- Jan 16, 2022
The world is constructed by men, and many rules and standards are made with men as the center or reference. From politics, literature, economics and scientific research, most resources are dominated by men.
The book's most impressive statistics about the hidden inequalities of gender, especially in medicine and car safety: some diseases are often studied only in men or male animals, leaving women with the same diseases undiagnosed or more easily misdiagnosed; Some medications, such as those for high blood pressure, can help men and worsen the condition in women; Women are 47 per cent more likely to be seriously injured and 17 per cent more likely to die in a car crash than men. Because most cars are designed for men's bodies, crash test dummies have been designed for men for decades. In recent years, some developed countries have required female dummies to be included in crash tests, but the dummies do not distinguish between female and male musculo-skeletal ratios. In clinical trials and product design involving life safety, there is an urgent need to conduct experiments and collect data on biological differences between men and women.
The book also lists the consequences of women's needs being ignored in areas such as public transport and disaster aid because the planners are men. In my opinion, even if these planners were replaced by women, the situation would most likely not improve, because the "class perspective blind spot" is the biggest cause of the difficult life of middle and lower class women.
Take public transport as an example. In some Nordic countries, the snow shovel municipal projects were initially only responsible for cleaning parking lots and communities, but did not clear sidewalks, leading to an increase in the number and proportion of injuries in snow car accidents. The author of the book points out that this is because urban planners do not consider women's travel habits. Travel routes are much more complicated than for men and are more likely to be injured. The authors warn that more women need to be included in team leaders of urban planning to reduce female road accidents.
But I think leaders, of both sexes, are the least likely to use public transport. In a region where 90 percent of trips are by bus, a female leader campaigned for better public transport and stepped into the subway in front of a television audience to prove she cared. But as she pulled into the station with her bus pass in hand, she asked her assistant in a panic, "Where is this card going? How does it work?" The image outraged local residents. How could a man who had only used private cars all his life want to represent ordinary people?
According to the author, the United Nations and some international development organizations offer clean cookstoves programs to poor women in India to protect the environment and reduce lung disease. However, the women do not want to use these stoves. The women couldn't cut the wood very thin, so rescuers sent them stoves that needed smaller pieces of wood. After wasting so much money, engineers realized they could just put a $1 filter on the stove instead of sending a clean stove. The engineers, many of them men, had no idea about the cooking habits and needs of lower-level women and did not ask them, the authors say.
I don't think that even if these aid workers were replaced with women, it would really help them, because rich people don't get into the local life well in poor areas. I am very familiar with these passages of Indian women cooking, because the old people in my family live in this way. Gas stoves and induction stoves are very unfriendly to them. They think cooking time is long and the function is complicated, while earth stoves are fast and easy to fire and the food is more delicious. The biggest criticism of international aid has always been the ineffectiveness of "not eating meat". It should be known that the rich in European and American countries almost have servants, they do not need to cook, and they have no idea about the living needs of the bottom. The rich set up charity or relief projects not to help the poor, but to avoid taxes. Some upper-middle class elites often use aid trips to poor countries as a curiosity trip, and some non-profit organizations end up as formalistic projects to satisfy the vanity of their donors. They seldom bother to go into the lives of the poor.
The authors stress that women's lives can be improved by having more women represented. But I would add that it is better to have women of the same class representing each other and speaking out than to have people (male or female) who have never experienced human suffering representing the general public. Reducing the wealth gap between the top and bottom ranks is therefore a priority if the average woman is to be radically improved.