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You'd think that by this point, having read as much on this and similar topics as I have, that I wouldn't be shocked anymore at how little women are considered or valued in society... but apparently not. This book was eye opening and yet, completely unsurprising.

This is a book about how the Default Human is man. Throughout history, men have been the form around which everything was based. Men were and are the arbiter of value, and as such, designed society and infrastructure around their own, ignoring the needs of the other half of the population. Men are the default, the standard, the objective normal... and women are the exception, the outlier, the anomaly.

The term "man", used generally, is supposedly representative of humanity. Humanity, which, you may be aware, has more than one biological sex. And yet only one of those sexes is called "man". This isn't a mistake. This is by design. Man is MANkind. Man is huMAN. WoMAN is a "deformed version of a man" according to Aristotle, apparently. WoMAN is simply allowed to live in a man's world - an inconvenient other, except when necessary for the continuation and care of mankind. These are bold statements, but it's not like we have to look far for evidence.

This book is about the data gap that exists when it comes to women. All too often, studies and plans fail to include women, so women's needs are not taken into account. This ranges from everything from neighborhood planning and infrastructure, to bus lines and schedules, to phone size, to health care (see my review on how women's needs in health care are not being met), to car safety testing, to job opportunity, to retirement planning.

Crash test dummies are modeled after men's average height and weight, and for a long time were the only model, and would only be tested in the driver's seat, where the man usually would be. Female representative models have only recently been added, but are usually tested in the passenger seat, meaning that women in the driver's seat are still not taken into account for safety - something seriously lacking when one considers that women, being usually shorter, will have the seat closer to the steering column and more upright, and so will naturally fare differently in an accident. Even seatbelts are designed for men - certainly not anyone with boobs or a potentially large pregnant stomach. I have to use a seatbelt adjuster so that I'm not strangled to death (or beheaded should I get into an accident) by the seatbelt that rides up over my chest because my pesky breasts are in the way of where it wants to naturally lie.

Firefighter/police/coast guard/military/et al safety gear is still designed and made for men, despite women having held these positions for decades at least. The "standard issue" "safety" equipment designed for male bodies does not protect female bodies effectively, and is often more detrimental to women's safety than just not wearing it. And women die because of it.

Aside from death, though, lack of correctly fitting equipment prevents female opportunity. This year, (as a reminder, it's 2019), we saw the first all-female spacewalk scrapped in March because there were not enough suits sized for the women available. They later clarified and said "Oh, well we DO have enough, but they'd require some adjustment, and it's just easier to send a man instead." (Paraphrasing.) So, of course, there was backlash, and now, 7 months later NASA finally got it right and allowed two women to venture outside of the atmosphere of men for the first time in history. It only took 50 years.

Let's not forget all of the hate and abuse and threats and shit aimed at women in... oh, pretty much any industry that's typically been done by men. Doctors, programmers, scientists, gamers, military, any elected official... you name it, and women take shit for daring to do it. And all too often, violence against women is seen as expected, normal, and accepted. What do we expect, stepping out of the kitchen like that? Unless it's stepping INTO a kitchen, which apparently men also dominate in the restaurant industry. How very DARE we.

Women's value and worth and competency is all too often conflated with our likability. But it's a lose/lose situation. Because if we are too likable, too pretty, too nice, too polite, we're not seen as capable. If we're not likable or demure or modest enough, if we dare show ambition or come across as too matter-of-fact or stern, then we're a bitch, hysterical, unpredictable, untrustworthy, two-faced, vindictive... etc. Men don't face these hypocrisies. If a man yells and screams or interrupts or bangs his fist on the table, he's "passionate". If a woman does it, she's "emotional" and "unhinged".

If a working woman has a family, she's still almost always expected to be the primary caregiver - and is penalized for it as she's seen as "not committed" to her career. But a man who has a family is expected to be the primary earner outside the home, and he can be and is expected to be career-driven... since usually he has a wife doing all of the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Women do an extraordinary amount of unpaid work to keep our families and society functional, and at every turn, that work is devalued, undermined, and ignored. We are generally the caregivers, the cookers, the cleaners, the errand runners, the homework helpers, the pet minders. We do gardening and house maintenance and menu planning and then shopping and then loading and unloading and putting away the groceries before we cook it. We are the laundry service, the find-the-item-sitting-in-plain-sight service... on and on and on. And that's just the normal stuff. All unpaid. "Women's work".

This book covered a HUGE array of areas where women are ignored or invisible to society, and my review can't cover it all or do it proper justice. I highly recommend this book. It was fascinating, and really shows how far we have come, and how far there is still to go to achieve true equality.