I know shes talking about jars but she really means that everything is like this. Shelves are too high. Stairs are too deep. Chairs and tables are too high. Spoons are too big. Women do not fit in...
I know shes talking about jars but she really means that everything is like this.
Shelves are too high. Stairs are too deep. Chairs and tables are too high. Spoons are too big. Women do not fit in cars and are forced to sit hazardously close to the steering wheel in order to operate a car.
I mean....I'm 6'3. Just about everything is too short/small for me by default and it's caused me posture problems all my life, since the average US male is 5'9. I know women ranging from my height...
I mean....I'm 6'3. Just about everything is too short/small for me by default and it's caused me posture problems all my life, since the average US male is 5'9. I know women ranging from my height to 4'ish (average US woman is 5'3 for ref).
There's, literally, not a one size fits all for these things. You can try to make everything dynamic or bespoke, but that's very expensive, causes other problems (ADA compliance being the main one), and i'm still not sure what you're going to do about stairs.
Its not that I think they should cover 4ft tall tiny women, thats not the case the blogger is making either. The problem is that “average person” is a man, and the average woman is too far away...
Its not that I think they should cover 4ft tall tiny women, thats not the case the blogger is making either.
The problem is that “average person” is a man, and the average woman is too far away from their measurement of “average person”
Big and tall guy here too, so I feel your pain, but the issue isn’t that we can’t accommodate everybody everywhere, it’s that in WAY too many instances of design, testing, and implementation,...
Big and tall guy here too, so I feel your pain, but the issue isn’t that we can’t accommodate everybody everywhere, it’s that in WAY too many instances of design, testing, and implementation, women haven’t even been considered.
I highly recommend Caroline Criado Perez’s book Invisible Women for a data-driven look into the issue at large.
One thing that stuck out to me from it was that female crash test dummies weren’t used until the 2010s(!) in the US, and when they finally were implemented, safety scores for cars plummeted. It highlighted a significant safety issue for women that was previously unknown because nobody was testing for it.
The book is very illuminating and I highly recommend it. This issue is so much deeper than “not everybody fits the average.”
as a 6'2", broad shouldered and long-legged, male I don't fit in airplane seats, driving position in cars is a toss up, I can't get my legs under tables, hit my head on things that are the "right"...
as a 6'2", broad shouldered and long-legged, male I don't fit in airplane seats, driving position in cars is a toss up, I can't get my legs under tables, hit my head on things that are the "right" high for other people.
I know where the author is coming from, but it really feels like a less of a "women" issue (don't get me wrong, there are a lot of those in the world) but an issue of everything being designed for the "average person".
There are lots of jobs around the house and in the garden where I trade off with my partner; she does the stuff that is low down, or demands small hands or getting in small spaces and I do the high-up stuff and high torque/strength things.
Women do not fit in cars and are forced to sit hazardously close to the steering wheel in order to operate a car.
A frustrating amount of cars, Italian ones being some of the worst, seem to assume short legs and long arms (from my perspective). I assume there are some people that fit comfortably, getting an ideal driving position in many European cars just isn't going to happen if you are too tall or too short. I looked at buying a (used) first generation Porsche Boxster many years ago, my partner was all for it but I had to point out I my head touched the roof when closed and my shoulder was pressed hard against the door.
But snake_case, what about all the men who are above or below average?! We can barely accomodate them! Are you seriously expecting the world to just accomodate women and men?! /s Men being the...
But snake_case, what about all the men who are above or below average?! We can barely accomodate them! Are you seriously expecting the world to just accomodate women and men?!
/s
Men being the unquestioned default for everything, down to industrial design, is extraordinarily depressing. I'd imagine this dates back to male dominance in building codes and norms, engineering. Ultimately it's probably a historic artefact of men being in charge of finances, so 'this house/car is great for me'.
And because this'll probably get a comment like 'women actually make the majority of large household purchases now', women have only been allowed financial independence for a couple of generations. Imagine how long it'll take for that to through to design and accessibility without active effort.
Haha yeah like I’m sure its not on purpose at this point, its just that men still design most of our things and their view of whats reasonable comes from their own experience and thats just how...
Haha yeah like I’m sure its not on purpose at this point, its just that men still design most of our things and their view of whats reasonable comes from their own experience and thats just how humans work.
Woman are totally justified in complaining about this reality even if the men don’t do it on purpose.
I think that car safety tests may be starting to include women sized mannequins, so progress.
The thing that really bothers me is researchers purposely excluding women in medical studies cause it’s inconvenient to include that data. That shit is so unethical.
