Did you know women are 73% more likely than men to be injured in a car crash? According to a 2019 University of Virginia study, this is because car safety measures are built with mostly male anatomy in mind.

Car crash test dummies, first designed in 1976 and still in use today, were built to replicate a man’s height and build. And while female test dummies do exist today, they are mostly scaled down versions of the male ones and do not account for female anatomy, like breasts and wider hips. It took until 2022 to develop the world’s first female crash test dummy.

This is one of many subtle yet damning ways gendered biases exist in our society. Institutions favour men when they design products, services and public spaces. When women’s needs are left out in so many corners of their lives, it creates unfair burdens they have to endure. Here are a few more of these gendered biases hidden in plain sight.

Ever wondered why women have to wait longer for the loo? According to a 2017 Ghent University study, one of the reasons is that men’s restrooms can hold more people at once. This is because urinals take up less room than cubicles. Even if you allocate restroom space equally between men and women, fewer women than men can use the bathroom at the same time.

Men also spend an average of 60 secs in a public restroom, while women need 90 secs, researchers at Ghent University said. This is because women need to open and close the cubicle door twice and take time to undress and dress. The study reported that unisex toilets can reduce waiting times for women by one and a half to six minutes.

Do you find yourself reaching for your cardigan in the office? One reason is that the standard office temperature, set in the 1960s, was based on the metabolic rate of a 40-year-old man, according to a 2015 Nature Climate Change report. A 2021 Qatar University and University of Oxford assessment of office workers in Qatar, India and Japan found that women feel more uncomfortable than men in colder indoor environments.

Further research by a 2021 University of California, Berkeley study found out offices today tend to set lower temps to make up for poor air-conditioning systems, a process called overcooling. So when people overcool their offices, women bear the brunt of the discomfort.

According to popular media, when someone gets a heart attack, they clutch their chest. But women who are having a heart attack may not feel any chest pain at all. John Hopkins Medicine confirmed that while anyone can experience chest pains during a heart attack, women are more likely to experience silent symptoms like back pain, shortness of breath, and nausea. If the media only shows dramatic symptoms, people are less likely to spot a woman in serious cardiovascular trouble.

That said, the media reflects larger medical trends that focus on male anatomy and neglect female anatomy. Professor Carolyn Lam, director of Women’s Heart Health at the National Heart Centre Singapore, said the misdiagnosis of heart failure among women is long known. This is because the “yardstick” used to diagnose and treat heart failure is tailored to male bodies, and not female bodies. In fact, male bias is seen across all types of pre-clinical research.

The medical gendered bias also transcends species. For decades, researchers have used only male mice for their experiments, believing that female mice are harder to work with because of their fluctuating hormonal and reproductive cycles. But according to a 2022 Journal of the Biology of Sex Differences study, among other research articles in the past 10 years, the behaviours of female mice’s can actually be more stable than behaviours of male mice. Yet, many researchers today still only use male mice.

This introduces gendered bias to experimental outcomes—when researchers do not include both male and female mice, they cannot analyse their data to find different reactions between sexes. Different reactions between male and female mice may translate to different reactions between male and female humans.

Meanwhile, men are less likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America said one in 10 men will experience anxiety and depression in their lifetime, yet less than half of them will seek treatment. This is not a surprise; when society teaches men to hide their pain, they’re less likely to ask for help.

It is clear: gender equality is not just a woman’s problem. It affects everyone and has a significant impact on our everyday lives. What other gendered biases have you noticed?