Women and men inhabit the same world, yet it does not suit them both equally.

Women are 73% more likely to be injured in a car crash than men. In the military, women suffer pelvic fractures at a much higher rate than their male counterparts. In construction, 90% of women are unable to find proper fitting safety gear.

These outcomes are not a coincidence—they are a result of products where the female population is an afterthought at best. Automobile crash test dummies used for safety tests are designed based on male anatomy, as is firefighting gear and personal protective equipment. Using a “shrink it and pink it” strategy, sneakers for women are scaled down versions originally designed for a man’s foot, and colored a stereotypical feminine color—like pink. In the design of products and places, the female body is often invisible and ignored. The result is a world less hospitable and more dangerous for women.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A designer for over 40 years at some of the world’s top corporations, including Reebok and Nike, Karen Korellis Reuther has witnessed the way women continue to be excluded from critical product design decisions. But Man-Made isn’t a patriarchal lament; it is a rousing call to action drawn from research-backed insights, market analyses, and expertise from leading designers, executives, and economists.

From the simply insulting and uncomfortable to the dangerous and deadly, the effects of exclusively man-made designs are wide-ranging. Rethinking and expanding product design and architecture, Reuther contends, will not only create a world that better fits women, but a world that better fits everyone.

The author recently took time to answer seven questions from Porchlight about her new book—and to tell us about some other books you may want to check out when you pick up a copy of Man-Made.

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Porchlight Book Company: Writing a book is no small undertaking. What compelled you to write this one?

Karen Korellis Reuther: After more than 40 years as an industrial designer, and later a creative director, I came across some statistics that stopped me in my tracks. Only 18% of practicing industrial designers in the US are women. Just 25% of licensed architects and fewer than 13% of mechanical engineers are women. These are the professions that create the products we use, the clothes we wear, the buildings we inhabit. I realized we are still living in a world that has largely been designed by men for men—and it has resulted in consequences that range from insulting to deadly. A built world that excludes half of humanity. I wanted to raise awareness through examples, understand how we got here, but most importantly share a blueprint for how we can make it right—through the products and places we build and the policies we craft to guarantee a comfortable, safe and inclusive world for women.

PBC: Writing (and reading) always prompts as many new questions as it offers answers to the ones you came to it with. What is one unanswered question you encountered as you wrote the book that you are most interested in answering now?

KR: With compelling evidence that the built world has not delivered for women, we can no longer minimize or ignore their distinct physicality. We must dismiss the myth that designing to a male standard is good enough. It’s not; it’s how we got here. It will require dismantling the persistent “law of averages”—you see, there is no standard, normal, or “happy medium” when it comes to the dimensions of the human body. Zero. What I am most interested in now is how we can accept biological differences without reinforcing harmful stereotypes and social inequality and begin designing for differences rather than an artificial average.

PBC: If there is only one thing a reader takes away from reading this book, what would you hope it to be?

KR: We can all play a big part in revealing where the built world falls short for women and advocate for doing better. Let’s be unapologetically demanding!

PBC: One of the great things about books is that they tend to lead readers to other books. What book[s] related to this topic would you recommend people read after (or perhaps even before) reading your book?

KR: Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro. It’s a fresh vision of power, and how it isn’t just for the few at the top; it’s for everyone.

Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes by Christine Yu. It cuts through myth and gender bias from real science to make the case for research and design that actually fits women.

PBC: What is your favorite book? 

KR: Strangers In Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild

PBC: What are you reading now?

KR: Who Is This City For: Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago by Blair Kamin.

PBC: Do you have any future projects in the works that we can look forward to?

KR: Raising awareness and creating a sense of urgency for the inequities in how we design that have long been felt and now have been named—and presenting the opportunities to make it right through teaching, lectures and rolling up my sleeves at the tables where decisions are made.

About the Author

Karen Korellis Reuther has been a designer for over forty years and today is a practicing activist committed to inclusion by design and ending gender bias in the built world. She on the faculty at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where she teaches in the Master in Design Engineering program. She was the Vice President of Creative Direction and Innovation at Reebok and served as the Global Creative Director at Nike for twelve years. A popular guest lecturer and public speaker at Harvard and across the world, Reuther also founded the Inclusion by Design event series, hosted by the Harvard Grid, which brings together students, faculty, and practitioners who share her commitment to designing a world that is safe, hospitable, and inclusive for women. She is a chairperson for the iF Design Awards and on the advisory board of the iF Design Academy. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Learn more at www.karenreuther.com.