IIRC it's a serious issue with pianos as well. Before puberty, men and women perform about equally; afterwards, men have a significant advantage, because the standard piano keyboard size was...
IIRC it's a serious issue with pianos as well. Before puberty, men and women perform about equally; afterwards, men have a significant advantage, because the standard piano keyboard size was designed for men.
Ironically, the family came to me from like age 10 til I moved out to open jars, because I played piano and I had hand muscles. My dad had meaty hands and we were about on par. He also taught me...
Ironically, the family came to me from like age 10 til I moved out to open jars, because I played piano and I had hand muscles. My dad had meaty hands and we were about on par. He also taught me that metal lids opened easier when you run them under hot water (as his engineering, and later my experience understood).
Also I never had any issues playing piano, and could reach some of Chopin's 13ths on a good day. I've been 5'9 (175cm) since age 14 and actively played until 16.
What I'd like to discuss is acceptable office temperatures though...
Relatedly, I rather like this instagram account of a woman in the trades who talks about this sort of stuff! So on top of everything else, this also discourages women out of pursuing entire career...
Relatedly, I rather like this instagram account of a woman in the trades who talks about this sort of stuff! So on top of everything else, this also discourages women out of pursuing entire career paths.
This article highlights the difference in grip strength between men and women, and it points out that many containers require an inordinate amount of force to open. Considering half the population...
This article highlights the difference in grip strength between men and women, and it points out that many containers require an inordinate amount of force to open. Considering half the population are women, maybe businesses should be more receptive to their needs and design easier to open containers. It would be an accessibility win and provide an overall better experience for everyone.
The comments on that post made me realize how absurd it is that you might need to pull off some special trick just to open a container. I've experienced containers that just feel clunky to open and it's always a slight point of frustration against that company.
Have you experienced any points of frustration when opening something?
When I transed my gender I was shocked by how quickly I lost the ability to open containers. I knew the medicine makes trans women lose a lot of muscle but I didn't expect it to really affect my...
When I transed my gender I was shocked by how quickly I lost the ability to open containers. I knew the medicine makes trans women lose a lot of muscle but I didn't expect it to really affect my daily life like that. Had to learn all the alternative methods for jars, and in general add exercise to my routine so that I wouldn't lose my ability to, like, carry a jug of milk for a few blocks.
Oh my god, me too, this just became an issue in my house. I can't open the pickles for my partner any more, we had to wait for a guest to come by and open up a jar before. I've even started to...
Oh my god, me too, this just became an issue in my house. I can't open the pickles for my partner any more, we had to wait for a guest to come by and open up a jar before.
I've even started to struggle with Gatorades as the article refers to, they hurt my hands now, in part bc they're softer as well.
I found our rubber grippies for helping with jars, but I should get into our home gym.
Honestly I never had that ability to begin with, I was always weak as fuck. I sometimes use a wire-stripping tool to grip bottle caps and open my bottled water because I can't do it any other way....
Honestly I never had that ability to begin with, I was always weak as fuck. I sometimes use a wire-stripping tool to grip bottle caps and open my bottled water because I can't do it any other way. I think I sent a video of that to @faye_luna once.
Oh! 100% yes, and on top of a gender-thing it's also an accessibility-thing -- once you get older (or injure a thumb), it becomes infinitely harder to take care of yourself. I learned about these...
Have you experienced any points of frustration when opening something?
Oh! 100% yes, and on top of a gender-thing it's also an accessibility-thing -- once you get older (or injure a thumb), it becomes infinitely harder to take care of yourself.
I learned about these adjustable jar openers the other day, though, which seem way better than the standard set of tricks (I tend to rotate through tapping with a spoon, hot water, and using a dish towel; eventually it comes off and I haven't had one explode in my hands yet 😅). Admittedly I'm the type to carry a mini-multitool with a pair of pliers for tearing into other types of packaging which require too much pinch/grip strength, so this might only be an outlier opinion.
(re. redesigning packaging so that it's easier to open -- I expect that there are probably a fair number of ways to do this that the commentors didn't discuss, such as forming extensions/flats on the lids in order to provide physical purchase on it for turning (example). Ultimately the tightness is (probably?) a food safety/package integrity issue, so giving better mechanical leverage somehow sounds like a safer idea)
Definitely have struggled, and I wish more lids at LEAST had ridged grooves or something to have a better grip. I never struggle with peanut butter or water bottles. At worst I'd end up using a...
Definitely have struggled, and I wish more lids at LEAST had ridged grooves or something to have a better grip. I never struggle with peanut butter or water bottles. At worst I'd end up using a towel or my shirt to twist stubborn caps because the ridges begin digging into my palms a bit painfully (or my hand gets sweaty), but those ridges also let the fabric grip more easily. But any glass jar with a smooth metal lid is awful.
