Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Exceptionally well-written book describing missing and biased data against women
As a woman working in a STEM field, I was already aware of biases, differences in pay, workplace harassment, and more against women in the workplace. I have experienced it myself. But this book brings a much-needed investigation that goes far beyond my anecdotal incidents and really looks at the data (both what exists and what is missing) and the consequences of dismissing half of the world’s population as irrelevant or atypical.This book is arranged with a preface, introduction, six sections, an afterword, an epilogue specific to Covid-19, and almost 100 pages of endnotes and index. Although the book (sans endnotes and index) is 326 pages long, it is very readable and so brilliantly written that it’s funny, and sad, and insightful, and infuriating, and more all at once. The author brings to light numerous issues that at first glance didn’t really seem to be gender/sex-related at all but after looking at them, they actually are. I think this book would be so helpful for people in many fields, especially in leadership in corporations, government, churches, the medical community, small businesses, and more.Introduction: The Default MaleThe introduction sets up the whole book to show how nearly universally, a default male (body, size, height, weight, shape, behavior, lifestyle, etc.) is used as the default for data, decisions, planning, policies, history, teaching, models, examples, etc. and how this excludes fully 50% of the world’s population’s experiences, bodies, behaviors, needs, and values.Part 1: Daily LifeIn the first chapter, “Can Snow-Clearing be Sexist?”, the author reveals how many activities, like plowing the snow from roads, have been set up based on male norms without consideration of how females have different norms. In the case of clearing the roads and sidewalks for travel and commuting, when women’s needs and patterns were considered, it was found that clearing side roads and sidewalks prior to major roads reduced injuries and accidents and the overall cost of snow conditions compared with the plan which only considered men’s needs and patterns. Chapter two, “Gender Neutral with Urinals”, looks and bathroom usage and compares the usable square footage and time to use restrooms of men’s bathrooms, which can accommodate more men, with the needs of women who cannot use urinals, often have children or elderly to help, and have physical needs which just take longer than men. As such, equal size bathrooms are simply not equitable. And many worldwide women don’t have access to safe facilities at all.Part 2: The WorkplacePart 2 has 4 chapters. “The Long Friday” refers to a day when 90% of women in Iceland decided to strike so that their contributions, many unpaid, would be recognized. Statistically, women do far more unpaid work like childcare, elder care, shopping, cooking, and cleaning compared with men. These tasks cannot be skipped; they are essential but unpaid. “The Myth of Meritocracy” shows how advancement in the workplace based on merit favors men who don’t have essential unpaid work to do at home and can invest more at work. Furthermore, men’s accomplishments are recognized and rewarded more often even when they are not more merit-worthy than women. “The Henry Higgens Effect” refers to a character in My Fair Lady who wonders why women can’t be more like men, as if the solution is to force women to act like men rather than recognize that half of the population is not male and behaving like a woman is quite appropriate for women. The final chapter in this section is “Being Worth Less than a Shoe” and discusses workplace safety standards and equipment that were developed for men without consideration for the women and their size and physiological differences. “Women have always worked. They have worked unpaid, underpaid, underappreciated, and invisibly, but they have always worked. But the modern workplace does not work for women. From its location, to its hours, to its regulatory standards, it has been designed around the lives of men and it is no longer fit for purpose. The world of work needs a wholesale redesign – if its regulations, of its equipment, of its culture – and this redesign must be led by data on female bodies and female lives. We have to start recognizing that the work women do is not an added extra, a bonus that we could do without: women’s work, paid and unpaid, is the backbone of our society and our economy. It’s about time we started valuing it.” p142.Part 3: DesignIn the section on Design, there are three chapters. “The Plough Hypothesis” looks at cultures where farm equipment, designed for men, allowed men who have significantly more upper body strength and hand grip to become the primary income-generating farmers but in cultures that used hoes, both men and women farmed. Farming practices that favor men aren’t limited to equipment but also impact crop types. Some high-yield varieties increase the time the women had to spend on cooking and preparing the crops and “clean” stoves designed to reduce harmful smoke emissions often increase the effort and time for women to cook and tend to the food. “One-Size-Fits-Men” discusses the issues with equipment, gear, and algorithms designed for an average-sized man and how these ill-fitting products do not properly protect, and sometimes even increase risk because they do not fit properly on women simply because women don’t have the same size, shape, and expression, as an average man. “A Sea of Dudes” shares the difficulties women have getting funding for research and products for women when often men are unaware of the needs of women and don’t value funding products that they themselves don’t need. “Designers may believe they are making products for everyone, but in reality they are mainly making them for men. It’s time to start designing women in.” p191.Part 4: Going to the Doctor“When Drugs Don’t Work” looks at the practice of testing drugs and dosages on men without considering how well they work (or don’t work) on women with different hormones and physiology. My mom is only about 85 pounds and I often wonder if the standard male adult dosage is appropriate for her tiny body. “Yentl Syndrome” starts by comparing typical heart attack symptoms in men versus women. Because symptoms in women differ from men, they are often misdiagnosed, sometimes fatally. Male-dominated funding panels impact how research funding is distributed and diseases that impact primarily women are less likely to be funded and studied. Women typically wait longer, take longer to diagnose, are misdiagnosed more often, and are not taken seriously by the medical community.Part 5: Public Life“A Costless Resource to Exploit” delves into the deliberate decision to exclude unpaid women’s work (childcare, elder care, cooking, cleaning, household activities, etc.) in the GDP. “It makes sense only if you see women as an added extra, a complicating factor. It doesn’t make sense if you’re talking about half of the human race. It doesn’t make sense if you care about accurate data.” p241. “From Purse to Wallet” looks at tax codes and how they favor men compared with women, particularly in that joint households receive tax credits to the head of the household, typically the man, and women may not have equal access to this money. “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” continues looking at how male-biased policies and gaps in government thinking are harming women. “The data we already have makes it abundantly clear that female politicians are not operating on a level playing field. The system is skewed towards electing men, which means that the system is skewed towards perpetuating the gender data gap in global leadership, with all the attendant negative repercussions for half the world’s population.” p286.Part 6: When it Goes Wrong“Who will rebuild” shows that “when things go wrong – war, natural disaster, pandemic – all the usual data gaps we have seen everywhere from urban planning to medical care are magnified and multiplied. But it’s more insidious than the usual problem of simply forgetting to include women. Because if we are reticent to include women’s perspectives and address women’s needs when things are doing well, there’s something about the context of disaster, of chaos, of social breakdown, that makes old prejudices seem more justified. The real reason we exclude women is because we see the rights of 50% of the population as a minority interest.” p290. “It’s Not the Disaster that Kills You” continues by pointing out that during disasters, it is women who are disproportionally negatively impacted. Women face increased domestic violence, trauma, displacement, injury, death, and female-specific injustices during warfare, pandemics, and natural disasters.The afterword offers some hope when women’s voices are included. Women bring valuable insight into the experiences of half the population and their experiences are good for business, economy, and humanity. The epilogue was added to specifically address the Covid-19 pandemic and, unsurprisingly, the “continual failure to systemically collect and sex-disaggregated data on symptoms, infection rates, and death rates from Covid-19.” p319. And of course, PPE that fit women (like masks) were disproportionally unavailable for the many women in healthcare settings who needed them.I found this book very well written, meticulously footnoted, and very eye-opening even though I was aware of some of the issues already. I would highly recommend the book to all leaders and all women. Although the author touched on women’s clothing and fashion, I wish she had chewed on it a little more, especially considering how men are able to purchase pants by style, waist size, and inseam whereas rarely are women offered the ability to buy based on measurements and most pants have only one inseam length as if all women are the same shape and height. Women, their bodies, and their needs matter in all areas of life and we should be considered.

