TRACEY SPICER: AI isn't coming – it's already here. And it favours men.

‘Mum, why is it “man” and “woman”? It’s like the “wo” is just added onto the “man”.’ – Grace Thompson, aged 9.

The scales fall from my daughter’s eyes at a young age. After years of listening to her parents rant about inequality, she expresses it simply and eloquently. Noting the female of the species seems to be an afterthought, exemplified by adding ‘wo’ to ‘man’, she continues the semiotic analysis. ‘Think about the word “she”,’ Grace says. ‘It’s just “he” with an “s” stuck on the front.’

Now, it could be argued that putting ‘wo’ and ‘s’ at the start of these words, instead of the end, constitutes success. Everyone wants to come first, after all: ‘Look, I won! Do I get a medal?’ However, peering closely, we see this for what it really is: the root word is male. This is what we call the ‘default setting’. In language, design and invention, we innovate using men as the default. If women are to be accommodated – god forbid – they’re an afterthought, created from the rib like Adam’s Eve.

As Caroline Criado-Perez writes in the 2019 book Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men: ‘Starting with the theory of Man the Hunter, the chroniclers of the past have left little space for women’s role in the evolution of humanity, whether cultural or biological. Instead, the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall. When it comes to the lives of the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence.’

Preach, sister! As artificial intelligence is shaping our society, we’re perpetuating this inequity. Our future is looking man-made, instead of human-made.

Watch: Tracey Spicer talks about 'bigoted AI'. Article continues below.

The world isn’t designed for women. How often do you sit shivering in a chilly office? Or stand on your tippy-toes to reach a coffee cup in the cupboard? And don’t get me started on the proliferation of games rooms instead of breastfeeding facilities. Or the corporate headquarters designed without childcare centres. This has been evident since the first Industrial Revolution: the workplace is designed by men, for men. There are notable exceptions, where you’ll find beautifully decorated bowls of pads and tampons in the toilets, and desks built for the average female height. But these are few and far between.

Most modern offices are set at a standard temperature based on the resting metabolic rate of the average man. But the average rate of young adult females is significantly lower, meaning offices are around five degrees too cold. To think of all those years shivering in freezing television studios in order to broadcast the news of the day! Sure, it’s not Siberia. But it’s chilly.

This is not only a matter of women being uncomfortable: it hinders performance. A German study published in the medical journal PLOS One in 2019 reveals women perform better at maths and verbal tasks at warmer temperatures. It’s appropriately entitled, Battle for the thermostat: Gender and the effect of temperature on cognitive performance. While raising the mercury level has a slightly negative impact on men’s performance, this is more than offset by the improvement for women. Productivity improves overall if women are properly accommodated. Take note, corporate Australia.

But it’s not just temperature: the technology and facilities in most offices, manufacturing plants and worksites are designed for men. I’m reminded of a woman who tells me about working on mine sites with no separate women’s toilets. She has to either use the men’s toilet or change tampons in full view of her colleagues. Another woman, whose story is also shared on these pages with her permission, has been raped by a colleague on a mine site. She blames the lack of night-time security and the company culture.

In the 2020s, mobile phones are required for almost any role. Texting one-handed on an iPhone that’s 12 centimetres or bigger is impossible for many women. Maybe size really does matter, at least when it comes to workplace tools. Mobile phone manufacturers seem strangely unaware of this issue. ‘We want to reach as many customers as we can with this incredible technology,’ Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller says while unveiling the 2018 Apple iPhone XS Max in a statement completely bereft of irony.

This is brought to you by the company whose so-called ‘comprehensive health app’ doesn’t have a period tracker until an overwhelming number of women complain. Of course, this ends up being an own goal years later, when the legislation known as Roe v. Wade is overturned. This raises the risk of data from such apps being used to penalise women seeking an abortion. Seriously, we can’t win: it’s two steps forward, one step back. At least we’re going in the right direction. However, if diverse groups are involved in design processes from the get-go, these issues are flagged an awful lot earlier.

But wait, there’s more! Design bias doesn’t only happen on earth. It also occurs in space. In 2019 an all-female spacewalk is cancelled because astronaut Anne McClain can’t find the right-sized spacesuit. (What’s that hackneyed line about women never being able to find something to wear?) The BBC reports the only available sizes are men’s medium, large and extra-large. Why on earth are there no women’s spacesuits?

Basically, the suits haven’t been updated since they were first made in 1978. Nor do they have toilet technology for women in space: the device to collect and dispose of urine uses a tube that only hooks up to a penis. Sure, we can squat and piss in the bush, but there are significantly fewer trees in space. Or so I’m told.

