Whether in mobility, climate change, health and medicine or communication - women and men are not the same. This is reflected in the results of our research projects and studies.
Facts about women
- Lighting: Young women perceive light differently to young men. They prefer less brightness and warmer light in activating situations.
- Climate change: Flood disasters are more stressful for women in material, health and psychological terms. They find it more difficult to return to normal life.
- Communication: In online meetings, women tend to have less speaking time than their male colleagues and they often have the impression that less attention is paid to them.
- Mobility: Women travel more distances, but these are shorter. This needs to be taken into account in urban planning and especially when expanding e-mobility.
- Social life: Women are more likely to live alone in old age than men. However, when women are in a relationship, they are usually the more sprightly partners.
- Health: Women are twice as often admitted to acute geriatric wards due to a femur fracture, but generally require less care.
- Visibility: Women tend to be less visible in online meetings. Significantly more men state that they (almost) always have the camera switched on.
- Ageing: Although women have a higher risk of malnutrition in old age, they are actually less likely to be malnourished than men.
(From FairCom, FEMCharge, LightLife, Österreichischer Akutgeriatriebericht and a publication about Social vulnerability in the event of flooding)
The fact that not everything that applies to men is automatically transferable to women has sometimes been neglected in research in the past, often to the detriment of women.
At JOANNEUM RESEARCH, the research group Technology, Innovation and Policy Consulting of the POLICIES Institute is therefore intensively involved in user-centred technology development. It analyses the extent to which gender and other dimensions of diversity play a role in relation to certain technologies. Because if you take a closer look, you realise that women and men sometimes have very different needs and requirements for products or services.
