When Gender Parity is Life or Death

Many have heard me say it before, but there is nothing like a pandemic to remind us: Gender parity is a matter of life and death. Putting it in those terms may sound alarmist, but it is a reality women face even in our daily lives.

This week I read two different articles that reminded me of this. First was Linda Sokol’s interview where she reminded us that even though women make up 67% of the healthcare workforce, a 2016 survey of 3,086 women conducted by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers Support Network found that just 29% of the PPEs were designed to fit women correctly. The life or death issues of this are clear: poorly fitted PPE allows exposure to disease and potentially death.

The next reminder was Melinda Gates’s recent white paper where she gave examples of the uncounted deaths of women in pandemics. We can see death tolls reflected by diseases that we see in the headlines daily. But there are many other deaths caused by pandemics that only affect women. Ms. Gates goes on to give statistics in Sierra Leon where the total deaths from ebola were 3,589, but an estimated 3,593 to 4,936 mothers and babies died during childbirth due to overwhelmed health systems.  

We know we will get through this pandemic and likely get back to normal, but women will continue to face an unfair exposure to death every day. It was only in 2011 that car manufacturers in the United States started using crash test dummies in cars that were reflective of women. But even then, these dummies were just lighter-weight versions of the standard dummies. They were not proportioned like women with different leg to body proportions, broader pelvis, and narrower shoulders. They didn’t have breasts that affect the seat belt positioning and they most certainly didn’t have pregnant bellies. They also were never tested in the driver’s seat. Yeah, these dummies were only tested in the passenger seat. How many women do you know who never drive? So what are the results of this? Women are 17% more likely to die in a car crash than a man is. She’s 47% more likely to be severely injured. [1] Yes, gender parity is life or death.

You will find similar disparities in medicine. From pharmaceuticals to heart attacks, women are not considered or tested on par with men. A woman is 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed after having a heart attack than a man because the symptoms that we traditionally associate with heart attacks such as chest and arm pain are not typical in women. Women are often left out of early-stage drug trials because their monthly hormone fluctuations make it difficult to understand results, so drugs are only tested on men. [1]

And sadly, I participated in this unequal threat to safety, and it still bothers me. I come from an aviation background and one of my fun claims to fame is that I am the warning voice on two different models of airplanes. Well at the time, human factors research showed that a woman’s voice is more likely to get the attention of a man in an emergency, so we recorded my voice. We didn’t even consider that there are many female pilots out there, in fact during that time, there were several female pilots working for our company, and yet there was no thought given to which voice is best for female pilots. 

This is all hard to take when you are a woman, but there is positive news for both men and women when it comes to life and death matters and gender parity. In countries with the highest gender parity, BOTH men and women tend to live longer. Let’s all use these examples to keep us motivated and focused on fighting for gender parity.

[1] Caroline Criado Perez’s book “Invisible Women” is a well-researched book that provides these and numerous other examples of the importance of gender parity.