Picture this: You’re shivering in an office while your male colleagues look perfectly comfortable. Your “standard-sized” tools feel awkwardly large in your hands. The medication that’s supposed to help you makes you sick instead. The voice assistant on your phone repeatedly mishears your commands.
Coincidence? Bad luck? Personal failing?
None of the above. Welcome to life in a world built on male data.
The Man-Shaped Default That Shapes Everything
In her groundbreaking book “Invisible Women,” Caroline Criado Perez pulls back the curtain on a disturbing reality: our entire society runs on data that systematically excludes or misrepresents half the population. The fallout isn’t just inconvenient—it can be deadly.
“Most of recorded human history is one big data gap,” writes Perez. “The result is a world built for men.”
This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s something far more insidious: the unconscious assumption that male experience is universal experience. Men become “people” while women become a special interest group, a deviation from the norm, a complication to be addressed later (if at all).
And it’s happening everywhere you look.
The Daily Tax on Being Female
The Products That Don’t Fit
Remember the iPhone 6? When Apple proudly unveiled it as the perfect size for “everyone’s” hand, women collectively rolled their eyes. The average woman’s hand is a full inch smaller than the average man’s. Yet products from smartphones to power tools, piano keyboards to VR headsets are routinely designed for male proportions—leaving women to adapt or struggle.
A female pianist described the standard keyboard as “like asking a man to play on a keyboard the size of a 52-inch flat screen TV.” It’s not just frustrating—it leads to higher injury rates among female musicians.
The Safety Features That Don’t Protect
If you’re a woman in a car crash, you’re 47% more likely to be seriously injured and 17% more likely to die than a man in a comparable crash. Why? Crash test dummies representing the “average” driver have traditionally been based on male bodies. Even today’s “female” crash test dummies are usually just scaled-down male dummies that don’t account for crucial differences in muscle distribution, fat placement, and bone density.
Your seatbelt? Designed for male chest anatomy. Your airbag? Calibrated for male height. The result is built-in failure for female bodies.
The Medicine That Doesn’t Work
Until the 1990s, women were routinely excluded from clinical trials. The reasoning? Female hormones might “complicate” the data. Yes, seriously.
The consequences are as predictable as they are catastrophic:
- Women are more likely to experience adverse drug reactions because “standard” doses are based on the male body
- Heart attacks in women are frequently misdiagnosed because medical textbooks emphasize male symptoms
- Conditions affecting primarily women (like endometriosis, which impacts 1 in 10 women) remain drastically understudied and undertreated
One doctor told a female heart attack patient she was just having a “panic attack” and advised her to “take some Xanax and go home.” She died shortly after. This is not an isolated incident.
The Workplaces That Drain You
Why are offices so cold? Because the standard temperature formula was developed in the 1960s based on the metabolic rate of a 40-year-old, 154-pound man. Women, with typically lower metabolic rates, freeze while men feel comfortable.
Then there’s the bathroom equity problem: Equal square footage for men’s and women’s facilities ignores that women take longer per bathroom visit (thanks, biology) and stop more frequently (thanks, childcare and menstruation). The result? The eternal line for the women’s restroom—a seemingly trivial issue that actually costs women productive time and creates needless stress.
Beyond Inconvenience: When Missing Data Kills
The gender data gap isn’t just annoying—it can be fatal:
- When disaster strikes, women die at higher rates than men. In the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, women accounted for 70% of deaths in some areas. Why? Early warning systems failed to reach women who were caring for children or elderly relatives, and many women never learned to swim or climb trees.
- Snow-clearing policies in many cities prioritize main roads (used more by male commuters) before sidewalks and bus routes (used more by women). When the Swedish city of Karlskoga reversed this priority, pedestrian injuries dropped by half—with most victims being women.
- Women suffering heart attacks wait longer for treatment than men and are less likely to receive aggressive intervention. The reason? Medical training treats male symptoms as “textbook” and female symptoms as “atypical”—despite women making up half the population.
- Women in combat zones face higher risks because military equipment is designed for male bodies. Body armor that doesn’t accommodate female anatomy leaves critical areas exposed.
“These are not ‘women’s issues,'” Perez argues. “They are issues that affect all of society because ignoring half the population means failure for all.”
Breaking the Loop: From Invisible to Visible
So how do we fix a problem this vast and deeply embedded? Perez suggests several avenues for change:
Seeing the Gaps
First, we need to acknowledge the problem exists—and that it’s systemic, not anecdotal. This means:
- Collecting sex-disaggregated data as standard practice
- Analyzing how policies, products, and services affect people of different genders differently
- Recognizing when so-called “neutral” approaches actually default to male experience
Filling the Gaps
Once we see the gaps, we need to fill them:
- Ensuring diverse research teams and subject pools
- Adjusting testing protocols to account for physiological differences
- Designing for the full range of human bodies and experiences
- Funding research into historically neglected areas affecting women
Changing the Default
Most fundamentally, we need to challenge the assumption that male is the default human:
- Questioning universal claims about “human nature” that actually describe male experience
- Recognizing women’s unpaid labor in economic measures like GDP
- Centering the experiences of those traditionally pushed to the margins
“When we exclude half of humanity from the production of knowledge,” Perez writes, “we end up with a picture that is less than half complete.”
The World We Could Build
Imagine a world where medications work equally well for everyone. Where safety features protect all bodies. Where public spaces serve the full range of human needs. Where technology fits all hands. Where women’s time, health, and lives are valued equally.
This isn’t about special treatment. It’s about accurate data. It’s about designing for actual humans, not just theoretical ones. It’s about acknowledging that when we say “people,” we should mean all people.
The gender data gap harms women most directly, but ultimately, it diminishes us all. Products fail to reach their full market potential. Medical treatments remain suboptimal. Public resources are allocated inefficiently. And talent is squandered when systems create unnecessary barriers.
Closing this gap isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s the smart thing to do.
What Now?
Next time something in your environment doesn’t quite work for you—a product that’s awkward to use, a medication with unexpected side effects, a public service that’s inconvenient—ask yourself: Could this be a symptom of the gender data gap?
Because awareness is the first step. Once we see the invisible, we can begin to change it.
And there’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
What aspects of your daily life have you noticed might be designed around male bodies or experiences? Have you encountered products, services, or systems that seem to treat you as an afterthought rather than the intended user? Share your story—making the invisible visible starts with all of us.
