Status
Available
Call number
Collections
Publication
Chatto & Windus (2019), 432 pages
Description
Sociology. Women's Studies. Nonfiction. HTML: Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development, to healthcare, 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 bias in time, money, and often with their lives. Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research in Invisible Women, diving into women's lives at home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor's office, and more. Built on hundreds of studies in the US, the UK, and around the world, and written with energy, wit, and sparkling intelligence, this is a groundbreaking, unforgettable expose that will change the way you look at the world..… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member japaul22
Oh, this book. Filled with important data pointing out the myriad ways that women have been neglected in building society around the world. And so depressing that it took me forever to read it.
Criado Perez is thorough. She explores not just the commonly known areas where women have been
Her main solution to all of this is getting women in the position to be involved in decisions. To me, this seems undoubtedly correct, though I think part of that equation has to be getting men involved evenly in the unpaid care work at the same time. (Please, to all my male friends who are already there and doing their fair share, I see it and acknowledge it - my husband included!) I do love her last line:
"And so, to return to Freud's 'riddle of femininity', it turns out that the answer was staring us in the face all along. All 'people' needed to do was to ask women."
This is a book everyone should read, but fair warning that it isn't comfortable or easy reading.
Criado Perez is thorough. She explores not just the commonly known areas where women have been
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historically unplanned for, like medicine and the workplace, but also transportation, public toilets, the internet, refugee camps, and the list goes on and on. She ends with summing up her work into three themes that "define women's relationship with the world". One is the invisibility of the female body - neglecting to take into account the female body in medicine, technology, and architecture - and how it has led to injury, death, and a world where we just don't fit. Two is, ironically, the hyper-visibility of the female body. Male sexual violence against women and how we don't measure it and don't design spaces to account for it or limit it. And third, the unaccounted and unpaid care work of which women do more than their fair share. In our current world, "human" equals "male". Her main solution to all of this is getting women in the position to be involved in decisions. To me, this seems undoubtedly correct, though I think part of that equation has to be getting men involved evenly in the unpaid care work at the same time. (Please, to all my male friends who are already there and doing their fair share, I see it and acknowledge it - my husband included!) I do love her last line:
"And so, to return to Freud's 'riddle of femininity', it turns out that the answer was staring us in the face all along. All 'people' needed to do was to ask women."
This is a book everyone should read, but fair warning that it isn't comfortable or easy reading.
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LibraryThing member rivkat
The world isn’t designed for women, and we don’t even know how bad it is because we haven’t collected information about it. For example, until very recently there was no crash testing of cars using dummies with a female weight/height profile, and it’s still very limited. “[W]hen a woman
Women’s work is ignored, which means that, for example, transportation planning doesn’t take into account the trips that women are more likely to make and anti-poverty programs move women into places where their networks are unavailable and childcare is suddenly both necessary and impossible to find. And male violence against women is ignored, so women’s safety concerns that limit use of public transportation and public space are dismissed as flaws in female behavior, even as we now know that women in India who have to use fields to urinate, instead of bathrooms, face a much greater risk of sexual assault and that women prefer security measures at bus stops (where we otherwise have to wait alone in the dark) to cameras on buses (which transportation designers are more willing to plan for). The disregard for women’s interests interacts—when we don’t count unpaid care work, we find that moderately long hours at paid work improves men’s health but threatens women’s health—because women are actually working a ton more. Everything could use some gender analysis: what counts as a deductible work expense generally conforms to “the kinds of things men will need to claim. Uniforms and tools are in; emergency day care is out.”
Among the rage-inducing stuff, I also learned that “countries with genderless languages (such as Hungarian and Finnish) are not the most equal. Instead, that honour belongs to a third group, countries with ‘natural gender languages’ …. because men go without saying, it matters when women literally can’t get said at all.” Relatedly, “gender neutral” tenure policies that give extra time on the tenure clock for having children advantage men, who use the extra time to write: one analysis of economics departments found that they resulted in a 22% decline in women’s chances of gaining tenure at their first job, and a 19% increase for men. Instead, Perez points to the example of giving father-specific paternity leave on a use it or lose it basis, which has apparently done some good in Sweden.
