Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
Author: Caroline Criado-Pérez
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
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Cover Description
Imagine a world where your phone is too big for your hand, where your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body, where in a car accident you are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, where every week the countless hours of work you do are not recognised or valued. If any of this sounds familiar, chances are that you're a woman.
Invisible Women shows us how, in a world largely built for and by men, we are systematically ignoring half the population. It exposes the gender data gap – a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against women, and that has created a pervasive but invisible bias with a profound effect on women’s lives.
Award-winning campaigner and writer Caroline Criado Perez brings together for the first time an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the impact this has on their health and well-being. From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media, Invisible Women reveals the biased data that excludes women. In making the case for change, this powerful and provocative book will make you see the world anew.
TL;DR Review
WOW. Invisible Women is an unrelenting pop-pop-pop of bruising, important truth bombs. Caroline Criado-Pérez doesn’t hold back. Everyone should read this.
For you if: You want to learn more about gender inequity.
Full Review
“The presumption that what is male is universal is a direct consequence of the gender data gap. Whiteness and maleness can only go without saying because most other identities never get said at all. But male universality is also a cause of the gender data gap: because women aren't seen and aren't remembered, because male data makes up the majority of what we know, what is male comes to be seen as universal. It leads to the positioning of women, half the global population, as a minority. With a niche identity and subjective point of view. In such a framing, women are set up to be forgettable. Ignorable. Dispensable — from culture, from history, a from data. And so, women become invisible.”
Hey hi hello. If you are looking for one book to teach you something new and important, let this be it. Caroline Criado-Pérez drops fact after fact after fact, study after study after study. She doesn’t hold back as she pulls back the curtain over all of our eyes and shows exactly how the fact that assuming data about men is universal to all people, women across the world suffer.
Here are a few examples:
Car manufacturers are not legally required to test their cars with anatomically accurate woman crash-test dummies. Thus, women die.
Medical studies are overwhelmingly performed on people assigned male at birth and / or not separated by gender. Thus, women die. (Did you know women exhibit different signs of a heart attack than men and so many not even be seen at a clinic if she’s in active cardiac arrest??)
Because entire cities and transit systems are designed by men who go off to work (usually driving) for men who go off to work (usually driving), women who are more likely to meander to day care to grocery stores etc not only end up paying more for transportation but also spend more time traveling ON TOP OF being paid less or nothing. (When a city decided to prioritize snow removal along women’s typical routes (on sidewalks) rather than roads into city center, the city saved money because fewer people were injured.)
This book is a deluge of information just like this — information that is clearly presented, extraordinarily persuasive, long overdue, and so important. I honestly don’t even have much to say beyond that, except that everyone should read this book.
Trigger Warnings
None
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