Good book about data and unconscious biases.
Published in 2019, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez tells the story of how women have been underrepresented, or outright missing, from studies and data as far back as data collecting goes. The author’s premise is that all of humanity suffers from an inherent yet unintentional bias against women due to this lack of data.There were some eye-opening parts to this book. The data and studies are well documented throughout, which helps to prove the author’s hypotheses and points. Using that data, Perez shares detailed explanations of why the lack of data on women affects decision-making for current and future generations on both micro and macro levels. I also enjoyed that many industries (transportation, technology, healthcare) and countries (Bangladesh, Brazil, UK, Sweden) were noted.While there were many great elements of the book, naturally, there are things I didn’t love. The author got perhaps too biased and let her personal opinions color the data at some points. As a woman who is not a mother, I also felt that Perez did not do a great job of separating “woman” from “mother.” I’m sure there’s a reason for that, and for the most part, I’d guess that, around the world, most women are mothers. However, it did leave me asking questions about the data surrounding domestic work when women are not mothers. Finally, about halfway through the book, Perez began asking many “what-if” and “what-about” questions where the only solution was “collect more data on women.” While the answer is a resounding, “yes, we need more data on women, and we need sex-disaggregated data,” how do we get that? What changes are we making in academia, in the field, and globally to collect new or improved data?I was left without an answer to that question.Perhaps the point of this book was to shed light on the lack of data on women. However, this book felt a bit like hot-potato: yes, it’s a problem, but no one, including the author, is offering tactical solutions to remedy it.Invisible Women is a must-read, but there’s still bias built-in.

