Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

"This is a bible for understanding ‘women’s place and space’ in the world we live in today. I have included it in this list about being average because it is crucial to understand where we each individually come from and what we are up against. One of the things Criado-Perez does so well in this book is to describe the glass ceiling and the guardrails that society has in place to stop women from breaking out and succeeding. Statistics show that women earn less money than men for doing the same job, and women are tasked with more caring responsibilities and other unpaid work. When I say women, I am talking about everyone who identifies as a woman, including non-binary people. Perez dives into the minutiae of daily life to reveal how the data that informs everything from urban planning to product design is based predominantly on men. Seatbelts are designed to accommodate a six-foot male body. While grocery shopping, most women find that many products are placed out of their reach by design, because supermarkets have been scaled to fit men. Subway systems run directly from the suburbs into the city centre instead of connecting the various residential, recreational, commercial and industrial zones, because they were designed to carry a traditionally male workforce into the business district instead of facilitating childcare, household errands, and other responsibilities that tend to fall under women’s jurisdiction. While these may sound like random facts that are not connected, they corroborate a picture of how our world has been constructed with men in mind. It’s no wonder that at times we feel unable to achieve our full potential. Women are made to feel that way by a society in which everything is stacked against us. Once we understand the source of our frustration, we realize that our discontentment is rational and grounded. We can then reframe and target our anger in a more constructive fashion. When you realize that rally karts were not built for your body, you can understand why you are not the best rally driver. However, that’s not to say you should sit back and accept it. “We don’t have to be an award-winning scientist to experience joy” Understanding where the barriers lie makes it easier to remove them. Let’s say that whenever you are in an airport, you show up late at the departure gate. You’re starting to feel deficient as a person. Then, you realise that every departure board is positioned at an angle that’s difficult for you to see. The floor is slippery, and the company for whom you work requires you to wear heels when you’re traveling, so you’re always stumbling through the departure lounge. Now that you have identified the issues, you can start to address them. You have to understand your nemesis to beat it. The invisibility referenced in the book’s title relates to what Perez describes as gender blindness. It’s one thing to be all-encompassing and equitable. But if we are blind to the issues that impact women, then how can we ever address those issues? An interesting example in tech is the smartphone. Smartphones are designed to fit a man’s hand. I had always wondered why I frequently drop my smartphone, and why my phone doesn’t fit into any of my pockets—if I am lucky enough to have pockets. I realized I can’t text with one hand. In adverts, I always see people doing that and being very proficient. It always made me feel inept. I ultimately realized that my phone was not designed for a woman’s hand. Once you think about it, it seems so obvious. In a society that is designed to make me feel average, I can accept being average. My mantra is: We all are average . If we can admit that to ourselves, it will help us to be more content in life."

"This is by Caroline Criado-Perez who I think definitely would describe herself as an activist. Invisible Women looks at the design of products based on data, and reminds us (or tells us, if we didn’t already realize) that a lot of that data was drawn from testing or analyzing what men do. The classic example is cars being tested for crashes with dummies based on men. By suggesting that the default human is, in fact, a man, women are exposed to injury and even death. She goes through a number of examples, the ways in which design of everything from urban planning to healthcare and drug development has been based on men’s experiences. Gender bias has literally been built into the things that we use with sometimes awful effects. It is a polemical book. It’s a book that is right on message in terms of what I was describing earlier, the scepticism about technology and the way tech companies use data. The list of things she cites suggests we need to put them right, or at least take account of the fact that they may be wrong. The book is full of super quotable examples from across a whole range of sectors. It’s powerful."

"One reason that people have often formed not-particularly-accurate ideas about women’s situation in the world is because, in fact, there hasn’t been much data, and when the data has been collected, it has been collected with bias. And when it’s reported, it’s reported with bias, or the women’s part of the data hasn’t been reported at all. One example that I give in my book is that we have not had a good picture of women’s role in the economy until very recently, because the smallest unit of measurement of economic data collected was the household. So that means that any economic activity that women have generated was subsumed under the wealth of the head of the household—who was usually male. So you couldn’t detangle the women’s contribution at all, right? Many, many women also work unpaid. Not just as mothers, but as farm workers, for example. So as a consequence, people assume women are a trivial influence, and they appear invisible on paper?, but in truth they are a very powerful influence on the world economy. They produce about 40% of global GDP. They produce more than half the world’s food. But people haven’t realised because the data have not been there, or have been reported in such a way—such as by household—that biased the results. Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women book is very accessible. It’s not wonky. Right. And the implications are pretty serious. In the case of medicine, there was one awful situation where a sedative was released to market without testing on women, and nobody figured that out until, like, five women died. And these are fields like medicine, economics, which you really think of as being objective. It’s a sweeping bias, from a research point of view, to exclude half the population. That’s really inexcusable."

"Invisible Women is an exposé of just how much of the world around us is designed around the default male. Deploying a huge range of data and examples, Caroline Criado Perez, who is a writer, broadcaster and award winning campaigner, presents on overwhelming case for change. Every page is full of facts and data that support her fundamental contention that in a world built for and by men, gender data gaps, biases and blind spots are ubiquitous. These gaps in our knowledge and understanding, whether intentioned or not, lead to systematic discrimination against women. “In a world built for and by men, gender data gaps, biases and blind spots are ubiquitous” From daily life to the work place, product design to health science, public policy to emergency response, Perez gives example after example of gender bias: smart phones too big for a female hand, voice recognition software 70% more likely to recognise male voices than female, automotive design that renders women 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a crash, and pain relief drugs that simply don’t work on female physiology. All of this in a digital age where we are collecting and using data to ever-greater scales, but still in so very many cases making the same mistakes and assumptions. She argues that half the population is effectively invisible. Perez reminds us that when products are designed, the facts of the matter that relate to how most women are built and function are either simply ignored, or else the data has not been acquired. In the design of infrastructure from transport to public conveniences, drugs to protective clothing, hi tech to the value of work—all are used to illustrate and make the central thesis of the book—women are rendered invisible by the assumptions and presumptions of our technologically driven societies. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter The book, with all its passion and energy, is not about blame or conspiracy. It is a relentless and compelling appeal to examine the facts, to learn from the data, in key areas to seek much more contextualised data. It is a litany of sins of omission and commission. If we do not confront this asymmetry of design and engineering, of policy and attitudes, we perpetuate continued unfairness, discrimination and we foreclose on the talents and ingenuity of half of our species."