Then there’s bias against women: male biology students routinely underevaluate female peers while female students can tell who’s actually good; student evaluations are biased against female professors (and nonwhite professors)—that we know this very well and keep using evaluations as part of the standards for professors demonstrates that it’s not just lack of information that’s the problem, it’s that policymakers can’t stop thinking of women as problems to be solved, deviations from the norm. Women can’t get startup funding as easily as men; when professions gain importance (like computer programmers), decisionmakers kick women out of the field. In such circumstances, the myth of meritocracy can only perpetuate itself by collapsing the is/ought distinction—Perez cites an example of a finding that “frequenting a particular Japanese manga site is a ‘solid predictor of strong coding,’” which of course is much more about free time and culture than anything else.
And it’s not just money; women pay in illness and death for these failures to see. Construction jobs have safety limits on what can be lifted, but the research and regulation in nursing lags far behind. Miners’ diseases are heavily studied, but not the chemicals used in nail salons. The Army buys ‘different boot styles for hot and cold weather, mountain and desert warfare and the rain,’ but not for women. Medicine isn’t studied in women because women’s bodies are considered too complex and variable—but it sure as hell is prescribed to us, though our pain is undertreated. One result: “the second most common adverse drug reaction in women is that the drug simply doesn’t work, even though it clearly works in men.” And note what else that failure may mean: since women aren’t sufficiently studied in drug trials, we are likely losing out on drugs that would work for women but are ruled out because phase one trials are mostly done in men. And so on.
Poverty programs that fail to think about women fail. In Syria, for example, “while the introduction of mechanisation in farming did reduce demand for male labour, freeing men up to ‘pursue better-paying opportunities outside of agriculture’, it actually increased demand ‘for women’s labour-intensive tasks such as transplanting, weeding, harvesting and processing.’” Other interventions fail “in part because women are already overworked and don’t have time to spare for educational initiatives, no matter how beneficial they may end up being,” leading innovators to blame women for failing to be sensible. Other initiatives “exclude women by requiring a minimum land size, or that the person who attends the training is the head of a farming household, or the owner of the land that is farmed.” The story of improved stoves—which could help environmental impacts and women’s health—is particularly frustrating, because their designers for decades ignored the barriers to women’s uptake and blamed women for not changing, even though the new stoves disrupted multitasking and household relationships.
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is involved in a car crash, she is 47% more likely to be seriously injured, and 71% more likely to be moderately injured, even when researchers control for factors such as height, weight, seat-belt usage, and crash intensity. She is also 17% more likely to die.” Because women are shorter, “[o]ur legs need to be closer to reach the pedals, and we need to sit more upright to see clearly over the dashboard,” but designers have defined this as the wrong position, making us “out of position” drivers. We “have less muscle on our necks and upper torso than men, which make us more vulnerable to whiplash (by up to three times), and car design has amplified this vulnerability. Swedish research has shown that modern seats are too firm to protect women against whiplash injuries: the seats throw women forward faster than men because the back of the seat doesn’t give way for women’s on average lighter bodies.”Women’s work is ignored, which means that, for example, transportation planning doesn’t take into account the trips that women are more likely to make and anti-poverty programs move women into places where their networks are unavailable and childcare is suddenly both necessary and impossible to find. And male violence against women is ignored, so women’s safety concerns that limit use of public transportation and public space are dismissed as flaws in female behavior, even as we now know that women in India who have to use fields to urinate, instead of bathrooms, face a much greater risk of sexual assault and that women prefer security measures at bus stops (where we otherwise have to wait alone in the dark) to cameras on buses (which transportation designers are more willing to plan for). The disregard for women’s interests interacts—when we don’t count unpaid care work, we find that moderately long hours at paid work improves men’s health but threatens women’s health—because women are actually working a ton more. Everything could use some gender analysis: what counts as a deductible work expense generally conforms to “the kinds of things men will need to claim. Uniforms and tools are in; emergency day care is out.”
Among the rage-inducing stuff, I also learned that “countries with genderless languages (such as Hungarian and Finnish) are not the most equal. Instead, that honour belongs to a third group, countries with ‘natural gender languages’ …. because men go without saying, it matters when women literally can’t get said at all.” Relatedly, “gender neutral” tenure policies that give extra time on the tenure clock for having children advantage men, who use the extra time to write: one analysis of economics departments found that they resulted in a 22% decline in women’s chances of gaining tenure at their first job, and a 19% increase for men. Instead, Perez points to the example of giving father-specific paternity leave on a use it or lose it basis, which has apparently done some good in Sweden.