On that note, the difficulty varies by individual jar—not brand or product, but jars. My last major struggle was trying to open a jar of pasta sauce for probably five minutes, until I decided to try another unopened jar of the exact same sauce. It popped off almost instantly, no tricks needed. Just... GAH.
Yeah i'm not sure how much of this is "you're dealing with physics and food safety". Pickle jars are the "trope" and that's mostly due to canning hot items pulling a vacuum. You could design the...
Yeah i'm not sure how much of this is "you're dealing with physics and food safety".
Pickle jars are the "trope" and that's mostly due to canning hot items pulling a vacuum. You could design the product to have some breakable seal, but not sure how you're going to do that without potentially causing other problems.
From the article itself:
Yes, strength required to open packaging ranges across a wide distribution, but I note that very few are impossible for anyone to open, so it seems like some effort somewhere goes into keeping them in the feasible range, and that effort does not seem to care about it being reliably feasible for people like me. I don’t imagine Bonne Maman wants to stop women getting to their jam—I imagine that nobody cares.
I'm really not sure what Bonne Maman can do to ensure a tight and shippable seal that meets all safety compliance. They aren't "Making sure some people can open it" and designing it that way. It's basically just the physics of the vacuum you're pulling when you process Jam. Processing it then transferring it to an easier to open container is not only going to WAY up the price for obvious reasons, but also nuke shelf life and a bunch of other things.
Like look if i'm wrong and some of this can be easier, go for it. The "obvious" solution to me is probably a total redesign of lids to have a leveragable handle, but then you'll see price increases. Retooling machinery and larger shipping costs being the main issue. One's an up front but you'll be able to fit fewer jars per shipment and a larger % will spoil and that's not going away (and is technically a larger carbon footprint).
Honestly it'd probably be easier to just go back to cans that REQUIRE a can opener.
It's not always canning though - it's possible the breakaway perforation on a bottle of soda could be more generous, or a bag of chips could use weaker glue.
It's not always canning though - it's possible the breakaway perforation on a bottle of soda could be more generous, or a bag of chips could use weaker glue.
Maybe? I think some of these are just tolerances and QA? Some % of the product doesn't meet spec, so you toss it. They could tighten up the spec and lower the acceptable tolerances, but you're...
Maybe?
I think some of these are just tolerances and QA? Some % of the product doesn't meet spec, so you toss it. They could tighten up the spec and lower the acceptable tolerances, but you're still looking at retooling and probably more waste as a larger % fail QA?
Again i'm not against it if it's actually easy, but like...most times I can think of a woman not being able to open a soda bottle or bag of chips...none of us could without destroying the damn thing.
Given these are usually popular brands it pretty clear these are outliers, but it kinda just gets back to it maybe being easier if you just expect your users to carry small tools. I've got a minuscule knife/screwdriver thing (2ish" i think?) on my keyring and it'll make quick work of pretty much any packaging in anyone's hands.
Class warfare comes into it too - making packages difficult to open is often to prevent theft, but this is a massive imposition upon the consumer, all for the "tradeoff" of pinching pennies and...
Class warfare comes into it too - making packages difficult to open is often to prevent theft, but this is a massive imposition upon the consumer, all for the "tradeoff" of pinching pennies and preventing the poor from eating.
For containers that are too tight: strap wrench . Extremely cheap, and since I got one I had not had to ask again. But the general point of the world being made for the average man excluding the...
For containers that are too tight: strap wrench . Extremely cheap, and since I got one I had not had to ask again.
But the general point of the world being made for the average man excluding the rest of us, stands.
When my sister and I lived together by ourselves, this was a serious nuisance, especially since we both have small hands. I keep rubber bands in the kitchen to wrap around stubborn container lids,...
When my sister and I lived together by ourselves, this was a serious nuisance, especially since we both have small hands.
I keep rubber bands in the kitchen to wrap around stubborn container lids, but beverage bottles out in public are still an issue.
I know shes talking about jars but she really means that everything is like this.
Shelves are too high. Stairs are too deep. Chairs and tables are too high. Spoons are too big. Women do not fit in cars and are forced to sit hazardously close to the steering wheel in order to operate a car.
I mean....I'm 6'3. Just about everything is too short/small for me by default and it's caused me posture problems all my life, since the average US male is 5'9. I know women ranging from my height to 4'ish (average US woman is 5'3 for ref).