If you’re a fan of Star Trek, you’ll know the introduction intoned by William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk. ‘Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilisations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!’

I’m bemused by the number of sci-fi TV series, films and books that maintain the gender and racial mix of the age in which they’re created. Surely a far-sighted writer should be able to envisage a future in which women and people in marginalised communities are the ones with the power? Thank goodness for sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin, whose works counteract the ‘white man conquers the universe tradition’, as she told the Los Angeles Times in 2012. In one of her novels, The Left Hand of Darkness, people randomly become male or female for a few days each month. Now THAT would surely increase empathy.

Perhaps the biggest fail of the past decade – symbolically, if not substantially – is an illustrated cover story for the Washington Post Express on the historic 2017 Women’s March on Washington. It features the gender symbol for male instead of female. This mistake makes it all the way to print and guess what? No-one at the newspaper notices. Not one single person. Zero, zip, nada.

During the past 35 years in the media, I’ve worked across newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Oh, and that new-fangled thing known as ‘online journalism’. Nothing gets to print or broadcast before being seen by multiple sets of eyes. It begs the question: are there no female editors at that publication? Or sub-editors? Or anyone with a brain?

There are countless examples of this nature. It’s easy to dismiss concerns with comments like, ‘Well, just wear a jacket in the office’, ‘Buy a smaller iPhone’, or ‘Who cares about which symbols represent male and female?’ I can hear the naysayers now: ‘Stop being such a Karen.’

But the consequences of living in a world built on male data can be deadly. When a woman is involved in a car crash, she’s 71 per cent more likely to be moderately injured, 47 per cent more likely to be seriously injured, and – drumroll, please – 17 per cent more likely to die. This is all to do with how, and for whom, the car is designed.

Women tend to be shorter so we sit further forward in an upright position in order to see over the dashboard. Which is kind of critical when hurtling down the motorway at 120 kilometres an hour. There was originally a societal notion that somehow women were ‘out-of-position’ drivers. Blame the victim, much? Apparently, the fault’s not with the design of the car; it’s with the design of the women. Silly us, with our smaller torsos and shorter legs.

Traditionally, cars are built based on the results of collisions using crash-test dummies, which are the ‘average male’ body shape. Let’s reflect on this for a moment. The year 1886 marks the birth of the automobile. This is the year of the ‘lobster tail’ bustle, large enough to carry a tea tray, should one so choose. Admittedly, this would make it rather difficult to sit in a vehicle, let alone drive the damn thing. It takes a century – 100 years – for researchers to wake up and realise cars aren’t designed for women. Is this negligence or deliberate disregard? Either way, it’s unacceptable. 

In the 1980s, activists lobby for an average-sized female dummy to be included in the crash tests. And what happens? Manufacturers and regulators refuse. Outright. (‘How dare you ask us to save women’s lives!’) It takes until 2003 for the US to begin using a scaled-down male dummy to represent women. Because of course our bodies are exactly like those of small men. The first female crash test dummy arrives in – wait for it – 2022, courtesy of a Swedish engineering team led by Dr Astrid Linder.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) dummies pose a different dilemma. These are the mannequins used to teach mouth-to-mouth techniques. One study finds men are 23 per cent more likely than women to survive while being resuscitated in public. Why? It’s our fault due to our boobs. People are scared about touching the chest of a woman they don’t know, because they never practise on a CPR dummy with breasts. This could be a matter of life or death. Enter the Womanikin. This aims to normalise giving CPR to anyone, regardless of gender. Gotta say, I love this idea. But the name still indicates a standard ‘manikin’ is male, with the ‘wo’ added on.

At the risk of sounding like Dr Spicer, we’ll stay in the chest region and look at heart disease, which is historically viewed as a male affliction. Believe it or not, heart disease is currently the leading cause of death for women worldwide, according to the Global Burden of Disease study. But the Heart Foundation says women are 50 per cent more likely than men to be misdiagnosed.

This is an issue close to my heart – figuratively and literally – after developing mild pericarditis from a COVID-19 infection. The symptoms are heart pain, fainting and unusual fatigue. Studies indicate women suffering a heart attack have a wider range of symptoms than men, including nausea and pain in the back or stomach. But people still visualise a heart attack as a middle-aged man clutching at his chest.

Listen: Mia Freedman talks to Tracey Spicer about life with long covid. Article continues below.

Women and gender-diverse people face a longer wait for pain medication or a cancer diagnosis, and are more likely to have their pain ascribed to ‘mental health issues’, Australian Gabrielle Jackson writes in her outstanding 2019 book, Pain and Prejudice.