Then there’s bias against women: male biology students routinely underevaluate female peers while female students can tell who’s actually good; student evaluations are biased against female professors (and nonwhite professors)—that we know this very well and keep using evaluations as part of the standards for professors demonstrates that it’s not just lack of information that’s the problem, it’s that policymakers can’t stop thinking of women as problems to be solved, deviations from the norm. Women can’t get startup funding as easily as men; when professions gain importance (like computer programmers), decisionmakers kick women out of the field. In such circumstances, the myth of meritocracy can only perpetuate itself by collapsing the is/ought distinction—Perez cites an example of a finding that “frequenting a particular Japanese manga site is a ‘solid predictor of strong coding,’” which of course is much more about free time and culture than anything else.
And it’s not just money; women pay in illness and death for these failures to see. Construction jobs have safety limits on what can be lifted, but the research and regulation in nursing lags far behind. Miners’ diseases are heavily studied, but not the chemicals used in nail salons. The Army buys ‘different boot styles for hot and cold weather, mountain and desert warfare and the rain,’ but not for women. Medicine isn’t studied in women because women’s bodies are considered too complex and variable—but it sure as hell is prescribed to us, though our pain is undertreated. One result: “the second most common adverse drug reaction in women is that the drug simply doesn’t work, even though it clearly works in men.” And note what else that failure may mean: since women aren’t sufficiently studied in drug trials, we are likely losing out on drugs that would work for women but are ruled out because phase one trials are mostly done in men. And so on.
Poverty programs that fail to think about women fail. In Syria, for example, “while the introduction of mechanisation in farming did reduce demand for male labour, freeing men up to ‘pursue better-paying opportunities outside of agriculture’, it actually increased demand ‘for women’s labour-intensive tasks such as transplanting, weeding, harvesting and processing.’” Other interventions fail “in part because women are already overworked and don’t have time to spare for educational initiatives, no matter how beneficial they may end up being,” leading innovators to blame women for failing to be sensible. Other initiatives “exclude women by requiring a minimum land size, or that the person who attends the training is the head of a farming household, or the owner of the land that is farmed.” The story of improved stoves—which could help environmental impacts and women’s health—is particularly frustrating, because their designers for decades ignored the barriers to women’s uptake and blamed women for not changing, even though the new stoves disrupted multitasking and household relationships.
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LibraryThing member EowynA
I am a woman. This highlights things I already knew, and opens my eyes to things I did not know about just how male-biased our culture is. The gaps in the data are some of the more key components. Partway through, I began to wish for a Mythbusters episode to test the (possible) myth that "crash
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test dummies based on the 50th percentile male body adequately test test survival of women with seat belts on, in car crashes." After reading the medical section, I have questions for my doctor about particular courses of treatment. This book asks questions, and notes where answers are unknown, because men are the "default human." Fascinating, scary, stunning, and important. I am recommending this book to everyone I know. Show Less
LibraryThing member JenniferElizabeth2
IF YOU ARE A HUMAN, READ THIS BOOK NOW. That is all.
LibraryThing member infjsarah
I listened to this as an audiobook and boy (or should that be girl), it made me angry and should make everyone angry. I was aware of some of it of course - I am female and a short female at that so I know all about bad design where I can't reach top shelves or the floor on couches or the endless
Now our world will operate on algorithms based on data biased towards men and it will become even harder to overcome. Made me very angry.
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queues for female toilets. But I'd never known or thought about some of the things talked about in this book such as poor urban design which forces women into dangerous situations, poor consideration of safety in transport, medical bias towards male testing only, lack of interest in fixing female health issues ( menopause anyone?). This is not mentioned in the book but I wonder if there is a reason medical scandals are often around obstetrics or dementia care where it mostly happens to women?Now our world will operate on algorithms based on data biased towards men and it will become even harder to overcome. Made me very angry.
