Data is fundamental to the modern world.
From economic development to health care to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this insidious bias, in time, in money, and often with their lives.
Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates this shocking root cause of gender inequality in the award-winning, #1 international bestseller Invisible Women. Examining the home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor’s office, and more, Criado Perez unearths a dangerous pattern in data and its consequences on women’s lives. Product designers use a “one-size-fits-all” approach to everything from pianos to cell phones to voice recognition software, when in fact this approach is designed …
Data is fundamental to the modern world.
From economic development to health care to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this insidious bias, in time, in money, and often with their lives.
Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates this shocking root cause of gender inequality in the award-winning, #1 international bestseller Invisible Women. Examining the home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor’s office, and more, Criado Perez unearths a dangerous pattern in data and its consequences on women’s lives. Product designers use a “one-size-fits-all” approach to everything from pianos to cell phones to voice recognition software, when in fact this approach is designed to fit men.
Cities prioritize men’s needs when designing public transportation, roads, and even snow removal, neglecting to consider women’s safety or unique responsibilities and travel patterns. And in medical research, women have largely been excluded from studies and textbooks, leaving them chronically misunderstood, mistreated, and misdiagnosed.
Built on hundreds of studies in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and around the world, and written with energy, wit, and sparkling intelligence, this is a groundbreaking, highly readable exposé that will change the way you look at the world.
More a collection of facts than critical commentary
3 stars
(read for the intersectional feminism book club)
To me, this book read like a data analysis report. Or a review paper. It lacked critical commentary. Perhaps asking why was not the purpose of the book. I'm not sure. Would I still recommend that people read it? Absolutely. It does a good job of listing and highlighting plenty of data biases, which, given how data-centric we're becoming, is an important thing to note and discuss.
On the one hand this is clear and infuriating, a wide ranging look at how male-as-default, often unquestioned or under-researched, in infrastructure, transportation, medicine, employment and care and GDP, etc, makes the world much worse for women and also for everyone. Yet the book speaks of women almost entirely as a monolithic global whole - slight mentions of hormonal or racial complications, but basically no intersectional or queer consideration. As the author is often asking for better nuanced and dis-aggregated data analysis on this single important binary, we could use a version of this book that took that conclusion to a full embrace of considered complicated no-simple-norms human society.
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men is an infuriating read. Pérez asserts that not only is there a gender data gap, but that men being considered default humans makes the world worse, for everybody. She supplies plenty of evidence to support these statements. Depressing and enraging amounts of it.
First published in 2019, it has a surprising lack of discussion on how this affects people who are trans, non-binary, or of other genders, but I still feel it’s an important book everyone should read.
