There is a major Gender Health Gap in medicine. Today, the subject of research is still the man. The discrimination begins with drugs being developed and tested on male mice. And it continues with the development of new medicines, which are still primarily tested on men. Women* get even poorer treatment by male doctors than by same-sex doctors. A study shows that the mortality rate for women with heart attacks increases when they are treated by male doctors.

The top results for “heart attack symptoms” on Google are pressure in the chest, stabbing, burning or pressing pain behind the breastbone. These are probably the symptoms you know.
However, these are the typical male symptoms. Women suffer from entirely different symptoms like headaches, nausea, fatigue, jaw and back pain. Which is a problem since a heart attack should be treated within 45 mins. to save as much muscle as possible. When you know your symptoms, you are able to react quick and get yourself or someone else to the hospital in time.
If you don’t know the symptoms – well…
The female symptoms are just not portrayed in the media at all. For this reason, heart attacks are not recognized at all or much later in women, because they are just not well known.

A study by the New England Journal of Medicine showed that a commonly described heart drug shortens womens live with heart diseases. In the study only around 15% of the test subjects were women, in whom the drug did not work but was still described as effective.

Unfortunately prescriptions are still based on the ”one size fits all” principle — medication is developed for men only, all gender receive the same dose, although it has long been known that women* are often overdosed and that we’d need gender appropriate dosages.

The blue vase (ironically) represents the male that has a fitting lid which embodies the drugs that work for male. If you try to take that lid/drug and put it on the other vases, it will not fit. It communicates that one drug doesn‘t work for all gender, that we would need gender appropriate dosages. And that the principle ”one size fits all” just doesn’t work. We are all different and we need to see some changes in medicine and medication development to be treated equally.

The shapes are inspired by the pill shapes that are available on the market and is displayed to walk around to be able to see it from all sides. In no particular order since gender has no rules or harsh lines to stick to, it’s fluid so you are invited to see it as a group of different genders and also to place them differently if desired.

The colours are inspired by the pill colors but are also supposed to reflect the diversity. This project can be continued, there could be an infinite number of other combinations to convey the message even more clearly.
What I like most about this project is, that it’s of political relevance and works as a whole. But you could also use those vases for it’s purpose and let them shine with blossoming flowers.