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LibraryThing member KallieGrace
How are we so bad at intersectional feminism still. The information in here is not surprising if you're a woman, even if it's infuriating. What's more infuriating is the way trans and nonbinary people are completely ignored. You'd think we'd learn our lesson being excluded from so many aspects of
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the world that we shouldn't be excluding anyone else, but that's not the case here sadly. Show Less
LibraryThing member arewenotben
Impossible to read without becoming angry and it really does make you look at the world in a new light, even as someone who felt like they were reasonably aware of these issues already - gender bias in design, science and policy is seemingly in everything. My only criticisms are that Criado-Perez
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is very pro-data as a solution and never really touches upon the manifold issues inherent in data capture, and by the end of the book I became pretty deadened by statistics. Show Less
LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
This is a book that once again will be ignored by those who don't want to hear it. I'm sure it has added to the authors litany of threats but it's a book that needs to be read that needs to be thought about and examined. Yes there may be errors, but honestly I want to see your proof and if you're
There were two things that stood out for me in this book, one was the Policewoman who had breast reduction surgery to make her stab vest safe... the other is that 78% of female pianists (47% of men) have hand pain and that if they just could use the 7/8 DS keyboard that this would be drastically reduced. The reason the second anecdote stood out for me is because I had ganglion surgery at 21 and stopped doing piano exams because the Octave scales were causing pain. I had done 7 of 8 exams before the Diploma. Barely passing the last one so I decided to cut my losses.
I'm a short woman, I wear a padded piece on the seatbelt of the car because otherwise it rubs painfully. I'm also aware that front impact protection bags can kill women my size. But the fact that we're in a world where it's acceptable to ignore 50% (I've seen the numbers at 51% but let's just go broad here) of the population because it's messy to properly do the research. Ignoring the fact that body chemistry can have impact on things. The fact that a lot of tools to help detect that a person has fallen over involves phones in pockets... when most women can't carry them that way.
Read this book, no really, there may be some errors in it but overall it's a book that designers and most men need to read and then ask themselves why women aren't angrier.
I lost sleep over this book....
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coming at this going "well actually the number is 77% not 78% and with that error how can we trust any of it" I don't want to hear it.There were two things that stood out for me in this book, one was the Policewoman who had breast reduction surgery to make her stab vest safe... the other is that 78% of female pianists (47% of men) have hand pain and that if they just could use the 7/8 DS keyboard that this would be drastically reduced. The reason the second anecdote stood out for me is because I had ganglion surgery at 21 and stopped doing piano exams because the Octave scales were causing pain. I had done 7 of 8 exams before the Diploma. Barely passing the last one so I decided to cut my losses.
I'm a short woman, I wear a padded piece on the seatbelt of the car because otherwise it rubs painfully. I'm also aware that front impact protection bags can kill women my size. But the fact that we're in a world where it's acceptable to ignore 50% (I've seen the numbers at 51% but let's just go broad here) of the population because it's messy to properly do the research. Ignoring the fact that body chemistry can have impact on things. The fact that a lot of tools to help detect that a person has fallen over involves phones in pockets... when most women can't carry them that way.
Read this book, no really, there may be some errors in it but overall it's a book that designers and most men need to read and then ask themselves why women aren't angrier.
I lost sleep over this book....
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LibraryThing member isabelx
The result of this deeply male-dominated culture is that the male experience, the male perspective, has come to be seen as universal, while the female experience—that of half the global population, after all—is seen as, well, niche.
A deeply interesting book, but one that enraged me. I’ll be
A deeply interesting book, but one that enraged me. I’ll be
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on the lookout for the female data gap from now on for sure. Show Less
LibraryThing member MickyFine
A brilliant exploration of the overwhelming data bias and/or gender data gap that exists in a wide range of fields where men are treated as the default and women as the outlier, even in cases where we know there are statistically significant differences between them. Criado Perez delves into a wide
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range of fields from social service provision, to the design of software, cars, and tools, to medical science, to politics where data is not being explored at a gender level, even when the limited data that exists indicates that women's experiences/needs are significantly different. Both informative and infuriating (particularly the section on medical science), the book is extremely well-cited and offers a plethora of evidence that the data we collect and then acting on that information, has the potential to massively change the lives of women around the globe. Highly recommended for all readers. Show Less
LibraryThing member spbooks
This was an incredibly enlightening book. It was also shocking. I had no idea of the extent that bias occurs in the collection of data, the research using the data, and the application of that data to solving problems and designing innovation in the real world. It's as though, as the title of the
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book suggests, women are completely invisible. I will never look at research data, or the world, in the same way again. This is a must-read for women and men. We need to speak out about this. Fight with women, who are forced to live in a world designed for men and where women must constantly be made to feel out of place. Get this book. Read it. And resist, object, speak up. After reading this book, the world is a different place for me and I hope I never forget the lessons I have learned in reading it. Show Less
LibraryThing member Cecilturtle
At first glance, Criado Perez seems to rely a bit too much on data with percentages and statistics thrown on the page and punctuated with the leitmotiv "gender data gap". However, from this foundation, she builds a compelling story on the numerous ways in which women are disadvantaged in all
This book is an excellent example of the importance of such tools as the Gender Bias Analysis Plus to ensure that voiced of all humans are heard, listened to and actioned on. It is also a great way to continue the conversation on equality and feminism in a rational, deliberate and focused way.
