Invisible Women

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Talk about an eye-opener! So many ways in which we women have to navigate a world that is not designed for us--from uniforms and seatbelts, to counter-heights and air-conditioning settings, from city to designs to housing accommodations. The thing that is most concerning is the medical stuff: prescription drugs tested on males and not females, so we may have different side-effects or it may not work for us at all. Perez keeps coming back to the point that there is not even any data given on women in many instances--we seem to be relegated to being just slightly smaller males. This book has an angry, sarcastic tone which bothered me a little, but I have to say it is warranted. It is appalling that women are so little researched and designed for.

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is it humans who are murderous, or men?

gender-inflected languages, which have strong ideas of masculine and feminine present in almost every utterance, are the most unequal in terms of gender.

because men go without saying, it matters when women literally can’t get said at all.

The fact is that worth is a matter of opinion, and opinion is informed by culture. And if that culture is as male-biased as ours is, it can’t help but be biased against women. By default.

When you have been so used, as a white man, to white and male going without saying, it’s understandable that you might forget that white and male is an identity too.

this perspective is not articulated as white and male (because it doesn’t need to be), because it is the norm, it is presumed not to be subjective. It is presumed to be objective. Universal, even.

‘giving birth is not a gender-neutral event’. 91

Companies also still seem to conflate long hours in the office with job effectiveness, routinely and disproportionately rewarding employees who work long hours. 114