Feminism and a world designed for men
- Thread starter friendofdorothy
- Start date
8ball
Decolonise colons!
We definitely need more female statisticians.
Declaration of interest: female statistician on my team is on maternity leave and am on a generally male-dominated team - applications welcome (from both sexes)
scifisam
feck! arse! girls! drink!
That's written by a friend of mine. He's one of the soundest people around.
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
They were talking to the author about this on bbc Radio 4 this morning.
Medical controversies
Start the Week
Andrew Marr discusses scientific breakthroughs and missteps with Joshua Mezrich, Angela Saini, Caroline Criado Perez and Richard Ashcroft.
BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Medical controversies
Medical controversies
Start the Week
Andrew Marr discusses scientific breakthroughs and missteps with Joshua Mezrich, Angela Saini, Caroline Criado Perez and Richard Ashcroft.
BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Medical controversies
Interesting talk about women's symptom are recorded/taught as 'atypical' because the average human = average male.
stuff_it
Too skool for cool
A rare instance of the world being designed for women - Bedford trucks optionally came with a "ladies" steering wheel that was 2" wider than the standard "gent's" version. In a time before power steering, a wider diameter meant you were using a longer lever to turn the wheel, thus making it easier. They're pretty common in lorries from just after the war when a lot of women were driving trucks. I've had a lot of male friends complain that they could barely get their legs under the steering wheel in their FG because there wasn't much leg room with the larger "ladies" wheel installed.
I wonder if there are other instances of stuff like this - simply massively undocumented.
I wonder if there are other instances of stuff like this - simply massively undocumented.
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
probably designed for the women of the ATS who kept supplies moving during WW2.
Like you say probably a rare instance.
Like you say probably a rare instance.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
I was going to post this up.
She also said drug trials used the "typical male". So often treatments are if not dangerous not geared to women's bodies.
I looked up Caroline Criado Perez. The book is "invisible women". About how data is making assumptions based on the supposedly typical male.
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez – a world designed for men
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
When it come out in paperback I'd like to read Invisible Women.
The Guardian reviewer implies its like old school feminism. A list of facts of how the world is designed around the men.
Given that , as women posters have pointed out here, that the old issues haven't gone away this book is precisely what this thread is about.
So return to straightforward social research is in order.
Not that there is not a place for theory.
The Guardian reviewer implies its like old school feminism. A list of facts of how the world is designed around the men.
Given that , as women posters have pointed out here, that the old issues haven't gone away this book is precisely what this thread is about.
So return to straightforward social research is in order.
Not that there is not a place for theory.
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
link on the OP too
I was alarmed about the female heart attacks being undiagnosed as women typically present with symptoms like indigestion and not with chest pain - but these symptoms are described in text books as 'atypical' as they are not typical for men
she raised questions about the data on chemo, statins and even aspirin.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
I was staggered that a scientific discipline like medicine could not produce textbooks that described how heart attack symptoms in women are different.
Just proves how normalised it is that the world is set up around the male body.
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
so was the author - that is the point of her book. Its all so 'normal' its invisble - that she had to dig around in data to find this stuff. That science reproduces the gender bias is what most of us would not expect.
I have a young relative (studying for masters in micro biology, doing research on human pathegens) who has been told that women don't really belong in the lab ffs - so it seems sexism in research / education /medicine is alive and well.
? I can't see how this is about social research, explain please.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Caroline Criado Perez is, I think, using secondary sources, to put together her book. She is using studies and data that already exists. I would call that using social research. Nothing wrong with that. And its good way to put forward an argument.
Pure theory is , as example, Judith Butler's Gender trouble. (Gender is performative)
Which when I did Feminist theory was a key book.
Feminism contains both. Research based and theory.
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mango5
Endeavour era
I think this thresd is substantially about lived experience supported by social research, where that exists in useful form. Social research illuminating gender bias is never going to be 'straightforward'. Most women's feminism exists because of life experience rather than theory.
I bet it's hard to find and create primary data because of sexism in research and male gender defaults in most research methodologies. This is one of Perez's points I think. Incidentally I think many women publish research (novels, anything really) without a full first name because using first initials disguises their gender as an author, which is seen as beneficial.
Yes of course some men do this too in certain situations but as ever the scale is weighted against women being published.
I bet it's hard to find and create primary data because of sexism in research and male gender defaults in most research methodologies. This is one of Perez's points I think. Incidentally I think many women publish research (novels, anything really) without a full first name because using first initials disguises their gender as an author, which is seen as beneficial.
Yes of course some men do this too in certain situations but as ever the scale is weighted against women being published.
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friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
Gramsci your language is woolly - I couldn't work out what your point was.
I studied feminism in consciousness raising groups in womens sitting rooms and took part in feminist actions before feminist theory had a 'reading list'. I used to read everything feminist thing I could get my hands on at one point (mostly pre 1984) so my knowledge of theory since maybe patchy. I've not had to study feminism - I've had to live it. I've had no choice.
I was more interested in living deviant gendered behaviour and exploring gender parody as a life style, than studying it as pure theory, or as Butler would say about gender 'yer doing it'. (no doubt someone with a degree in it will come along and tell me I misunderstood her 'Gender Trouble')
None of this will help me when I go to the docs and am prescribed some medication that could harm me / not help me, based on biased research. Or if a gp tells me that I've got indigestion...
I studied feminism in consciousness raising groups in womens sitting rooms and took part in feminist actions before feminist theory had a 'reading list'. I used to read everything feminist thing I could get my hands on at one point (mostly pre 1984) so my knowledge of theory since maybe patchy. I've not had to study feminism - I've had to live it. I've had no choice.