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spheres of life and in all societies. She looks broadly across the world, analyzing studies from every continent and how unexamined biases affect women in real ways: their health, their safety, their ability to ear a living and much more besides. Her style is academic but not dry which makes the book an easy read - before I knew it I'd finished the book (and I'm not a big nonfiction reader).This book is an excellent example of the importance of such tools as the Gender Bias Analysis Plus to ensure that voiced of all humans are heard, listened to and actioned on. It is also a great way to continue the conversation on equality and feminism in a rational, deliberate and focused way.
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LibraryThing member marshapetry
Intuitively we know this, but awesome to see the data. difficult to read because it's so frustrating. But do read! Highly recommend
LibraryThing member forsanolim
This book was, perhaps extremely unsurprisingly, pretty infuriating to read. Criado-Peréz looks at ways in which sexist policies and principles have been integrated into various aspects of government and everyday life, focusing on the ways in which the "data gender gap"--a lack of data about
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women's lives (how they travel, how their bodies respond to medicine) and a lack of women's input in decision-making processes--perpetuates inequality. Criado-Peréz is British and accordingly includes a lot of information about British government workings and policies, in addition to data on a wide range of other countries. I found the comparison of policies in different countries--paternal leave in Sweden and Japan, for instance--especially interesting, and I thought that the numerous discussions of women's unpaid labor were very thought-provoking as well. Show Less
LibraryThing member sparemethecensor
Truly excellent. I borrowed it from the library then liked it so much I bought it. I am certain I will flip back to a few chapters in the future.
LibraryThing member terran
I was so impressed with this book. Not only does the author cite study after study that bears out her hypothesis, but she writes in such a fashion that one can understand and follow the reasoning. The reviews by men that I read indicated that they were impressed by the scholarly aspect of the
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research underpinning the book, and that they accepted that the world is designed by men which means that women are left out in the planning. It is overwhelming and disheartening to read three hundred pages with statistics that point this out over and over. If you are a woman get out and vote. Elect women to local, state and federal positions. Run for the school board, the city council, county board, state legislature, county judge, sheriff, any and all offices you can. Get an education, help your daughters become educated and teach your sons to look beyond their own comfort and needs to take into account what their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters need to work, live well, and stay healthy and safe in the world we all inhabit. Show Less
LibraryThing member The_Hibernator
Invisible Women is about how women are missing from data collected and used to, say, create crash test dummies for cars, plan bus routes, design cell phones, etc. She points out that disparity in collecting data about women leads to dangerous situations for women. For instance, women are more
The thoughts in this book were well-expressed, and interesting. I did feel at times that she was over-stating her case, but that is often true of books with a strong bias (in this case feminism). Not that I’m saying feminism is a bad bias, only that it IS a direction that can be leaned too heavily upon at times (like every other social issue). Overall, a highly suggested book for those interested in feminism.
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likely to die in a car accident because seat-belts are designed to safely hold a man in place, and does not account for the difference in body composition and fat / lean mass location. The bus routes are planned around where men go to work, and not so much around shopping trips, which are more often performed by women. This creates very inconvenient travel for women.The thoughts in this book were well-expressed, and interesting. I did feel at times that she was over-stating her case, but that is often true of books with a strong bias (in this case feminism). Not that I’m saying feminism is a bad bias, only that it IS a direction that can be leaned too heavily upon at times (like every other social issue). Overall, a highly suggested book for those interested in feminism.
