

My wife use to always complain about feed bags being too heavy at 50 pounds. "Why can't they put feed in 30 or 40 pound bags to make it easier for women to carry?" She would frequently ask. Even I have a tough time with the 50 pound bags. But I noticed they are starting to put chicken and sheep feed in smaller bags but for a higher cost. Same with dog food. Two 25 pound bags end up costing you $24 while one 50 pound bag is only $20.

Is this a packaging fee or just another pink tax?

And also she complained about tractors not having seats close enough to the clutch and other foot pedals.

as much related to gender as it is related to charging more and getting away with it. If you buy one of something as opposed to bulk items you pay a lot more. I have a 500 sq ft apt and no storage space and have to buy single items and it costs me 33% more that if I could buy larger amounts of an item.

The seats and pedals of machines and vehicles is a gender/size issue and is a danger. I was in an accident and even though I had my seat belt on my head hit the windshield so hard it cracked the windshield and my chest and face were all bruised from the steering wheel but my Honda airbags never opened. I have asked Honda people about this several times over the years and they keep telling me that it is due to my sitting too close to the steering wheel and I need to sit back further. If I did that I wouldn't be able to reach the pedals since I am 5'1". This is addressed in the Guardian article too. I thought it was just me but seems to be a common and serious problem.

THat way it will shut them up for once.

THAT would end the argument against abortion. If men could get preggers, abortion would be available at the drive-thru.

in a variety of flavors

Bacon. beer, beef jerky, coffee...

In all seriousness the male birth control pill would have been approved by now but men don't think they have anything to gain by it. They don't get pregnant so why should they have to suffer the possible side effects.

from an ovarian cyst might suffice.

I had one rupture that literally dropped me. One moment I was standing there talking to someone, the next I was on the floor.

The birth control pill is sometimes very helpful to those who get them, but, hey let's make that harder to get, too, right?

Great article.

I have a pair of pants that fits really well - BUT IT HAS NO POCKETS!!!

lounge pants because of the pockets!!! All of mine are mens size M. After washing they shrink to the perfect length. It's no wonder that men don't wear them! They are too short after washing!
Pro-Tip: I get mine at Kohl's.

Marking for a full read later. Very interesting

K&R

What stupid man designed a health tracker that ignores 50% of the population?

That’s the most stunning part to me.

Esp. the piece about Apple's so-called "comprehensive" health tracker that will record your copper intake -- but not your menstrual periods.

of it as misogyny, I just think of it as typical human, "Duh, ya mean there are people in the world who aren't me" shortsightedness. I'm a female 5'7" and I don't have trouble with most things that are based on height, but you still run into everyday things that require upper body strength above the average female. THIS freakin' bugs me because you have to run and get a man to do the thing. And I have made a concerted effort to increase my upper body so it is at least usable, but the difference between men and women in this area is considerable.

have been saying for a while that what we need is a matriarchy. Sick of men running everything, and doing it so stupidly.

It's become a running joke with us, if there's a side effect from a medication, she's gonna get it. I blame much of it on the fact that there is no dose difference based upon body mass. She's 95 lbs. The standard male per the FAA is something like 220 lbs. That's a huge difference. Even if you used a number like 170, that's still nearly twice the mass. It's hard for me to believe that some medications shouldn't be adjusted for this difference in body mass.

I have been fussing about the weight of house paint cans. We are moving to our new (to us) home next week and I'm going to paint a few walls and OMG, the paint cans are too heavy. They don't have 1 gallon size cans here, they go by liters. Most of them are so heavy, I can barely pick them up. Why don't they make house paint cans light enough for women? Sheesh.

how the cumulative effect of all these things ends up affecting women's lives, even when we're not consciously aware of it. Everything ends up being just a little harder (that is, when it's not downright dangerous).

It's really getting old being marginalized as though we don't matter and are some kind of irrational harpies when we ask that our needs also be taken into account.

by what men are capable of understanding.