This is a brutal history: clitorises cut off, wombs and ovaries taken away, and rest prescribed. The latter is still the recommended course for people with long COVID, who are predominantly women, because of its similarities with chronic fatigue syndrome, now known as ME/CFS. This medical misogyny is fed into the data. Only one in three participants in clinical trials is female, meaning women are diagnosed and treated on information drawn mainly from men.

Disparities are also found in transgender populations. One study demonstrates transgender women have a twofold increase in the rate of heart attack compared with cisgender women, even after adjusting for other risk factors. Believe it or not, no-one knows why. Unfortunately, this research is only in its early stages, despite sex reassignment surgery being available since the 1950s. As recently as December 2021, a research paper states, ‘Clear gaps exist in our understanding of the relationship between being transgender and cardiovascular health’.

What does this all tell us? Society’s default setting is definitely male. But he’s also a white – or, at least, light-skinned – male. There’s burgeoning research in the area of ‘techno-racism’. One of the most obvious examples is pointed out by Chukwuemeka Afigbo, a Nigerian tech worker.

Afigbo tweets a video of a ‘racist’ automatic soap dispenser at a Marriott hotel: it works for a white person’s hands, but not a Black person’s. The dispenser uses infrared technology to detect when a hand is underneath. This ‘invisible light’ reflects off the skin, triggering the sensor. Darker tones absorb more light, so there’s not enough to activate the dispenser. Frankly, this is a serious health and safety issue during the current ongoing global pandemic.

Issues like this would be easily avoided by testing devices on people with a variety of skin tones. ‘Simples!’ as the meerkat says in the TV ad for comparethemarket.com. Creators often test inventions on themselves and their friends. These are usually homogenised groups of young white and Asian men working at the epicentre of innovation, Silicon Valley. The good news is that developers, executives and the public are becoming more aware of how bias is being built into the machines that will determine our futures. It’s certainly not ‘one giant leap’, however; rather, a small step towards a solution.

Here’s an example from Sweden, which is centred on snowploughing. In 2018, municipalities decide to investigate the practice of first ploughing major highways, then side streets, walkways and bike paths. They take a forensic look at the data. Some stand open-mouthed; others shake their heads. Okay, I’m using poetic licence, but you get the drift. 

They discover three times more people are injured while walking in icy conditions – usually women taking their kids to childcare or school – compared with people driving on icy roads. Women often have different driving patterns from men, taking side streets to run errands or check on family members. As a result of this research, Sweden now ploughs side streets and walkways first, leading to a reduction in trips to the emergency room.

To be clear, I’m not implying Sweden has a history of killing off its female population. Quite the opposite: Scandinavian countries top the global list for gender equality. It’s a clear case of the ‘default’ mechanism again. The Swedish example is exciting because it shows how we can use data to remove unconscious bias, rather than reinforce it. However, so-called gender-equal ploughing becomes a hot potato in the ‘culture wars’.

In the US, when the Boston mayor’s chief of staff floats the idea of emulating the Swedish example, she’s pilloried by right-wing columnists and talkback radio hosts for ‘woke snowploughing’. Call these shock jocks foolish if you like, but their comments are carefully considered: the topic is terrific clickbait. At the intersection of capitalism and chauvinism sits a lucrative industry. They’re not going to stop, while raking in the cash. It gives new meaning to the term ‘divide and conquer’.

This is part of the feminist backlash. Everything’s going along smoothly until those pesky women start destroying the joint, as one right-wing Australian broadcaster famously says in 2012. A rich undercurrent of misogyny flows through the large tech firms in particular. This is exemplified by an incident known as ‘diversity-gate’.

It begins in 2017, when Google engineer James Damore writes a 3300-word internal memo about women in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine). ‘How wonderful, a male ally!’ you might be thinking. Well, think again. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Damore seeks not to praise diversity programs, but to bury them.

In his memo, entitled ‘Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber’, Damore asserts women are under-represented in the technology industry because: ‘Preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes.’ This is neurosexism at its ‘finest’. After being sacked, Damore tries to sue Google for discrimination… against conservatives and white men. Boom-tish! The matter is dismissed in its entirety. Damore could have a career in stand-up comedy with lines like this.

Some men see the status quo as the way it should be for eternity: the natural order. They fear change because it threatens their standing. If these kinds of antiquated attitudes remain, machine learning will send us back to the dark ages.

This is an edited extract from Man-Made by Tracey Spicer, RRP: $34.99, Simon & Schuster.

Feature image: Supplied; Instagram/traceyspicer.

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