There's, literally, not a one size fits all for these things. You can try to make everything dynamic or bespoke, but that's very expensive, causes other problems (ADA compliance being the main one), and i'm still not sure what you're going to do about stairs.
Its not that I think they should cover 4ft tall tiny women, thats not the case the blogger is making either.
The problem is that “average person” is a man, and the average woman is too far away from their measurement of “average person”
Big and tall guy here too, so I feel your pain, but the issue isn’t that we can’t accommodate everybody everywhere, it’s that in WAY too many instances of design, testing, and implementation, women haven’t even been considered.
I highly recommend Caroline Criado Perez’s book Invisible Women for a data-driven look into the issue at large.
One thing that stuck out to me from it was that female crash test dummies weren’t used until the 2010s(!) in the US, and when they finally were implemented, safety scores for cars plummeted. It highlighted a significant safety issue for women that was previously unknown because nobody was testing for it.
The book is very illuminating and I highly recommend it. This issue is so much deeper than “not everybody fits the average.”
as a 6'2", broad shouldered and long-legged, male I don't fit in airplane seats, driving position in cars is a toss up, I can't get my legs under tables, hit my head on things that are the "right" high for other people.
I know where the author is coming from, but it really feels like a less of a "women" issue (don't get me wrong, there are a lot of those in the world) but an issue of everything being designed for the "average person".
There are lots of jobs around the house and in the garden where I trade off with my partner; she does the stuff that is low down, or demands small hands or getting in small spaces and I do the high-up stuff and high torque/strength things.
A frustrating amount of cars, Italian ones being some of the worst, seem to assume short legs and long arms (from my perspective). I assume there are some people that fit comfortably, getting an ideal driving position in many European cars just isn't going to happen if you are too tall or too short. I looked at buying a (used) first generation Porsche Boxster many years ago, my partner was all for it but I had to point out I my head touched the roof when closed and my shoulder was pressed hard against the door.
Right exactly and its unfortunate that in the eyes on the people who make stuff, a man is “the average person” instead of some combo of woman and man.
But snake_case, what about all the men who are above or below average?! We can barely accomodate them! Are you seriously expecting the world to just accomodate women and men?!
/s
Men being the unquestioned default for everything, down to industrial design, is extraordinarily depressing. I'd imagine this dates back to male dominance in building codes and norms, engineering. Ultimately it's probably a historic artefact of men being in charge of finances, so 'this house/car is great for me'.
And because this'll probably get a comment like 'women actually make the majority of large household purchases now', women have only been allowed financial independence for a couple of generations. Imagine how long it'll take for that to through to design and accessibility without active effort.
Haha yeah like I’m sure its not on purpose at this point, its just that men still design most of our things and their view of whats reasonable comes from their own experience and thats just how humans work.
Woman are totally justified in complaining about this reality even if the men don’t do it on purpose.
I think that car safety tests may be starting to include women sized mannequins, so progress.
The thing that really bothers me is researchers purposely excluding women in medical studies cause it’s inconvenient to include that data. That shit is so unethical.
Seat belts don't sit correctly over breasts
At work, they replaced the old and comfortable cafeteria chairs with ones where my legs dangle...
Revolt!
IIRC it's a serious issue with pianos as well. Before puberty, men and women perform about equally; afterwards, men have a significant advantage, because the standard piano keyboard size was designed for men.
Ironically, the family came to me from like age 10 til I moved out to open jars, because I played piano and I had hand muscles. My dad had meaty hands and we were about on par. He also taught me that metal lids opened easier when you run them under hot water (as his engineering, and later my experience understood).
Also I never had any issues playing piano, and could reach some of Chopin's 13ths on a good day. I've been 5'9 (175cm) since age 14 and actively played until 16.
What I'd like to discuss is acceptable office temperatures though...
Relatedly, I rather like this instagram account of a woman in the trades who talks about this sort of stuff! So on top of everything else, this also discourages women out of pursuing entire career paths.
This article highlights the difference in grip strength between men and women, and it points out that many containers require an inordinate amount of force to open. Considering half the population are women, maybe businesses should be more receptive to their needs and design easier to open containers. It would be an accessibility win and provide an overall better experience for everyone.
The comments on that post made me realize how absurd it is that you might need to pull off some special trick just to open a container. I've experienced containers that just feel clunky to open and it's always a slight point of frustration against that company.
Have you experienced any points of frustration when opening something?
When I transed my gender I was shocked by how quickly I lost the ability to open containers. I knew the medicine makes trans women lose a lot of muscle but I didn't expect it to really affect my daily life like that. Had to learn all the alternative methods for jars, and in general add exercise to my routine so that I wouldn't lose my ability to, like, carry a jug of milk for a few blocks.
