By Amelia Lipcsei
The cabinets that seem ever so slightly too tall, the tools that often feel too large to properly use, the watches and phones that feel too bulky to easily manage—all of these technologies were created by men for men. In a society where men make up over 75 percent of the engineering workforce, it makes sense that the majority of products gear toward men. After all, women only contribute a quarter of ideas, if even that, to the development or improvement of modern technology. Although the engineering industry’s lack of consideration toward the needs of women has often only contributed to small inconveniences for people who aren’t male, the lack of representation has also caused life-threatening issues for women.
Unfortunately, engineering branches with the least amount of female representatives often contribute the most to these issues. The mechanical engineering branch, for instance, which women make up only 8.3 percent of, contributes largely to the automobile industry—an industry that has continuously failed to consider the health and well-being of women. Since the 1960s, when safety regulations were imposed on automakers, crash tests have used dummies modeled around the average male; however, these dummies fail to account for the discrepancies in the safety needs of men and women. In fact, in a study by the University of Virginia’s Center for Applied Biomechanics, researchers found that seat-belted female drivers had a “47 percent higher chance of serious injuries than belted male drivers in comparable collisions” and that “for moderate injuries, that difference rose to 71 percent” (University of Virginia). Not only are women often faced with the need to sit more upright to see over the dashboard, but also they are often obliged to increase the angle of their knees to reach the gas pedal. These differences in positioning while driving, as compared to men, have caused women to face serious repercussions when handling vehicles that fail to consider these “abnormalities.” Since the majority of safety features in vehicles adhere to the male standard, women are placed at a much higher risk of injury due to the difference in average body positioning and size. In 2011, the first female crash test dummies were required in safety testing: the majority of vehicles failed, or just barely passed. Although these tests highlight the shortcomings of engineers in the industry, the implementation of regulations that take women into account will hopefully force manufacturers to consider the needs of the other half of the population—needs that should have been adhered to a long time ago.
Likewise, researchers and engineers in the medical field also fail to consider women in their studies. In fact, although cancer usually affects men and women proportionally, the majority of studies done in this field have been conducted on men. Rory O’Neill, professor of environmental policy research at the University of Stirling, explains that breast cancer rates have increased exponentially over the past 50 years, but due to a lack of research on female bodies, the data for contributing factors is “highly lacking” (Perez). Since cancer is a long-latency disease, even if studies surrounding women began in the next few years, it would take generations for data to become usable. However, instead of beginning to conduct essential research on women, researchers continue to use data taken from studies done on men and apply them to diseases that women experience. This has caused a higher fatality rate for women using prescribed medications. In fact, Viviana Simone, a scientist, explains that “The close of the previous decade saw 8 out of 10 prescription drugs withdrawn from the U.S. market because they cause statistically greater health risks for women” (Ely). The failure to understand the female body and its differences has led to high risks for women. Unless engineers and researchers in the medical industry begin to take women’s health seriously, people who don’t identify as men will continue to suffer the consequences.
In a world where the majority of the engineering workforce consists of men, the needs of only half the population are usually accounted for. From the gadgets and tools that are designed to fit the needs of men to the technologies that fail to consider the safety of women, the world truly is designed for men by men.