Sep 7, 2020

Invisible Women - Default Male Hangovers

By Caroline Criado Perez • Issue #25 • View online

Good MORNING GFPs! First up, thank you to the many Italian GFPs who got in touch after last week’s newsletter! It’s great to know so many of you are out there, although really sad as well to hear several of you moved country specifically to get away from this kind of misogyny. HOWEVER! I’d like to make a new rule. Women should NEVER apologise on behalf of men with whom they happen to share a nationality. I hugely appreciated the solidarity, but they are 100% NOT your responsibility <3

Second! A note on correspondence. Most of the messages I get on here are either fascinating or just bloody lovely. Usually both! Occasionally, however, I get a message from someone who thinks they have a right to tell me how to write this newsletter. To be clear, this isn’t about suggesting content – I love it when GFPs suggest entries for default male of the week etc. I mean things like the email I got from someone complaining that one week’s newsletter was too long (just…don’t read it all??), or the email I got this week telling me to “please oh please retire ‘GFP’” because no one wants to click on a hyperlink.

So let’s just get a couple of things straight. This is a free newsletter and it will always remain so. I spend a fair amount of time on it each week, collating, curating, and writing. I don’t ask for payment because this is something I care about, and I just want to get the information out there. I also love the sense of community we’re building here! I love my GFPs – and the more you get in touch with all your amazing anecdotes and fascinating research, the more hopeful I feel that we’re creating something amazing.

I know some of you feel guilty for not paying for this, as you have emailed to tell me, and if you really want to support this work, the best thing you can do is buy the book! Buy it for a friend, buy it for your brother, buy for your mum. Buy it for your nan! You don’t have to feel guilty though – it’s my choice not to charge for it.

BUT. Because it’s free, the contract is that I write it how I want and if you don’t like it, you hit the unsubscribe button. Anyway, I get FAR more people emailing me about how much they love GFP. Many of them *sign off* as GFP which never fails to make me smile. Because it’s who we are! So GFP is staying. Long live GFP! (I also have my suspicions that a man in my position wouldn’t have to put up with this presumptuous shit, but that’s a newsletter for another time…)

ANYWAY….just one more thing before we get on with the main event.

A GFP emailed this week with this amazing initiative started by two “data-gap fighting gals” to close Transport for London’s sexual harassment data gap. In their own words:

Transport for London found that 90% of all incidents of sexual harassment go unreported. This under-reporting contributes to a wider data gap, making it impossible to design a policy which accurately reflects the experiences of passengers on the Tube, and a lack of practical solutions to make you feel safe when travelling.

Data is powerful and once it exists, it is difficult to deny. This is why we have created a quick, easy, and safe way for you to report your experience of harassment. We will use the data we collect to lobby Government to introduce measures to deter incidents from happening.

As we exit lockdown, sexual harassment on public transport will go back up again. So if you see it: report it. Let’s do this thing. 💪

And now, the news.

Gender data gap of the week

At last! A cure for the hangover has been found, say Finnish researchers | National Post

Researchers say that as well as reducing or even eliminating hangovers entirely, the dose also helps ‘reduce the need of drinking the next day’

nationalpost.com • Share

Hurrah!

A group of Finnish researchers believe they’ve discovered what people have spent centuries searching for: a cure for hangovers.

A dose of 1,200 milligrams of amino acid L-cysteine was found to reduce alcohol-related nausea and headache, while a dose of 600 milligrams helped alleviate stress and anxiety, according to a study published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism by researchers at the University of Helsinki and the University of Eastern Finland.

The randomized, double-blind study had 19 healthy male volunteers…

Oh.

Default male of the week

Well this article pissed me off.

As women’s running takes off, the shoe industry is racing to keep up - The Verge

Even as brands put more women’s-specific shoes on the market, female foot pain persists. The problem, it turns out, is that we aren’t sure how to design a safe, comfortable shoe in the first place.

www.theverge.com • Share

As long-term GFPs will know, I am (or was) a regular runner. The bracketed was is because, as long-term GFPs will ALSO know, I have been really struggling over the past 6 months or so with my legs which just WILL NOT get better. Both my knees are a disaster as is my RHS achilles tendon. It’s incredibly frustrating, especially since I feel like I have been doing all the boring things I’m meant to do, the squats and clams and the stretching and even the rolling (which I HATE). I had been putting it down to just getting older. Until I read this.

