WHAT DO SNOW PLOWING, car safety, investment management and face-recognition technologies have in common? While it isn’t obvious to most, they all have impacts that are gendered.
Take snow plowing: Most municipalities focus on getting the roads clear after a major snowfall. But when you clear snow from roads before you clear the sidewalks, it turns out that you get many more slip-and-fall accidents — and most of these are women, because they are more likely to be out walking kids to school in the mornings.
What about car safety? Women are 47 per cent more likely to be injured and 17 per cent more likely to die when they get in a car accident because most vehicle crash tests are done with crash test dummies that are male-sized and have male features.
In the realm of investment management, research shows that women are highly likely to leave their investment advisors when their spouses pass away because those advisors had never worked with them effectively. And facial recognition technology is coming under fire for many reasons these days, but one important one is that these tests are much less accurate in recognizing women’s faces, especially women of colour.
The fact is, many policies, products, services and processes are gendered, and those impacts are often intensified when you also consider other intersecting identities such as race, ability, Indigeneity, sexual orientation or socio-economic class. And these dynamics shape the risks, opportunities and impacts of many of your organization’s activities and outcomes. As I will show in this article, insights around gender can uncover hidden possibilities for innovation and value creation.
Putting Gender Insights to Work
Through my research and teaching, I have come to understand that one of the biggest barriers to progress is that people don’t know how to think and analyze with gender. My hypothesis is that if we all learn how to generate intersectional gender-based insights, we will be able to create more inclusive innovation.
