Technology

the tech industry is rife with examples of tech that forget about women. Virtual reality (VR) headsets that are too big for the average woman’s head; a ‘haptic jacket’ (a jacket that simulates touch) that fits snugly on a male body, but on a female reviewer’s body ‘could have fit over a puffy winter coat’; augmented-reality glasses whose lenses are too far apart for a woman to focus on the image, ‘or whose frames immediately fall off my face’. Or, as I know from my experience of going on TV and giving public lectures, mic packs that require either a waistband or substantial pockets to attach to. Out goes pretty much every dress ever designed. Defaulting to male seems particularly endemic in sports tech. Starting with the most basic, the calorie count on treadmills is perfect for practically no one, but it will be more accurate for your average man because its calculations are based on the average male weight

And although you can change the weight setting, that still leaves a calculation based on an average male calorie burn. Women generally have a higher fat and lower muscle distribution than men as well as different ratios of various muscle fibres. What this means at a basic level is that even after accounting for weight difference, men on average will burn 8% more calories than a woman of the same weight. The treadmill does not account for this.