I was more interested in living deviant gendered behaviour and exploring gender parody as a life style, than studying it as pure theory, or as Butler would say about gender 'yer doing it'. (no doubt someone with a degree in it will come along and tell me I misunderstood her 'Gender Trouble')
None of this will help me when I go to the docs and am prescribed some medication that could harm me / not help me, based on biased research. Or if a gp tells me that I've got indigestion...
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
You asked me what this had to do with social research.
Caroline Criado Perez is using existing data and research to show how , for example, medicine is based around the typical male body to the detriment of healthcare for women.
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Manter
Lunch Mob
Most staggering example of this for me is pregnancy and childbirth. Remarkably little proper science and research, and so the fault is don’t. ‘Can I take x medicine while pregnant? No one has ever bothered to check, so don’t.’ The stuff they quote at you on risks around childbirth etc is mostly based on small, out dated studies... I could go on. Leaves the whole think subject to myth and ‘woo’ science.
And someone will be along soon to say ‘oh, well it’s really hard to do studies where a baby is involved....’ like that’s a limit to human ingenuity we should just accept
wayward bob
i ate all your bees
well, this is in part the basis of some of the bias in medical trials, isn't it? women who have a possibility of becoming pregnant are excluded in case of unforseen effects on a hypothetical foetus. i don't know whether they bother to look for celebate/post-menopausal/lesbian women or just recruit "men only". which edges into the current abortion debate where the rights of the unborn are increasingly held above those of the already born...
Poot
My wife thinks I work too hard
I would actually go even further and suggest that the headache/sciatica/hayfever/whatever of a pregnant woman is not even considered to be a problem. After all, it doesn't affect the baby. Not even that the rights of the baby are held above the mother's, but that the mother's struggles are entirely invisible.
Sorry but as a menopausal woman I am getting a bit fed up of 'this is entirely normal'.
Sorry but as a menopausal woman I am getting a bit fed up of 'this is entirely normal'.
ElizabethofYork
Old Crone
This is going to sound like a really stupid question but why are things still this way? Women have been active in science, design, medicine, academia for many years now, so why is our environment still designed for men?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
perhaps the people who employ the designers are in so many cases men? and who pays the piper...
wayward bob
i ate all your bees
i read this as half-charged, which also works
Manter
Lunch Mob
Yes agree. My hearing loss was dismissed in four separate appointments, it took three appointments to get some sort of care for the mess they had made of my pelvic floor, my morning noon and night sickness was making my life a misery, but was dismissed as a laundry issue... I could go on.
I’ve not reached menopause yet, but I can completely see it will be the same. You just have to look at how many women say periods, skin, moods etc have gone mad after childbirth and that’s not even medically a ‘thing’
Manter
Lunch Mob
I think this is where the pay gap, lack of women in senior roles etc makes a difference. Leadership in business, industry, science etc etc is predominantly male. The people who run the journals and universities and research institutes and so on. Where there are a few women, they are not in sufficient numbers, power or at seniority to reshape the world. It takes a certain bravery to sit in a meeting and say ‘well, actually, have we looked at this from a specifically female perspective’. You get looked at with incredulity, dismissed as emotional or angry or single issue.... and that’s from ‘neutral’ men who don’t understand that there is an issue- there are actively hostile men too. But even neutral men- if you ask a question in a meeting from an explicitly female perspective they may well not have the data, it’s going to delay anything, they assume it’s in the mix somewhere etc. You don’t want to be that woman who delays everything and causes problems and everyone misses a financial target, because you are pushing something that you thing is right but is seen as an outlier or ‘not strictly relevant’. It’s a miserable place to be (I’ve done it. After a year and a half of every meeting feeling like a fight, and ending up so stressed I was in the loo sobbing after meetings- women, so emotional, eh?- I resigned)
And that’s before we get into the fact that it’s a man’s world and women who have clawed their way to the top and positions of influence often think and behave in quite a ‘male’ way. It wouldn’t occur to many of them to ask.
This is why I think we need women on boards and leadership teams and in positions of power in significant numbers (and other diverse voices), and why I am in favour of quotas to break the back of some of this. I think the dismissal of equal pay, role in business etc etc concerns as white middle class feminism-mockery of lean in et al- misses the point- lone voices can’t change the world. It’s all linked. If we want this world to be better, we need more women’s (and BAME, non public school, etc etc) voices not just heard but empowered and considered. That isn't happening by itself- I think time has come to force it.
Early signs of frontotemporal dementia get missed in women as well because, as it is an early-onset dementia, it tends to coincide with the menopause. The characteristic changes in personality get waved away as just being what happens at that time of life.
Mrs Miggins
Eternal
My sister went to see a Dr when she started getting hot flushes, really heavy periods every 3 weeks, insane mood swings that she's never had with her periods but was told that it couldn't possibly be the menopause as she was too young. When clearly, that's exactly what it was. She knows her body, has had periods all her adult life and there had been a massive change. But no, too young for that to be happening.
Manter
Lunch Mob
Oh, I’ve so many things like this. And even the discussion about menopause being that it’s the end of something- end of sexuality or desirability or something. A friend calls it becoming an elder- which feels a completely different positive take
ElizabethofYork
Old Crone
I agree. And I think of my hot flushes as power surges!
wayward bob
i ate all your bees
kid1 went to see the leonardo drawings at the museum the other day and was amused at how bad his understanding of female anatomy was. he'd only seen dissected male human bodies and female animals, and came up with a pretty poor fantasy mash-up of the two. depressing to realise how little we've actually moved on since...
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