In the documentary Reference Man, journalist Sophie Frankenmolen goes in search of the 'standard man' our world is designed for. Reference Man comes back is almost everything, and that has consequences for women's health, for example.
Reference Man (NPO Start, 2022)
Our world is tuned, tested and built on a 'standard human being', namely a white man of about 1.75 meters tall and about 80 kilograms. This is 'Reference Man', a clumsy phenomenon that is sometimes downright life-threatening, researched journalist Sophie Frankenmolen in her four-part series. For example, women are nearly 50 percent more likely to be seriously injured in a car accident because manikins are shaped after the "standard man." But it goes much further than that; the reference man has a negative influence on many more important things, such as medicine.
The norm in neutral places
“I never expected that Reference Man hidden in so many things. It's really the norm in places I thought of as "neutral," like the medical world or the cars we drive. Every episode I speak to experts and experiential experts who explain where he is hiding and what it means if you are not like him. Reference Man single-handedly represents the whole world and that is not right”, says Frankenmolen.
She investigates a different theme for each episode, starting with the medical world. There it appears that there is much less knowledge about the female body than about the male body, which means that 'standard' medicines can have a different effect on women than on men. But reference man is also ubiquitous in our technology, everyday life and in the workplace, at the expense of everyone who deviates from it.
