By commerce, I’m an industrial designer. I’ve been a designer for almost all of my life. I’ve navigated the world as a girl for everything of my life.
Day by day, I inhabit and work together with areas and issues—the tangible, constructed world assembled to attain fashionable life—in the identical approach that every one girls do. Solely as a result of I’m a designer, I’m conscious about its shortcomings. After I attempt to answer a textual content with one hand and I can not attain the farthest keys; once I use a public restroom and wait in lengthy, sluggish queues, then resort to throwing my coat over the stall and subjecting my cell to the flat lid of the sanitary serviette receptacle as soon as inside; once I get into my automobile and don’t have any place for my purse; the truth that I require a handbag on my particular person within the first place, as a result of my clothes don’t have enough pockets to hold a lot as a tube of lipstick. That is all with out mentioning the gracelessness to which a girl should topic herself if she needs to stroll on cobblestone or subway grates in something however a sneaker, or, extra pertinently, courageous the steps up or right down to the subway with a stroller in tow. And it goes with out saying she would by no means do that alone and after darkish.
I, like most ladies, really feel drained by the tip of the day for a similar causes a person does, but in addition with the extra lethargy that outcomes from overcoming distractions associated to bodily discomfort all day lengthy, and from all the additional time and vitality it takes me to anticipate and plan for a day in a person’s world.
Ladies and men inhabit the identical world, but it doesn’t swimsuit them each equally. Ladies might not at all times discover the extent to which their bodily ecosystem is in poor health becoming, as they’ve by no means recognized it some other approach—we have now grow to be so accustomed to discomfort that we have now accepted as reality the pervasive, insidious, systematically manufactured design biases perpetuating a constructed world that makes it laborious for girls to navigate their lives. We’re conditioned to simply accept the established order, particularly because it pertains to our bodily consolation—the way in which our our bodies meet the constructed world. However we shouldn’t must.
The commuting distinction
Contemplate my commute to Harvard from my house in Boston. As I plan my journey, I take into account the assorted transportation choices, and usually I can not select probably the most environment friendly, time-saving one. First, I need to take into account the time of day. If it’s winter or early spring, I account for the gap I’ll have to stroll outdoors as it’s darkish throughout my commute and never all of the streets are nicely lit. I take the T (Boston’s subway system), needing to vary trains alongside the route. I plan my journey round avoiding the switch at one explicit cease (probably the most handy for me in time and proximity) as a result of it’s not secure for a girl to be there alone. As I exit the subway at one other cease, I take an extended stroll to exit the station, because the escalator that’s the most handy to my subsequent bus cease is an unsafe passageway to the road. Contemplating Harvard Yard’s infamous lack of illumination, I keep away from it altogether, tacking one other jiffy to my commute so I can stroll a better-lit path. I take into consideration all of this earlier than I even depart the home. My husband, in distinction, seems to be on the schedule, sees which choice will get him there quickest, grabs his T cross, and is off to wherever he must go.
Adapting to a world that doesn’t match is a distraction, and having to account for workarounds to keep away from conditions which are unsafe comes at a value, each economically and bodily. When the constructed world continuously ignores girls, they disengage, finally diminishing their entry to alternatives from high-paying jobs to well being care, denying them a hospitable world they’ll navigate as simply and safely as their male counterparts.
Alternatives for inclusion
As a designer, I do know that it doesn’t should be this manner. That there are limitless alternatives for enchancment, in order that the world can work for individuals of all genders, all wants, and all sizes (as a result of after we flip our eye to inclusivity, there aren’t any bounds). We must always now not settle for dwelling in a world that has been designed by males, for males. We have to demand a hospitable, secure, and comfy world that acknowledges that one dimension doesn’t match all and that ladies should not smaller males.
Ladies signify over half of the worldwide inhabitants and within the U.S., they affect almost 85% of all buying choices. But solely 19% of training industrial designers (product designers), 25% of registered architects, and 14% of mechanical engineers within the U.S. are girls. Feminine industrial designers account for simply 11% of all design management roles. Though they graduate with levels in design and structure at equal charges to their male counterparts, inside three to 5 years, the numbers of these nonetheless within the area drop drastically. This dearth of feminine designers creates a vacuum wherein unchallenged male designers create merchandise primarily based on stereotypes of feminine shoppers that miss their precise wants. And when feminine designers do make it by the systemic labyrinth, they face male decision-makers who ignore or push again on their concepts, making progress troublesome. Information reveals the design of the whole lot from public bogs to default HVAC settings to the lighting on our streets too usually depart girls behind, as these occupying the seats of creativity and energy proceed to be primarily male.
I’ve realized simply what meaning throughout my very own profession as an industrial designer. For a pre-Title IX sports-loving girl, working in design at main sports activities footwear and attire manufacturers was an incredible journey. It additionally offered me with a front-row seat to how the sector’s predominantly male echo chambers strengthened males’s preferences and biases in huge and small methods daily. And people echo chambers span the spectrum of product design: Even as we speak it’s largely males who design our vehicles, our electronics, our bicycles, our furnishings, our home equipment, our medical gadgets, and sure, our sneakers.
