Data Bias and the LATCH System

Gender studies make a huge impact on the way we look at our societies everyday functions, although some may not be as obvious at first glance. As researchers dove in to the the travel routes focusing on a small town in Sweden, gender was not initially considered in the plans for snow plowing routes. The initial plan was to plow the main roads and intersections, in order for workers to get to their jobs safer, and smaller back roads and side streets next, for errands and other tasks. Initially, this seemed to make the most sense,  but this plan focused on men’s travel patterns, and did not take women’s travel patterns into consideration. Travel patterns for men and women are very different; women need to go to children’s schools, the grocery store, etc. since this wasn’t considered “work” it didn’t seem as crucial, but its just as much travel as paid work and the society relies on it just as much as typical paid jobs. 

Once confronted with this realization, they decided to reverse their plan and instead plowed minor streets and sidewalks first, then major city streets. Emissions of injuries and emergencies were dramatically lowered, because now the majority of pedestrians were better taken care of, which actually saved the city money on both emergency treatment and insurance. Although the men who made these plans thought they were preceding with “best intentions” its actually what worked best for them (men), and didn’t serve the women in the society with the same urgency. 

The most crucial data gap in many situations is revolved around the caretakers of our society: women. Many of the solutions include checking with women first, getting their insight can drastically effect everyone in a positive and more efficient manner. The root of many design problems is that they’re designed by and centered around a cis-man, and default male assumptions. 

Many of us don’t even notice having men as a default, and not intentionally aware of ignoring women. The vast majority of medical research is based on men, often leaving women to the disadvantage of symptoms and corresponding illnesses. For example, heart-attacks effect men and women very differently, leading to many misdiagnosed and untreated patients. It’s often seen as a niche problem, when it effects half of the population, which just doesn’t make sense–this is a problem. 

Another example of an issue that needs to be taken into account are car crash-test dummies are designed around cis-male bodies; female bodies are not taken into consideration of women’s breasts, shorter legs and pregnant bellies. Studies show 47% of women in car crashes are seriously injured and 17% are more likely to die, this is negligence– but easily looked past simply because of cost. Although there have been considerations of women, they still use scaled down male crash dummies and even then only test them in the passenger seat.  

The case of the three stone stove was a new concept that I was not aware of, this type of stove is used primarily in third world counties. This style of cooking uses 3 stones with a fire underneath used for women cooking. This is often used in small un-ventilated rooms causing smoke to be trapped and hinders breathing. These were designed for increased cooking time, more attention, and not much room for multitasking; this was designed without asking women for their input–even tough they were the ones primarily cooking. Similarity, the stove was designed too small to put wood in, needing men to chop the wood and could have been solved easily by just asking the women first what they need and what would actually help them. This went on for decades, and is often pushed to be the women’s faults, saying they don’t spend enough time doing it correctly and not given enough attention to these “simple problems”. Once again faulting back to the males point of view. Thankfully this story has a happy ending, researchers in India created a new stove design that is very cheap, used recycled materials, and cuts down the smoke and wood air toxins down drastically. They went about it by asking women first, what they actually need, how do we provide that, how can we fix this problem while focusing on the people (women) who are effected by this. Researchers see that their are problems, so it’s very frustrating to see the problems be related to the negligence of women, the excuses are often exactly that, excuses that are positioning men as the default and missing crucial information that could help millions of women. 

The prescribed solution: collect more sex and gender desegregated data! 

Learn more about Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men and Richard Saul Wurman author of Introduction to Latch.