Q. Would it be a gender-biased usage if you used “man-made element”? What could be the neutral substitute, “human-made element”?
A. We try to avoid using “man-made,” especially when the context doesn’t mean “made by men.” Miller and Swift give the following alternatives in their Handbook of Nonsexist Writing: artificial, handmade, hand-built, synthetic, manufactured, fabricated, machine-made, and constructed.