Maya Kamat, Contributing Writer
The first time I learned CPR, I was sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with my peers in a dimly lit classroom as an earnest gym teacher played a video about Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) and chest compressions. I was watching the video intently when my friend tapped my shoulder.
“They take your shirt off to put on an AED?” she said with disgust. “I would rather they just let me die.”
I remember feeling distinctly horrified.
Why would she say that? How did we get to the point where the female breast had become so sexualized that women are uncomfortable with receiving life-saving care?
I don’t remember what I said to my friend then, but I would say this — with the way people treat female bodies, they probably would have let her die.
Women are 27% less likely than men to receive basic CPR in out of hospital cardiac arrests, according to a 2024 study. CPR can nearly double a person’s chances of survival. All 50 states as well as D.C. have good samaritan laws that protect bystanders performing CPR. And yet, women across all racial backgrounds are consistently less likely to receive this life-saving care.
As an EMT, I also see how women’s pre-hospital care differs from men’s.
The first time I did an electrocardiogram (EKG) on a female patient, I felt so lost. We train on these smooth, flat-chested dummies, but the reality is that our patients — male or female — do not look like that. It makes no sense that we train on dummies that resemble the easiest possible scenario.
Female-modeled CPR dummies aren’t a new concept. In fact, the first ever CPR dummy was named Resusci Annie, who debuted in 1960. Her face was modeled after an unidentified woman who had drowned in the River Seine in Paris. Despite having a woman’s face, Annie’s torso resembled that of a very small-breasted female or a flat-chested male.
The woman who died in the Seine remains nameless. She had no say in the way her face would be used for countless decades. She had no say in how her torso would be changed to resemble a man. Resusci Annie has saved countless lives since she entered the world of CPR training, but instead of honoring the woman who died, people joke and call her “the most kissed woman.”
How could we expect people to respect her legacy? Her life and womanhood has been overshadowed by the lives of all the men she’s helped save.
Today, there are some CPR mannequins with breasts. This is certainly a step in the right direction, but most of these mannequins feature unmoving, perfectly symmetrical breasts that stay out of the way during CPR; they don’t accurately represent the population they’re supposed to be advocating for.
In January, a “CPR Kiosk” was set up in the Commons that featured a mannequin to teach hands-only CPR. The mannequin features a dark skin tone and what might be considered a “genderless torso.” While this representation is on the right track, it’s not enough to bridge the existing gap between health outcomes for women and men.
When we know that women are less likely to receive CPR outside of hospitals, making all CPR dummies distinctly female draws attention to a cognitive bias by normalizing the female body. From the moment people receive training for CPR they are getting a clear message: “This is a body you might have to do CPR on, it might make you uncomfortable, but you have a life to save.”
It’s no secret that women’s health has taken the backseat to men’s health for all of history.
Women’s symptoms for heart attacks are less widely known or are considered “atypical.” Conditions that affect exclusively female bodies are less studied. Even in mouse trials for clinical research, it’s considered industry standard to only use male mice because female mice have hormonal cycles that are considered “confounding factors.”
These disparities can’t be addressed by adding breasts to a few mannequins. To even begin to change the training landscape for pre-hospital care, I think all training mannequins should resemble a female body.
We can’t know what the woman who died in the Seine would have wanted for her body, her face, her legacy. But we can make sure that we use her legacy to save women just like her. So that the next time a passerby sees a woman unconscious in a river, they will pull her out, check for a pulse, and immediately, without hesitation, start correctly performing CPR.