Things We Should Be Teaching
As a teacher, I felt so strongly as I read this that this is something we are missing in the education system. I’m so glad to have this compilation of data in such a digestible format. The author wrote in a way that made you crave more information, it was never boring.

Over 40% of the number of pages are references, that’s to show the amount of research was put in this book. It’s worth it and you’ll soon be talking about it with everyone around you, because the topic is just too present in our day to day. We just choose to ignore it. This book brings it to conscious.

It’s not hyperbole to say that data bias is affecting every area of women’s lives; from medical research and technology to government policy and their workplaces. The world is built with men as the standard and women an afterthought at best, often with disastrous consequences.Wow. This was such an eye opening read. There were some parts that I knew, the fact that women are 47% more likely to be injured in a car accident due to crash test dummies being built based on male bodies was one, but many more that I wasn’t aware of. The lack of female participants in medical trials probably shouldn’t have surprised me but did. Even drugs specifically intended for women aren’t generally tested on women.Criado Perez’s writing is incredible. She’s done so much research and gathered together an overwhelming amount of evidence as well as calling for solutions.This book is not a stick with which to beat men, Criado Perez explains the circumstances in how this data gap came to be and pushes for people to do better. She points out the failings in data not being disaggregated by sex.Ironically, some of the problems come from the idea that feminism is calling for equality between the sexes, when what is really needed is equity. Instead of pretending the differences don’t exist and attempting to treat everyone the same, we need to acknowledge where there are differences and give people what they need to close the gap.This is something I’ve thought a lot about in my life as a martial artist. The doboks we wear are clearly designed with one shape in mind, an athletically built male. I’m sure it could be argued that equality was in mind in ensuring we all wear the same but that isn’t the way human bodies work and women’s bodies, specifically, need a different style.More than anything, this book served as reminder of how far we’ve come but also how far we still have to go.

I read this book not long after it was published and was struck by the thorough and wide-ranging evidence base it constructs.The simple fact is that there are physiological differences between females and males, and these size and other differences are often not taken into account in product design or public policy development. From crash test dummies designed around the average white male’s height and weight to the countless powertools designed for the grip size of a large male hand, women (specifically: females) are systematically left out of the picture.This is a separate issue to the gender stereotyping we increasingly see in products, whereby it’s hard to buy clothes for girls that aren’t pink, sparkly and covered in unicorns, and toys get separated into “girls’ toys” and “boys’ toys”. (There’s no such thing – there’s just toys.)This book is a must-read and bears re-reading.