Becoming a Feminist - Part 1

Equality might not actually be fair

I used to be an advocate for equality in the sense that any given resource should be equally divided. This book made me rethink that position. Equality might not necessarily mean equal distribution of resources. Let me illustrate this with an example. Imagine you are an architect tasked with designing the restrooms in a cinema. The foundations of the building are already set, so you have to work with the provided layout. How do you divide the space between the men's restroom and the women's restroom? One might be tempted to divide the available floorspace equally between the two. But is this really fair?

Women tend to visit the bathroom more often and require more time per visit. More and difficult clothing to manipulate, taking small children with them, menstrual periods, smaller bladder due to pregnancy, higher occurrence of urinary tract infections, etc. This results in fewer toilets per square meter for the women's restroom as well as a longer occupancy time. Which leads to the long queues in front of the women's restroom we all know so well.

Now, is it really fair to distribute the available space equally, given the lower throughput of the women's restroom? Maybe in this case, a better approximation of equality might be to design the bathrooms in a way, so that they both achieve the same throughput? Even if this results in the women's bathroom being larger than the mens. I'm aware that there might be situations like offices in professions still dominated by men, where an equal throughput might not be needed. But the main argument, that the floorspace might be the wrong metric for equality and we should rethink what equality actually means, still holds. And yes, in existing buildings, with equal occupancy of women and men, this would result in a new queue forming in front of the men's bathroom, because the throughput of theirs is reduced in favour of the capacity of the women's bathroom. This will be a recurring theme in this series: In order to achieve equality, men will have to give up some of the privileges they have enjoyed in the past. I this case, it is the privilege of not having to wait to use the bathroom.

Why don't we have equality already?

Looking again at the example given above, why did the architect not consider the reality of the female anatomy when designing the restrooms? Actually it's quite simple. Most of things in our world are still designed, decided and run by men. And men tend to approach a problem with their own experiences and view of the world. So naturally they try to solve any given problem within their own frame of mind. Since men usually don't have to wait in a queue to use a restroom, nothing needs to be changed. It works fine for them. And since men still make most of the decisions, women's needs keep getting ignored and neglected.

When I first read this, it sounded like a easy way to blame all problems on men. But after reflecting on my initial refusal and dismissal of the proposed theory, I started to see examples in my own life:

• The office building I work at and the one where my partner works at both have metal grated walkways on the outside of the building. It looks nice and I guess it’s practical, unless you are a woman and wear a skirt in summer. Then you realise that every person who lifts their head to look up during their break can look right up your skirt. Again, if a man is tasked with building this walkway, why should he think of this? He never had to worry about someone looking up his skirt.
• Another good one is pants. Why don't women's pants have pockets? Why do men's pants have them? Who decided that women don't need pockets? This is what happens when products get designed for a group of people, without first asking what they really need (or without listening to them when they do tell).

Perez has many more examples like this in her book:

• Voice recognition systems in GPS devices and speech compression in phones work better on male voices then female voices because the training data is mostly comprised of male voices and the test subjects are men (p. 162-164).
• Cars are less safe for women in an accident, because all safety features are designed based on a standard test dummy. This dummy is modelled after the average 177 cm high and 76 kg heavy male body with a male muscle mass distribution and a male spine. In 2011 when they started to include female test dummies in the US, they just used scaled down versions of the male dummy, ignoring the different anatomy (p. 168-191).
• Standard piano keys and many other musical instruments are to large for women because they are designed after a male hand. Studies have found that female musicians run a higher risk of work-related injuries (p. 157-158).
• Women often get the wrong dose of medicine, because studies have only be conducted on male subjects. The dosages for women then get extrapolated by bodyweight from the male data (ch. 10).
• Health problems of women often get misdiagnosed, because women experience symptoms differently. Hearth attacks for example manifest differently in women and men (ch. 10).

The key is diversity and learning to listen

So how can we fix this? One way is to actually think about the people who will use the product or the facility. An even better option is to include these people when designing a product. In a diverse team you will have a lot more personal insights and experiences that help to eliminate these blind spots. This is not only valid for the issue around sex and gender. The same goes for age, ethnicity, different body types, disabilities, and a host of other differences.

But even more important than including them is to actually listening to them. The most diverse team is useless if it is lead by someone who won't accept inputs or critique from others (there will be a whole other blogpost about this issue).

Now you might be inclined to think that it can't be that easy. You might say that men are not that stupid or ignorant. Of course they are aware of these inequalities. Blaming everything on them is just an easy excuse. I would like to answer this with a question: When everyone is aware of these inequalities, then why do they still exist?

It's hard giving up privileges

I think the single biggest obstacle in the way of progress is the fact that men, or more generally people in power, will have to give up some of their privileges. It is comfortable not waiting in line to use the restroom, it is cheaper not to manufacture medicine specifically for women and it is easier to design a car so it fits just one size. And in the end, power and money always win.

For me personally this has been, and still is, a major challenge. Giving up privileges I have grown accustom to and take for granted is really hard. Accepting that I have profited from them all my life while people I love and care about had to suffer because of it, is even harder.