Women Are Treated Unfairly In Many Aspects Of Society

 

       I wish to compliment one of our readers, Janet Ivey. In her capacity as CEO (US) of Explore Mars, Inc, she put on an incredible Zoom meeting. Dr. Sharilyn Mark was the guest. Some years ago, Dr. Mark worked at the same Kaiser Permanente facility where Elena now practices. She went on to work for NASA for a number of years in space medicine. She now runs a non-profit related to space medicine.

     What really caught my attention was her discussion on gender differences. Elena complains to me all the time that chairs, couches and other furniture swallow her. They appear to be designed for 6' tall men like me. She also complains about the temperatures maintained in office buildings, restaurants, and theaters. The temperatures are kept artificially low due to males with large body mass and less sensitivity to cold. Dr. Mark added some to the list that I had not realized. When she was in Antarctica, she was issued heavy-weight cold weather gear designed for a small man. It did not fit her. This same practice happened in spaceflight until recently. Female astronauts were required to wear ill-fitting spacesuits designed for small males. Then she surprised me with two new gender differences that I was not aware of. The safety systems in motor vehicles (seat belts and air bags) are designed for large males like me. Due to this design deficiency, women needlessly suffer a lot of serious injuries including foot injuries because of this design flaw. She cited the design of women's shoes as another contributory factor to women suffering serious injuries in car crashes.

          Then she surprised me with something else that I didn't know. Keyboards are designed for male hands. One must exert a lot of force when hitting the keys. Women's hands have a different structure. They have to hit the keys on keyboards twice as hard to get them to work. When I lived in Australia in the 1980s, a lot of women were relegated to doing data entry jobs. Every day of their life was pounding keyboards to get data into computers. Many submitted permanent disability claims due to metacarpal fractures in the hands. Now I see why.