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LibraryThing member larryerick
I'm a man, so any person of the womanly persuasion is entirely welcome to question, even criticize what I'm about to write about this book. And yet, I have to say, seriously, women are and have been getting the short end of the stick. (You are welcome to substitute a more intensely graphic
Frankly, I don't think the author always presents her material quite as succinctly or directly as I have sometimes seen from other writers -- Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow is the gold standard in my eyes -- but she really heaps it on, relentlessly, comprehensively. There is plenty here that any woman will find obvious from their own life experiences, at least if they think about it very long. But, I also think there are multiple examples of data bias impacting women negatively that will surprise even some women. The many issues the author brings up on healthcare, for instance, will make some women readers wonder if their overall healthcare has been perhaps more comparable to being treated by a veterinarian than to the care their male counterparts receive. The sections on that are worth the price of admission all by themselves, in my eyes. Even my wife, the now retired healthcare provider was unaware of many discrepancies the author unearths.
I guess the bad news is that I, a guy, eventually fell into a certain level of depression and anger at the inequity. I can only imagine how a woman would feel by the time she's done reading it. But forewarned is forearmed. Or so they say, right? Then again, that might have come from just asking men, so maybe not.
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phrase.)Frankly, I don't think the author always presents her material quite as succinctly or directly as I have sometimes seen from other writers -- Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow is the gold standard in my eyes -- but she really heaps it on, relentlessly, comprehensively. There is plenty here that any woman will find obvious from their own life experiences, at least if they think about it very long. But, I also think there are multiple examples of data bias impacting women negatively that will surprise even some women. The many issues the author brings up on healthcare, for instance, will make some women readers wonder if their overall healthcare has been perhaps more comparable to being treated by a veterinarian than to the care their male counterparts receive. The sections on that are worth the price of admission all by themselves, in my eyes. Even my wife, the now retired healthcare provider was unaware of many discrepancies the author unearths.
I guess the bad news is that I, a guy, eventually fell into a certain level of depression and anger at the inequity. I can only imagine how a woman would feel by the time she's done reading it. But forewarned is forearmed. Or so they say, right? Then again, that might have come from just asking men, so maybe not.
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LibraryThing member arosoff
People make decisions based on data. We assume that the data we have is reliable, or that professionals making decisions have adequate data on which to base their decisions.
What if it isn't, and they don't?
This book looks at the concept of the "default male" and how this plays out in the data we
There are a couple of minor flaws. For example, sometimes, presenting things as the needs of men vs. those of women can obscure other angles. One example was a housing project in Vienna that eliminated parking spaces in favor of community rooms, because women are less likely to drive. However, making access more difficult for private cars, especially without a total rethink of the surrounding transport system and city layout, can also cause problems for the disabled, and indeed for women in general.
There is so much ground to cover that out of necessity, Criado Perez has to be somewhat selective. For example, the chapter on medicine can only hit a few examples. Maya Dusenbery's Doing Harm was an entire book on the topic, and she still had to leave out routine gynecology and obstetrics. This also means that the feel of the book (though well written and witty) is a constant slam of citations, without the space for in depth analysis. There's enough, but the problems are so pervasive that each could get more space.
The author is British, but the examples are international. Some countries are worse on particular measures (the US on maternity leave; the UK on inclusion of women in clinical trials) but the trend is pervasive and not limited to any one country.
I finished the book feeling enraged, but glad I had read it.
What if it isn't, and they don't?
This book looks at the concept of the "default male" and how this plays out in the data we
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use to make decisions across a wide range of domains. In short: Many of these data sets omit women, and that has huge ramifications. From public transport that doesn't account for differing travel patterns, to not accounting for or even tracking time spent on unpaid care (a theme that keeps arising in other contexts), to using only male models in safety and medicine, data is often just not there. We dont' know how safe cars are for women, what optimal care is for women having heart attacks or with diabetes. When we do have some knowledge--for example, that women take longer in the toilet for various reasons--we don't utilize that knowledge. There are a couple of minor flaws. For example, sometimes, presenting things as the needs of men vs. those of women can obscure other angles. One example was a housing project in Vienna that eliminated parking spaces in favor of community rooms, because women are less likely to drive. However, making access more difficult for private cars, especially without a total rethink of the surrounding transport system and city layout, can also cause problems for the disabled, and indeed for women in general.
There is so much ground to cover that out of necessity, Criado Perez has to be somewhat selective. For example, the chapter on medicine can only hit a few examples. Maya Dusenbery's Doing Harm was an entire book on the topic, and she still had to leave out routine gynecology and obstetrics. This also means that the feel of the book (though well written and witty) is a constant slam of citations, without the space for in depth analysis. There's enough, but the problems are so pervasive that each could get more space.
