Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men : Caroline Criado Perez by Caroline Criado Perez

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men : Caroline Criado Perez Reviews

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  Dani

  I never bought a book of this type in my life. I am a feminist but I never thought I would enjoy reading a feminist book. However, this book is so so so so much . The book is based on scientific research! It is fact based reporting of the current status quo. Invisible
• 
  Remko

  Dit is een echte verrijking van je kennis. Het is soms ook wel weer heel pijnlijk of schandelijk dat de werkelijkheid zo is maar ik heb heel veel mensen gesproken die door de voorbeelden zijn verrast. Het zou heel goed zijn om designers en architecten dit kado te doen.
• 
  Stuart Barry

  I bought this book intending it to be a gift for a family member. We have a shared interest in statistics and this seemed like a good punt. Unfortunately it will not be passed on.Firstly the positives:The author is clearly very passionate about her field and has put together a truly awe inspiring set of statistics that completely support the stance that women are biased against in society. This clearly needs to change, and there are some very good examples of where this could be done easily and effectively. It has been an eye opener to me to consider some of the examples brought up, crash test dummies, drug testing and outdated sexist guidance in a number of areas.The negatives:There is a consistent pattern of stating a set of statistics, and then expressing an opinion that this is an example of gender bias which could be fixed with gender disaggregated data. On a first read the conclusions, which seem consistently that men make decisions and that those decisions are implicitly designed to make women worse off off, are not entirely supportable by the statistics gathered.As an example, snow sweeping which is carried out by clearing the main roads first and then minor roads. The statement made is that this is biased against women as this benefits those commuting by car (men) and harms (physically) those who travel on minor roads as pedestrian (women). The conclusion that data should have been gathered which included women to prevent this bad decision.Firstly, it could be plausible that the decision makers being commuters by car themselves might have made a decision based upon their experience. This is in and off itself is decoupled from gender. One could imagine a mixed panel of working men and working women making the same poor decision with equal gender representation.Secondly, the bias that exists seems to be that men benefit from the status quo than women due to the nature of the jobs they do (paid work, full time, greater male proportion). The imbalance here is not how streets are cleared but who the jobs are carried out by so addressing gender bias via the job market would be a better path to removing the gender bias without addressing the poor decision making of how to clear snow.Thirdly, if one were to gather gender dis aggregated data this might incentivise equal gender participation. However, this does not guarantee that the set of people involved were from different selection groups and might still exclude those "people" that do not commute via main roads. I am sure plenty of women also benefited from the 'main road first' approach so one could imagine a poll of opinions which covers 50/50 by gender but excludes non commuters.All of the above are independent on what the best way to clear snow is and what we even mean by "best" in this context (cheapest for execution, reducing road accidents, reducing hospital attendance).I've already fixated on this one example too much, there are others but if you have read this far I risk boring you too much. The issues raised in the book could probably accurately be expressed as a journey into poor decision making by excluding groups given selection bias. The biases are not specifically gender and do not generally indicate a bias against women (there are other biases and poor decision making at play that predominantly harm women as a side effect) although there are also examples of terrible bias that deserve to be considered crash test dummies for everyone please!!I think the author sets off with an axe to grind, and spends the book grinding it. If you are feminist or pro equality with a view that the world is biased there will be a lot to enjoy here. If you attack it objectively there are still some gems with regards to systemic bias but there are plenty of opinions that do not bear up to analysis.Overall a good book (I think), just lacking a level of objective scientific rigor that would have made it's message convincing.
• 
  Aislinn O'Connell

