As sane people know, the “wage gap” is due almost entirely to the professions people choose to go into, and the amount f effort they devote to their career. Work less, get paid less. Work in a job that pays less… get paid less. Since we (“we” meaning Americans in this case, your kilometerage may vary) live in a nation where people can choose what to doand how much effort to put into it, and since women are in fact not men and their goals and motivations are often quite a bit different from those of men, and since women are physically different from men (including being statistically smaller), there are some professions that do not have nearly s many women as men. And as a lot of these low-womanage jobs are hard, unpleasant and dangerous, they often tend to pay more. Some professionally offended people are cheesed off that safer jobs don’t pay as much as jobs that involve, say, wandering around in fundamentally dangerous areas while carrying heavy loads and dodging falling objects.

And so, now they’re floating the notion that these dangerous, hard jobs need to be made easier so that smaller people (read: women) can do them. Behold:

The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes

Little data exists on injuries to women in construction, but the New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health (NYCOSH) points to a US study of union carpenters that found women had higher rates of sprains, strains and nerve conditions of the wrist and forearm than men. Given the lack of data, it’s hard to be sure exactly why this is, but it’s a safe bet to attribute at least some of the blame to “standard” construction site equipment being designed around the male body.

Wendy Davis, ex-director of the Women’s Design Service in the UK, questions the standard size of a bag of cement. It’s a comfortable weight for a man to lift – but it doesn’t actually have to be that size, she points out. “If they were a bit smaller, then women could lift them.” Davis also takes issue with the standard brick size. “I’ve got photographs of my [adult] daughter holding a brick. She can’t get her hand round it. But [her husband] Danny’s hand fits perfectly comfortably. Why does a brick have to be that size?” She also notes that the typical A1 architect’s portfolio fits nicely under most men’s arms while most women’s arms don’t reach round it.

NYCOSH similarly notes that “standard hand tools like wrenches tend to be too large for women’s hands to grip tightly”.

Smaller bricks, tools, cement bags. Genius.

Construction companies don’t care how much work you do in relation to your size, only in how much work you do. It may be just as hard for a small woman to carry 50 pounds a hundred feet  as it is for a big man to carry 100 pounds 100 feet… but the big guy has still carried twice as much stuff. And has thus proven to be twice as valuable to the company… while *not* costing the company twice the insurance liability.

There was also this line:

Women make up the majority of the elderly and disabled

You know why that is? Because men DIE.