It wasn’t until 1981 that the Federation of Feminist Women's Health Clinics created anatomically correct images of the clitoris. Published in A New View of a Woman’s Body, the images were part of a wider attempt to provide thorough, accurate information to women to support their health. Decades later, in 2009, the first 3-D sonography of the stimulated clitoris was completed by French Researchers.

Ignorance persists today. As the University of Western Sydney clinician and physiotherapy researcher Jane Chalmers explains, the subject of the clitoris is still avoided or ignored. “Several major medical textbooks omit the clitoris, or label it on diagrams but have no description of it as an organ,” she says. “This is in great contrast to the penis that is always covered in-depth in these texts.”

As a researcher who focuses on the vulva and pelvis as well, Chalmers says she is often harassed online. “I frequently face questions of ‘Why would you want to study that?’ and snide comments along the lines of, ‘She must be a lesbian.’”

The problem, many suggest, starts early. A recent research paper examined 55 qualitative studies in more than 10 countries. Its authors found that young people tend to have negative views of the sex education they received in school. The researchers noted that many students reported that very little was ever said about sexual pleasure, female pleasure in particular.

In France, where the model clitoris originates, sex education often teaches outdated attitudes, according to Fillod. Official guidelines for sex ed are “terribly sexist, heteronormative, even homophobic,” she says. In particular, social norms are often inaccurately linked to biological information. For example, Fillod explains that children are taught “that boys are more focused on genital sexuality, whereas girls care more about love and the quality of relationships, in part because of their ‘specific anatomical-physiological characteristics.’” She is not alone in her concern about this curriculum. In 2015 the Haut Conseil à l’Egalité, a government body which monitors gender equality, reported that school-based sex education in France was riddled with sexism.

Determined to do something about the problem, Fillod partnered with a Toulouse-based documentary-film production company to prepare a series of videos with alternative materials. In the process, Fillod realized that a life-size 3-D model of the clitoris would be a useful visual aid. In French biology textbooks,” she explains, “the clitoris is never correctly pictured in the drawings showing the female genital apparatus, and even quite often not pictured at all.”

As an engineer at the École Centrale Paris, who has been independently researching sex and gender issues in biomedical science since 2013, Fillod was prepared for the task. “Providing a free and open-access model that could be 3-D printed by anyone appeared as an ideal solution,” she says. “It would not be just for me and this video, but for anyone wanting to use such a 3-D model for educative purposes.”