The author is British, but the examples are international. Some countries are worse on particular measures (the US on maternity leave; the UK on inclusion of women in clinical trials) but the trend is pervasive and not limited to any one country.
I finished the book feeling enraged, but glad I had read it.
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LibraryThing member paulusm
Powerful and well-researched, highlighting the risk and damage of male defaults across design, policy and healthcare and more. Perez does a good job of pointing out where more disaggregated data collection and research is needed.
LibraryThing member LisCarey
We live in a world driven by data, an ocean of data that in theory should enable us to make much better decisions. Yet, to a truly frightening degree, that data leaves out half the human race--the female half.
One way is, of course, in medical studies. For a long time, women weren't included at all.
Of course, they do. One of the better-known examples, now, is that women don't show the same symptoms as men when having a heart attack. Because of this, women tend to get diagnosed later, and are less likely to survive. But there are a wide range of problems resulting from the lack of female data in medical studies. Women have different proportions of fat in their bodies than men, and different proportions of the different types of muscle than men. This causes many drugs to be processed differently, and this can make those drugs less effective in women, or make different dosages than arrived at by taking data based on men and adjusting it only for weight.
But's not just medical data that's missing, and that matters. Virtual reality designs are based on men, and aren't always as effective for women. Okay, that's just games. What about homeless shelters, or disaster relief shelters, or refugee shelters? We want them to be safe, but "safe" for men isn't the same as "safe" for women. Yet typically all these shelters are designed with the assumption of "gender neutral" design is genuinely gender neutral, when in fact it simply leaves out women's safety issues.
Most unpaid work, caring for children, other family members, elderly parents, is done by women. Women to the cooking and cleaning, most of it anyway, and the amounts done by men and women hasn't changed as much as we like in the last forty years. That work is of great economic value, and society depends on it, but because it's unpaid, it's simply not counted, and it's not accounted for in making tax, pension, and other legal and economic decisions that affect women's ability to do both their caring work and their paid work--often forcing women to cut back on or drop out of paid work. Some of those decisions are the ones working women or formerly working women deal with on a daily basis in middle class lives in developed countries. Others are truly startling, like building public housing that takes no account of extended families and informal local networks that provide backup and support for women trying to both care for their families, and earn money to provide for them.
Criado-Perez recounts the impact of the lack of data, or even more infuriatingly, the impact of not using data that has been collected, in a lively, interesting, accessible, and compelling way. I personally think the most startling error caused by not talking to women, or as far as I can tell, thinking, is the rebuilding of housing following a natural disaster in Sri Lanka--without kitchens. How do you not realize that houses need kitchens? Even not bothering to talk to the women, but only the men, hardly seems like an adequate reason for doing that, but it apparently also happened elsewhere, for the same reason.
I'm not conveying at all, I think, just how engrossing this book is, how well-organized, and how informative and enlightening. Highly recommended!
I bought this audiobook at Libro.fm.
One way is, of course, in medical studies. For a long time, women weren't included at all.
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Only men were included in medical studies, and it was just assumed that of course the same data, at least when adjusted for weight and height, will apply to women. Yet the reason women aren't included in studies is because women's bodies are different, and in some ways more complicated. It's bizarre that no consideration is normally given to whether this might mean that drugs and treatments might affect women differently.Of course, they do. One of the better-known examples, now, is that women don't show the same symptoms as men when having a heart attack. Because of this, women tend to get diagnosed later, and are less likely to survive. But there are a wide range of problems resulting from the lack of female data in medical studies. Women have different proportions of fat in their bodies than men, and different proportions of the different types of muscle than men. This causes many drugs to be processed differently, and this can make those drugs less effective in women, or make different dosages than arrived at by taking data based on men and adjusting it only for weight.
But's not just medical data that's missing, and that matters. Virtual reality designs are based on men, and aren't always as effective for women. Okay, that's just games. What about homeless shelters, or disaster relief shelters, or refugee shelters? We want them to be safe, but "safe" for men isn't the same as "safe" for women. Yet typically all these shelters are designed with the assumption of "gender neutral" design is genuinely gender neutral, when in fact it simply leaves out women's safety issues.