…women are a lot more dissatisfied with their shoes than men are” even though they also tend to have lower expectations for their footwear’s comfort, said Geoffrey Gray of Heeluxe, an independent shoe research laboratory. Heeluxe’s data suggests that, in general, women’s shoes are up to 18 percent tighter around the toes, 70 percent tighter around the big toe joint, and 68.4 percent looser in the heel than men’s shoes. And we’re not just talking stilettos — women are suffering in sandals, casual sneakers, even athletic performance shoes.

Many brands, researchers, and individual runners like Daisy Clark, attribute at least some of this discomfort to a long history of unisex shoe design.

Factories construct shoes around a last — a foot-shaped mold of steel, copper, or durable plastic. Historically, they built men’s, women’s, and even children’s sneakers on lasts based on an adult male foot. The colors changed, but the relative dimensions did not. A size 9 men’s last could make a size 10 ½ women’s shoe. That’s how this practice earned its name: shrink it and pink it.

This technique might have evaded scrutiny if male and female feet were identical. But as a 2009 study in the Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association concluded, “female feet … are not algebraically scaled, smaller versions of male feet, as is often assumed.” Instead, evidence suggests female feet tend to have a higher instep and narrower heel relative to the ball of their foot, while male feet are longer and broader overall. Forcing women into shoes designed for male feet can have serious side effects, Gray said, including dropped arches, bunions, ankle bone soreness (typically when a shoe collar is too high), and blistering.

This was the bit that REALLY killed me given my on-going achilles issues:

“One of the things that sold me when I tried them on is there’s a lot of padding around the Achilles — around the ankle — and that’s something I’ve never experienced before,” said Jamie Wearne, a recreational hiker in Adelaide, Australia, who posts about her Terradoras on Instagram. “It’s something you don’t realize you need before you experience it.“

Last word to Leslie:

Data in a time of corona

I feel like covid was a pretty clear memo to the world that sex differences matter in medical research, and yet somehow, too many researchers and journalists seem to have missed it.

Here is a gender neutral article from The Washington Post all about the gender neutral body’s gender neutral immune system:

The coronavirus disarms the foot soldiers of the immune system. Scientists theorize that boosting them could fight covid-19.

Critical components of the immune system’s early defense, called interferons, are missing in bad coronavirus cases.

www.washingtonpost.com • Share

The article cited several gender neutral studies.

This one, which used one female human (for cell studies), four male ferrets, two male humans, two gender neutral humans, and a further 48 gender neutral humans. It did not sex analyse its data.

This one, which used 101 gender neutral humans.

This one, which, hurrah! used sex-matched subjects, but booooo did not provide a sex analysis of its data

This meta analysis, which for one study does mention that there were 15 male and female subjects but otherwise doesn’t mention sex at all

And finally, this study, which had a 72% male control group and a 78% male subject group and which did not present a sex analysis of its data.

Toilet of the week

A GFP writes:

In case you are short of toilet pictures, here’s one I took earlier today in Bristol of the loos next to the children’s play area (ratio of about 9:1 women to men). Two unisex loos and an extra male only one?!

Slow hand-clap for Oldbury Court Estate in Bristol.

GIVE US POCKETS AN OCCASIONAL FURIOUS SERIES

Alison Murray

@ali__murray

@CCriadoPerez Just watching a netflix show with subtitles and this character is going through a metal detector and is being asked to empty all her stuff... lol, I thought of your book https://t.co/qnrFqlwisi

3:53 PM - 16 Jul 2020

Jolly Compromise of the Week

I’ve exhausted myself going through all those studies, so I have nothing to add to this, it’s just nice, isn’t it

COVID-19: Orange County company allows employees to bring children to work for distance learning - ABC7 Los Angeles

Flexibility has kept employees at an architectural and design firm in Irvine in the office and some of their children learning during the COVID-19 pandemic – all under the same roof.

abc7.com • Share

Poppy pic of the week

Poppy and I are off to take a well-deserved nap after a long morning of fighting the data gap. Until next time, GFPs! xoxoxo

Did you enjoy this issue?

By Caroline Criado Perez

Keeping up with the gender data gap (and whatever else takes my fancy). Like the Kardashians, but with more feminist rage. Plus, toilet queue of the week.

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