Invisible Women: exposing data bias in a man’s world
Imagine a world where your smartphone is too big for your hand, where in a car accident you are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, where the hours of work you do every week are not recognised or valued. If any of this sounds familiar, chances are that you’re a woman.
Data is fundamental nowadays: 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 Invisible Women, award-winning campaigner and writer Caroline Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality, diving into women’s lives at home, at the workplace, at the doctor’s office, and more. And she shows us how, in a world largely built for and by men, half the population is being systematically ignored.
With eye-opening examples, Criado Perez 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.
In this book you will find numerous case studies and research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are excluded from the very building blocks of the world we live in, and the impact this has on their health and wellbeing. From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media – Invisible Women reveals the biased data that excludes women.
For example, we learn that most offices are five degrees too cold for women, because the formula to determine their temperature was developed in the 1960s based on the metabolic resting rate of a 40-year-old, 70kg man. Or that cars are designed around the body of “Reference Man”, so although men are more likely to crash, women involved in collisions are nearly 50% more likely to be seriously hurt.
This is a groundbreaking exposé that any researcher, leader or policymaker who is serious about addressing the challenges faced by women today must read.
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