What’s the Value of a Brown or Black Baby? | Geeta Sidhu-Robb | TEDxBerlin Salon

Key Concepts

• White Body Standard: The historical and ongoing practice of designing healthcare, workplaces, and societal systems around the male, white body as the default, leading to disparities for others.
• Design Flaw: The core argument that inequities in health and professional outcomes for women, particularly women of color, are not due to biological differences but to systemic design failures.
• Monoculture vs. Diversity: The analogy of agricultural monoculture to illustrate how a lack of diversity in systems leads to fragility and collapse, while diversity fosters resilience and survival.
• Outliers: The recognition that women, and especially women of color, are treated as deviations from the norm in systems built for a different demographic.
• Biological Visibility: The need for systems to acknowledge and accommodate the biological realities of women, rather than expecting them to conform to a male standard.

The Systemic Disadvantage of Brown and Black Women & The Need for Inclusive Design

This discussion centers on the alarming disparity in health outcomes for brown and black women and babies in the UK, and extends to broader systemic biases affecting women in healthcare and the workplace. The core argument is that these disparities aren’t rooted in biology or chance, but in a fundamental “design flaw” within systems not built to recognize, measure, or protect women – particularly women of color.

I. Disparities in Maternal and Infant Health

The speaker begins by highlighting stark statistics: brown or black babies are twice as likely to die before their first birthday, and black or brown mothers are twice as likely to die in childbirth. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but a persistent issue stemming from systemic failures. The speaker’s personal experience with the medical system, where her concerns about her son’s health were dismissed, illustrates this point. Her son experienced anaphylaxis and briefly died in her arms, highlighting the potential for catastrophic consequences when a patient’s intuition and knowledge of their own body are disregarded. She emphasizes that the issue isn’t a lack of care from medical professionals, but rather that she, as a brown woman, wasn’t considered the “default” patient. A particularly poignant detail is the observation that babies on either side of her son in intensive care did not survive, underscoring the scale of the problem.

II. The "White Body Standard" and its Ramifications

The speaker explains that healthcare, historically, was created for a specific demographic: “a man who is English-speaking, economically able and able-bodied.” This “white body standard” serves as the benchmark for everything from symptom identification and diagnosis to drug trials and dosage calculations. This standard inherently disadvantages anyone who doesn’t fit that profile.

• Dosage Discrepancies: The speaker cites the example of Ambient, a drug prescribed at double the dose for women for 20 years until women began experiencing adverse effects like falling asleep while driving, leading to a belated investigation.
• Airbag Safety: She points out that female crash test dummies weren’t designed in the US until 2025, despite women being 47% more likely to be injured and 17% more likely to die in car crashes compared to men.
• Clinical Trial Bias: Only around 27-28% of clinical trials include female participants, and less than 20% analyze data by sex. Even recent advancements, like using blood instead of water in period product testing, were only implemented three years ago.

These examples demonstrate a pervasive pattern of overlooking female biology in crucial areas of health and safety.

III. Beyond Healthcare: The Workplace as Another Monoculture

The speaker extends the argument beyond healthcare, asserting that the workplace also operates on a “monoculture” – an ideal worker who is “linear, unpredictable and uninterrupted.” This ideal worker is implicitly male, and women are penalized for deviating from this standard.

• The Motherhood Penalty: Women face a 30% pay penalty for having children.
• Age-Related Discrimination: Women are often “thrown out” of workplaces during perimenopause or childbirth.
• Productivity Paradox: Despite contributing to companies that are 25% larger than those led by men, women’s contributions are often undervalued because they don’t fit the linear productivity model.

IV. The Importance of Diversity and System Redesign

The speaker draws a powerful analogy to agriculture, explaining that planting the same crop repeatedly depletes the soil. Similarly, a “monoculture” in healthcare, workplaces, and leadership leads to systemic fragility and ultimately, collapse. Diversity, conversely, is not merely a matter of inclusivity, but a “biological requirement for the survival of the species.”

The speaker’s organization operates on the “radical assumption” that “radical women are not small men.” They focus on redesigning workplaces to embrace women’s biology, rather than expecting them to suppress it. This includes creating a culture where pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and perimenopause are seen as assets, not liabilities.

V. Reframing the Question: Value and Future Implications

The speaker concludes by reframing the question of “the value of a brown baby” as a question of what future is lost when certain bodies are deemed less valuable. She emphasizes that improving infant mortality rates requires systemic change, not just interventions within hospitals. Systems must be redesigned to “see and hear” women, granting them access “by right” rather than “by permission.”

Notable Quote: “Diversity isn’t a slogan. It is a biological requirement for the survival of the species, our species.”

Key Takeaway: The speaker powerfully argues that systemic inequities affecting women, particularly women of color, are not the result of inherent differences, but of systems designed around a narrow, historically privileged demographic. Addressing these inequities requires a fundamental redesign of healthcare, workplaces, and societal structures to embrace diversity and recognize the inherent value of all bodies.