It’s 2020, yet somehow it still feels like our world was built with only men in mind.
You can see it in the wage gap, in voice recognition software, and definitely in the fact that
the Impractical Jokers got a movie. I sent Amy Hoggart to investigate how we got here.
- The year is 1996. A female firefighter dies in a flameover. Fast forward to 2019. The
first attempt at an all-female spacewalk is scrapped for, quote, “safety concerns.”
Finally, in 2020, Amy Hoggart nearly dies while trying to reach her secret stash of
dark chocolate. To the untrained eye, these, and thousands of other deaths and injuries,
are unconnected incidents. But Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women, says the
evidence all points to one culprit. - It’s someone that I call Reference Man.
To me, Reference Man sounds just kind of like that dude Brian in The Office who just quotes
Anchorman all the time. - Well, actually, Reference Man comes from
the fact that wherever you look, you’ll see the male body being used as this kind
of unisex universal template for humanity. So, for example, an average male car crash
test dummy. Okay, so Reference Man is actually a big f—
dummy. But he’s just as cunning and deadly as other serial killers. What’s his preferred
murder weapon? Those little tags that say “one size fits all.”
- Reference Man is generally Caucasian. He’s about 5’9”, around 155 pounds. And he’s
about 25-35 years old. I’m pretty sure that I matched with him
on Bumble. Does he like skiing? - The problem is there is not an average female
car crash test dummy. She does not exist. Instead, we have a car crash test dummy that
is about the size of a twelve-year-old child. And in fact, when she is used, she is used
in the passenger seat. No way!
- And the end result being that women are 47% more likely to be seriously injured if
they are in a car crash, and 17% more likely to die than a man in the same car crash.
Wow! - Basically if you aren’t a white man, you’re
going to have more problems. Yes. Anyone that doesn’t fit Reference Man’s
mold faces a range of threatening situations, from the potential to be exposed to cancer-causing
chemicals, to the dreaded 68-degree workplace. And this master of disguise seems to take
on a different alias wherever he goes: Default Man, Generic Man, Modular Man, and Macho Man.
Wait, wait that one can't be right. Anyway. I found that Reference Man has a new accomplice:
everyone's least favorite coronavirus, COVID-19. - Most of the PPE, whether it’s for health
care or outside of health care, is designed for a standard European man.
Reference Man. - Or American. Correct. Reference Man.
This is Dr. Arghavan Salles, who used her two weeks of vacation and traveled across
the country to volunteer in an ICU one of New York’s hardest hit hospitals during
the peak of coronavirus. While in return for those acts of selflessness, she was given
the PPE equivalent of baggy sweatpants. - And so once you put the N95, it comes to,
like, here. And then, for the best eye protection you want the goggles that seal. Well, the
ones that seal are like this on my face, so they go over the top of my N95, which is not,
then, creating a seal. How am I going to do my job and do the right thing for my patient
and myself when stuff doesn’t fit and stuff doesn’t work for me? For a petite person,
whether it’s a man or a woman or any other gender, um, that can be difficult to work
with. But it’s not like, “Oh my god, I’m so
small, it’s so cute.” It’s more like, “Oh my god, I’m so small, like, f— everyone.
I might die now.” - Yeah.
Meanwhile, the CDC only anticipated one problem with PPE size. So they created a guide for
every type of white man’s facial hair in Brooklyn. But Dr. Fatima Stanford says Reference
Man’s menace goes way beyond sex. - So this is something that’s not just a
white male issue. When we’re looking at Reference Man and using that as the gold standard
for how we deliver care as we look at racial, ethnic differences between individuals.
In some metrics, studies have shown that people of color can receive almost 60% worse care.
- We have quite a few patients of Black, Latinx, or Hispanic, etc., and if we don’t have
a large subset of the population included in this thought process of this Reference
Man, then we’re failing our society. This means that Reference Man is not only
sexist, he’s also the type that goes to Sears just to buy white sheets and scissors,
if you know what I mean. My investigation took a dramatic turn when I received a tip
off from Jaime Robinson at Joan Creative about how to stop Reference Man.
- My partner had read this statistic that women are less likely to receive CPR than
men in public from bystanders. Yeah. It’s really messed up. And a lot of schools, they
buy one dummy. The dummy that they buy is a male. There is no female dummy that is available.
So, they did something genius. They created an attachment to give the CPR dummy huge jugs.
- The major reason, which we couldn’t believe, was that people are afraid to touch boobs.
Really? - Yeah!
No dudes that I’ve met. - Apparently, people are getting really squeamish
when it comes to touching breasts. The fact of the matter is time is always of the essence.
You cannot hesitate one minute. But in many ways, Womanikin is just a band-aid
with boobs. If we really want to stop Reference Man, we have to go to the source of the issue.
- The way that we eliminate Reference Man is for us to increase the diversity in regards
to gender, with regards to race, ethnicity, to really get some different voices blending
to conversations that lead to major changes within organizations. More women, more people
of color in conversations that are at a level that actually influences power that you will
begin the systematic change. That’s right. If we’re going to stop this
racist, sexist puppet, we’re going to have to stop the racist, sexist puppet masters.