Like in the spring of 2015, when Louise Selby, a pediatrician in Cambridge, England, joined PureGym, a British chain. But every time she tried to swipe her membership card to access the women’s locker room, she was denied: the system simply wouldn’t authorize her. Finally, PureGym got to the bottom of things: the third-party software it used to manage its membership data—software used at all ninety locations across England—was relying on members’ titles to determine which locker room they could access. And the title “Doctor” was coded as male.