Oh my god, me too, this just became an issue in my house. I can't open the pickles for my partner any more, we had to wait for a guest to come by and open up a jar before.
I've even started to struggle with Gatorades as the article refers to, they hurt my hands now, in part bc they're softer as well.
I found our rubber grippies for helping with jars, but I should get into our home gym.
Honestly I never had that ability to begin with, I was always weak as fuck. I sometimes use a wire-stripping tool to grip bottle caps and open my bottled water because I can't do it any other way. I think I sent a video of that to @faye_luna once.
Oh! 100% yes, and on top of a gender-thing it's also an accessibility-thing -- once you get older (or injure a thumb), it becomes infinitely harder to take care of yourself.
I learned about these adjustable jar openers the other day, though, which seem way better than the standard set of tricks (I tend to rotate through tapping with a spoon, hot water, and using a dish towel; eventually it comes off and I haven't had one explode in my hands yet 😅). Admittedly I'm the type to carry a mini-multitool with a pair of pliers for tearing into other types of packaging which require too much pinch/grip strength, so this might only be an outlier opinion.
(re. redesigning packaging so that it's easier to open -- I expect that there are probably a fair number of ways to do this that the commentors didn't discuss, such as forming extensions/flats on the lids in order to provide physical purchase on it for turning (example). Ultimately the tightness is (probably?) a food safety/package integrity issue, so giving better mechanical leverage somehow sounds like a safer idea)
Definitely have struggled, and I wish more lids at LEAST had ridged grooves or something to have a better grip. I never struggle with peanut butter or water bottles. At worst I'd end up using a towel or my shirt to twist stubborn caps because the ridges begin digging into my palms a bit painfully (or my hand gets sweaty), but those ridges also let the fabric grip more easily. But any glass jar with a smooth metal lid is awful.
On that note, the difficulty varies by individual jar—not brand or product, but jars. My last major struggle was trying to open a jar of pasta sauce for probably five minutes, until I decided to try another unopened jar of the exact same sauce. It popped off almost instantly, no tricks needed. Just... GAH.
I mean, canning requires a good seal for safety reasons. The solution could be having a special groove for a specific tool to latch on.
Yeah i'm not sure how much of this is "you're dealing with physics and food safety".
Pickle jars are the "trope" and that's mostly due to canning hot items pulling a vacuum. You could design the product to have some breakable seal, but not sure how you're going to do that without potentially causing other problems.
From the article itself:
I'm really not sure what Bonne Maman can do to ensure a tight and shippable seal that meets all safety compliance. They aren't "Making sure some people can open it" and designing it that way. It's basically just the physics of the vacuum you're pulling when you process Jam. Processing it then transferring it to an easier to open container is not only going to WAY up the price for obvious reasons, but also nuke shelf life and a bunch of other things.
Like look if i'm wrong and some of this can be easier, go for it. The "obvious" solution to me is probably a total redesign of lids to have a leveragable handle, but then you'll see price increases. Retooling machinery and larger shipping costs being the main issue. One's an up front but you'll be able to fit fewer jars per shipment and a larger % will spoil and that's not going away (and is technically a larger carbon footprint).
Honestly it'd probably be easier to just go back to cans that REQUIRE a can opener.
It's not always canning though - it's possible the breakaway perforation on a bottle of soda could be more generous, or a bag of chips could use weaker glue.
Maybe?
I think some of these are just tolerances and QA? Some % of the product doesn't meet spec, so you toss it. They could tighten up the spec and lower the acceptable tolerances, but you're still looking at retooling and probably more waste as a larger % fail QA?
Again i'm not against it if it's actually easy, but like...most times I can think of a woman not being able to open a soda bottle or bag of chips...none of us could without destroying the damn thing.
Given these are usually popular brands it pretty clear these are outliers, but it kinda just gets back to it maybe being easier if you just expect your users to carry small tools. I've got a minuscule knife/screwdriver thing (2ish" i think?) on my keyring and it'll make quick work of pretty much any packaging in anyone's hands.
Class warfare comes into it too - making packages difficult to open is often to prevent theft, but this is a massive imposition upon the consumer, all for the "tradeoff" of pinching pennies and preventing the poor from eating.
For containers that are too tight: strap wrench . Extremely cheap, and since I got one I had not had to ask again.
But the general point of the world being made for the average man excluding the rest of us, stands.
When my sister and I lived together by ourselves, this was a serious nuisance, especially since we both have small hands.
I keep rubber bands in the kitchen to wrap around stubborn container lids, but beverage bottles out in public are still an issue.