With the recent public discourse around “boys being boys” and the associated impact on women, I spent some time looking at how our world and communities are designed. What I found (which won’t surprise most women) is that most aspects of the world we encounter are not designed with women in mind — likely because they are often designed without the input of women. This episode dives a bit into how our communities, tech, and other aspects of our lives are designed, and sheds some light on how those designs impact women. It’s clear that we could use some re-designing, and that includes some social redesigning to move away from the harmful societal expectation that “boys will be boys.”

Resources in this episode:

• Jennie Hill, 10/22/2017 “Walking, dressing and being on a planet designed for men”
• 3/2/2004 Volvo: “Your Concept Car – by women for modern people”
• Kat Ely “The World is Designed for Men” (Medium article)
• Justin Davidson, 3/2018 “What Would A World Designed By Women Look Like?“
• Ankita Rao, 5/15/2017, “Sexism in the City”
• Alexander Starritt, 2016, “Women And Men Use Cities Very Differently“
• Ellie Dori, “Designed with Men in Mind”
• Soraya Chemaly, 3/16/2016 “The problem with a technology revolution designed primarily for men”
• Kate Brodok, 8/4/2017, “Why We Desperately Need Women To Design“
• Larry Hardesty, 2/11/2018 “Study finds gender and skin-type bias in commercial artificial-intelligence systems”
• Stance Grounded (@_SJPeace_) video