Women are 73% more likely to be injured in a front-seat car crash. Yet, the dummy used in vehicle tests by the US highway traffic safety administration is modelled almost “entirely off the body of a man”.

The crash test dummy, reports Associated Press (AP), has a name, Hybrid III and has, since its birth in 1978, been built as a 5-foot-9, 77.5 kg man (in the years since, the average American man’s weight has gone up by 13 kg). To be sure, there is a female dummy that is a “smaller version of the male model with a rubber jacket to represent breasts”. She is usually tested in the front passenger seat or the back seat because, well, women don’t drive do they?

Crash dummies for cars aren’t the only ones to follow a male default.

If your smartphone feels too big for your hand, if the air-conditioning leaves you wishing for a sweater—unless you’re menopausal, in which case it can never be cold enough—then blame the male default, points out Caroline Criado Perez in her 2019 bestseller Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men.

Entire cities, streets, parks, markets, public transport, are built around the male default, despite the fact that when you put together women, transgender people, differently abled, children, adolescents, and senior citizens, able-bodied men are in a clear minority. This lop-sided by design arrangement sends a clear message: Only men matter.

What would an inclusive city look like? It’s “where a wide group of women loiter and spend time in public spaces—a marker that the public spaces are safe, accessible, responsive, and women have the time for self-care,” says Sonal Shah, founder, The Urban Catalysts.

So, street lighting that works, benches in parks, adequate play areas, unoccupied footpaths, buses........

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