Women are not small men

Did you know that women are 73% more likely to be seriously injured or die than a man in the same crash. This is partly due to the fact that car crash safety testing uses three types of dummy:

• a 95th percentile male dummy (ie only 5% of men will be larger than this dummy)

• a 50th percentile male dummy

• a 5th percentile female dummy

Men are twice as represented as women, two dummies to our one AND the female dummy isn't even used in most of the tests -- she also isn't tested at all in the driver seat, because of course, women don't drive.(!)

What’s worse is the so-called female dummy is in fact not a female dummy: it's a very very very very scaled down version of the male dummy. Read more about this here.

BUT WOMEN ARE NOT SMALL MEN. There are other differences:

• muscle mass distribution

• spinal column flexibility

• Women’s cervical vertebrae are smaller than men of equivalent head size,

• women's torsos are shorter than the torsos of men of equivalent height

• there are differences between the male and the female pelvis, with women's being wider even when controlled for height difference.

This is one of the reasons why I am teaching women’s movement classes. Because we are different to men and have different anatomies, let alone the changes in hormones, pregnancy, breastfeeding and the menopause. We deserve to have tailored classes because we have specific and changing considerations.

I highly recommend Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women’s newsletter, podcast and book if you wish to learn more about the incredible ways which women are not represented in so many different ways in our society, in science, in research and much, much more.