Most unpaid work, caring for children, other family members, elderly parents, is done by women. Women to the cooking and cleaning, most of it anyway, and the amounts done by men and women hasn't changed as much as we like in the last forty years. That work is of great economic value, and society depends on it, but because it's unpaid, it's simply not counted, and it's not accounted for in making tax, pension, and other legal and economic decisions that affect women's ability to do both their caring work and their paid work--often forcing women to cut back on or drop out of paid work. Some of those decisions are the ones working women or formerly working women deal with on a daily basis in middle class lives in developed countries. Others are truly startling, like building public housing that takes no account of extended families and informal local networks that provide backup and support for women trying to both care for their families, and earn money to provide for them.
Criado-Perez recounts the impact of the lack of data, or even more infuriatingly, the impact of not using data that has been collected, in a lively, interesting, accessible, and compelling way. I personally think the most startling error caused by not talking to women, or as far as I can tell, thinking, is the rebuilding of housing following a natural disaster in Sri Lanka--without kitchens. How do you not realize that houses need kitchens? Even not bothering to talk to the women, but only the men, hardly seems like an adequate reason for doing that, but it apparently also happened elsewhere, for the same reason.
I'm not conveying at all, I think, just how engrossing this book is, how well-organized, and how informative and enlightening. Highly recommended!
I bought this audiobook at Libro.fm.
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LibraryThing member jonerthon
... and sometimes I do read the hot new non-fiction as soon as my library gets it. This was a sobering look at how the default human is male in most of what we still do today, and how that is literally deadly for women, including in pharmaceutical doses, military and police uniforms, car crashes,
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and more. Even the cover supports the claim in a very creative visual. It would, though, have been nice to get a little more about what solutions to public infrastructure this awareness could lead us to, as she did in other areas. Show Less
LibraryThing member TiffanyAK
I would consider this to be a good intro to the topic of data bias based on sex. The author does a reasonably solid amount of research in presenting at least a decent number of solid examples and anecdotes of how these flaws can work and impact people in the real world or lead to misunderstandings
The examples chosen are generally quite relevant and relatable, the text is extremely approachable even for the most casual of readers, and the time spent reading or listening to the text feels abundantly worthwhile. Overall, I would say this is a work well done and which accomplishes all that it sets out to do.
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of data or situations. Now, not all of her interpretations about findings are necessarily totally correct, and she certainly does NOT go the extra mile in attempting to produce solutions or claiming to have any real answers on what can be done - indeed, this is a reasonably short audiobook on such a big subject for a reason - but, then again, this book makes no such claims. It is meant to introduce a reader to a very important subject. Going beyond that introductory level of grasping the basic concepts and why they matter is entirely up to them.The examples chosen are generally quite relevant and relatable, the text is extremely approachable even for the most casual of readers, and the time spent reading or listening to the text feels abundantly worthwhile. Overall, I would say this is a work well done and which accomplishes all that it sets out to do.
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LibraryThing member Devil_llama
A look at the state of information on how women's needs differ from those of men. The author outlines what she calls the gender data gap - the lack of comprehensive information on women and their lives, their bodies, and their economics. This data gap is the result of centuries - make that
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millennia - of treating male humans as the default, and basing all the research on male subjects. She lays out a good case for why this is a bad idea, not just for women, but for everyone. She also demonstrates that at least part of this appears to be less oblivious than intentional, and that the challenges women face continue even as many people believe we have closed the gap between opportunities for men and for women. Highly recommended, especially for those who wouldn't dream of reading a book like this. Show Less
LibraryThing member verenka
I didn't finish the book, not because I didn't like it, but because it made me so furious, that I couldn't go on.
Awards
LA Times Book Prize (Finalist — Science & Technology — 2019)
Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize (Shortlist — 2019)
Orwell Prize (Longlist — Non-fiction — 2020)
Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction (Longlist — Nonfiction — 2020)
Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year (Shortlist — 2019)
The British Book Industry Awards (Shortlist — 2020)
Books Are My Bag Readers Award (Winner — Readers' Choice — 2019)
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Nonfiction — 2020)
Parliamentary Book Awards (Shortlist — 2019)
NDR Kultur Sachbuchpreis (Winner — 2020)
Writers' Prize (Longlist — 2020)
Просветитель.Перевод (Longlist — 2021)
Los Angeles Public Library Best of the Year (Non-Fiction — 2019)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — 2019)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2019-03-07
Physical description
432 p.
ISBN
1784741728 / 9781784741723
Local notes
Fascinating review of the impacts of male-centric design.
Male figures on the outside with female figures on the dustjacket underneath.
Male figures on the outside with female figures on the dustjacket underneath.