A extra harmful world
I’ve devoted my profession to design and have succeeded on the enjoying fields of main manufacturers like Nike and Reebok, however there may be nonetheless a lot work to do. The feminine physique is simply too usually invisible. A world designed by males, for males, isn’t only a matter of fashion or choice for girls. By not accommodating the feminine physique within the design of merchandise and locations, we have now created a world that’s much less hospitable to and extra harmful for girls.
Within the examination room, feminine sufferers topic themselves to routine checkups with their gynecologist, enduring a pelvic examination that facilities round a medieval-looking device referred to as the speculum—a chilly metal clamp that hasn’t been up to date in 200 years, when it was invented by a person. This neglect of affected person consolation and dignity isn’t with out its penalties. With diminished adherence to preventive care, the share of ladies overdue for cervical most cancers screenings elevated from 14% in 2005 to 23% in 2019. Cervical most cancers is a preventable illness given routine screenings, however as we speak, advanced-stage incidence is on the rise.
Within the army, feminine troopers are 5 occasions as more likely to fracture their pelvis as their male counterparts, because of the biased design of army boots and backpacks, and course necessities made with males’s anatomy in thoughts. In well being care, the place girls make up the bulk, private protecting tools seldom suits them correctly—robes, gloves, goggles, and masks are too huge, placing our feminine frontline employees at further danger daily.
The driving dilemma
Within the driver’s seat, girls expertise an egregious instance of this drawback. Automobile crash check dummies are 5-foot-9 and 171 kilos—the peak and weight of an “common” American man within the Nineteen Seventies, when crash check dummies had been first put in use—that means automobile security isn’t designed with girls’s physique sorts in thoughts. The result’s that automobile crashes are 17% extra more likely to be deadly for girls than males, and 73% extra more likely to trigger severe harm. Seat belt design ignores the feminine anatomy so severely that many pregnant girls can’t even buckle up. Including insult to literal harm, the “feminine” dummies are solely examined within the passenger seat, not behind the wheel!
A designer is at the start an advocate for the patron. Design is about making individuals’s lives higher. Safer. Simpler. Extra stunning. I grew to become an industrial designer as a result of I liked determining tips on how to remedy issues for individuals. However in apply, I realized that design usually creates extra issues for girls. On the fruits of my profession, although I had a “seat on the desk,” I discovered that male voices nonetheless dominated it. With out sufficient feminine voices influencing design, we’ll proceed to design for a person’s world. We want extra feminine designers, architects, engineers, planners, and policymakers on the desk—as a result of, as Caroline Criado-Perez mentioned in her seminal ebook Invisible Ladies, “Ladies merely don’t neglect that ladies exist as simply as males usually do.”
From what girls placed on their our bodies, to what their our bodies work together with, to the atmosphere that surrounds their our bodies, this ebook will look at all of the ways in which girls are left behind because of dwelling in a bodily world that’s too usually nonetheless designed with out girls in thoughts. It’s going to lay naked the various causes we are sometimes left no selection apart from to compromise the consolation and security of our our bodies to suit right into a man-made world. I gained’t cease there. I’ll additionally present the trail ahead, how we are able to incorporate fairness within the course of, from idea to execution. I’ll present that constructing a greater world, one which doesn’t simply embrace girls however champions them, is feasible.
Reshaping the world for all of us
Importantly, this ebook is not only for designers. I hope it should open many eyes to how gender bias within the constructed world speaks to us in methods huge and small. Sure, it’s within the high-stakes moments, like a pelvic examination or an car accident, nevertheless it’s additionally within the further time girls spend daily to stroll a safer path to work, faculty, or house. It’s in the necessity to schlep round a number of heavy luggage all through the day for the a number of what-if situations you encounter; it’s bleeding and never realizing if a restroom will probably be stocked with menstrual merchandise, to not point out in case you have a coin to buy them; it’s ache at 3:00 p.m. from the sneakers that don’t fairly match as a result of they had been designed for a male foot; and it’s in making an attempt, but once more, to discover a place to hold your purse at a restaurant, in a ready room, or at a live performance. It’s the constructed world continuously treating girls as an afterthought.
I’m a girl. I’m a designer. I’m an optimist. I consider that difficult the established order can reshape the world for us all.
Think about a world wherein girls don’t must take these further steps to be snug, the place merchandise and areas don’t actively intrude with girls’s security. Think about an atmosphere designed at the start for feminine shoppers, that accounts for the various neglected wants and challenges, changing into safer, extra accessible, extra usable, and extra related to a good broader inhabitants.
It is a ebook for individuals throughout demographics who’re questioning, “Does it must be this manner?” It’s a ebook for younger girls contemplating careers in public service, as firefighters, policewomen, or within the trades; it’s for entrepreneurs, company executives, politicians, and school college students of all genders to learn and focus on. It’s for anybody with a physique that interacts with the atmosphere. The constructed world isn’t solely the bodily atmosphere wherein we exist. It’s additionally the merchandise and instruments we maintain and use, it’s what we put on at house and to work and to play, it’s the tools that enables us to do our jobs and interact with our hobbies. This ebook will change the way in which all of us see the constructed world round us and problem us to make it extra inclusive, hospitable, and secure.
That change begins right here.
Excerpted from MAN-MADE. Copyright © 2026 by Karen Korellis Reuther. Reprinted right here with permission from Harper Enterprise, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
