Gender Bias At The Gym

Love a good story? Come along, gather around! This is a tale as old as time.

Once upon a time in 2015, there was a gym in the UK called Pure Gym. They were big and popular and had several branches.

At their Cambridge branch was a surgeon, Dr Louise Selby. Dr Selby has a passcode that she can use to access the gym and its facilities.

One day, she tries to access their female changing room - and is denied access. The dreaded error message appears. 🙀

Why? The gym uses two IT systems and somehow between the two IT systems, its coded in somewhere that all members using the title ‘Dr’ were assumed to be male.

And so, Dr Selby was refused access to the female changing room.

Alright kids, so I don't need to draw that out any more, do I? That's your quintessential cautionary tale against all things bias and for all things inclusive design. This is not the kind of stuff you learn from sitting in a workshop.

Inclusivity needs to be baked into our very practices, our systems and policies. Unless we do that, no amount if unconscious bias training is going to fix it.

We need to draw a line from our biases to our work. If you want to learn more about this, feel free to get in touch.