Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
432 pages
English language
Published Dec. 12, 2020 by Penguin Random House.
Imagine a world where...
· Your phone is too big for your hand · Your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body · In a car accident you are 47% more likely to be injured.
If any of that sounds familiar, chances are you're a woman.
From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, and the media. Invisible Women reveals how in a world built for and by men we are systematically ignoring half of the population, often with disastrous consequences. 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 profound impact this has on us all.
Especially men, though I doubt many will. I didn't know most medical trials only include men "for simplicity" which results in medication not working as well or at all for women. Many other points are mentioned where women are disregarded in planning for transport, architecture, taxation systems etc. resulting in disadvantages that affect women's lives disproportionately. This is wild considering that this is half the population.
This was a tough read. It’s full of instances where women are overlooked because we simply don’t have data on them. The worst thing is that in most cases we didn’t even deliberately ignore women, we (or more correctly the all male deciders) just forgot about them.
Where men don’t use (or even enter?) kitchen, they just forget to include them in emergency rebuilding projects.
Since men don’t walk or use public transportation as much, sidewalks don’t get plowed in time and bus schedules and routes are not made for hopping off to do some grocery shopping while leaving work.
For those cases the solution sounds simple: Add some female decision makers to boards, politic parties, and lead management.
Only apparently it isn’t that simple at all, since especially in politics, women simply can’t be seen as assertive yet warm personalities.
So for me it seems we need a step …
This was a tough read. It’s full of instances where women are overlooked because we simply don’t have data on them. The worst thing is that in most cases we didn’t even deliberately ignore women, we (or more correctly the all male deciders) just forgot about them.
Where men don’t use (or even enter?) kitchen, they just forget to include them in emergency rebuilding projects.
Since men don’t walk or use public transportation as much, sidewalks don’t get plowed in time and bus schedules and routes are not made for hopping off to do some grocery shopping while leaving work.
For those cases the solution sounds simple: Add some female decision makers to boards, politic parties, and lead management.
Only apparently it isn’t that simple at all, since especially in politics, women simply can’t be seen as assertive yet warm personalities.
So for me it seems we need a step before that one ☝
Invisible women is a book about absence, it's a look at how the world is designed in favour of the average person which ends being male biased in all sort of things, from how cities are planned to menial things like how a phone is designed. It’s about the decisions to exclude women in the interests of simplicity, from architecture to medical research. It is packed with facts but it is written in such a way that it is really witty. Invisible women is for everyone, woman or man, who is interested in having an equal society. It’s also a book for policy-makers; it will introduce them to new and different ways of looking at the world, ways that probably they wouldn’t have considered before.