  First things first: the designer of this book was clearly on a roll. The font is clear and delightful. The italics, in particular, are so beautiful I had to take a picture of them and send it to my friend so he could appreciate them too. The cover design is subtle and fantastic. When you take the dustjacket off, the overlaid blue male figures disappear, leaving the invisible women behind, which ties in wonderfully with the book’s overarching message. The texture of the dustjacket and hardcover is delightful, with a velvety smooth overlay that is really pleasing to the touch.The book is heavily referenced throughout with endnotes. These are collected directly after the acknowledgements, a full 69 pages of references. The impact of this collected body of commentary serves to underline the density of information and dedication of the research which went into this book. While I’m not a fan of endnotes, personally, the stylistic choice to collect them all together gives undeniable weight to the book, and makes it difficult to dismiss its conclusions.But that’s enough about the physical construction of this book (for which Chatto and Windus deserves great praise). What about the content itself?Well, I read this book with a combination of mounting horror, frustration, and rage. Criado Perez takes the reader by the hand and gently leads them along a journey of discrimination against women which is endemic in all areas of life. Split into six thematic sections (Daily Life, The Workplace, Design, Going to the Doctor, Public Life, and When it Goes Wrong), this book catalogues a pantheon of circumstances where what is female is considered as abnormal, as less than standard, as Other. Collected together, the ignorance of design to the differing needs of 50% of the population is both fascinating and incredibly infuriating.Criado Perez doesn’t use this book as a stick with which to beat the patriarchy, however. Rather, she delicately unpicks the circumstances which lead to a lack of consideration of the needs of those other than what is considered to be the default. Her examples are wide ranging, touching on every area of life, and consistently return the same conclusion: women just haven’t been thought about. It’s not that their needs have been considered and dismissed. It’s that the fact that they might have different needs hasn’t even occurred to the people creating these structures.(Generally. There are some notable exceptions. One quote from Tim Schalk really burned my cookies. But it’s not actually the norm.)From Sheryl Sandberg’s explanation at Google that heavily pregnant women can’t walk long distances to Apple Health’s omission of allowing tracking of a menstrual cycle, for many examples in this book, the reason for these omissions is that people didn’t even think of them as a potential need. Cars are crash tested rigorously before making it to market – but the dummies used are 1.7m tall. This is the size of the average man, not the size of the average person, and it leads to shocking statistics like the fact that women – despite being less likely to crash – if they are involved in a crash, are 47% likely to be seriously injured. Criado Perez points out myriad ways that this unthinking acceptance of male as default – and as applicable to all – unfairly impacts on women, and leads to their being unconsidered in further development.The book has one overarching message, which calls clearly from every page. Do something about this. Don’t accept data as applicable to all. Sex disaggregate data, and investigate how men and women are differently impacted. In an era which relies on big data than ever, the gender data gap needs to be acknowledged, counteracted, and filled. And it needs to be done with a specific focus on counteracting the detriment which the gender data gap had caused. Otherwise we end up with situations where a policy designed to create family friendly situations actually end up disadvantaging those it intended to help.Criado Perez is not myopic in her discussions either – she skillfully acknowledges the intersections of race, gender identity, disability, and other minority identities can have to create a cumulatively detrimental effect. Invisible Women is a primer on how not to design, a feminist manifesto, a fantastic example of hard research with incredible readability, and a thoroughly engaging experience. It has filled me with rage and frustration – my friends and family have borne the brunt of several rants already – and I’ll be passing it on and recommending it to pretty much everyone I know.
• 
  Dorson

  This book is amazing at opening the door on invisible bias, unfortunately I am not a fan of the writing style.The author makes fantastic points backs it up with great facts but then in an attempt to cement her point she will suddenly and needlessly jump to unrelated examples of sexism e.g. she makes fantastic eye opening points on why women's toilets should be bigger than men's but then jumps from discussing women's needs and toilet requirements in the West to toilet issues faced by women in India (this just belittles her first point).She also uses the term 'White Men' a lot, I really cannot stand generalisations but stuck with it. The author seems blame all the issues faced by women on men but reading this book makes you think a lot of these issues are a product of their time and are now a systematic societal issue which is as much women's fault as men's; for example 76% of teachers are women and women by far make up the majority of childcare, so why/how are children still being raised with a male gender bias? We have everything we need to change it so why hasn't it been changed? the reason is because the women themselves (and men) don't know issues exist, both genders need educating on these issues.Everyone should read this book as it provides great insight into bias we cannot see but live with but I think blaming one gender for the issues faced by another will create division and stall progression.
• 
  Kindle Customer

  Firstly, this is a great read. The reader is taken on a tour of an unknown yet familiar world as the author lays out the facts and costs of the gender data gap. You can't get accurate answers if you don't have quality data or if you don't ask the right questions in the first place. This isn't presented as a conspiracy against women but as the result of just not seeing slightly than half the population in the data. The results can range from the inconvenient (not being able to access tall shelves or straps on the Underground) to the fatal (women and men react differently to drugs but mostly only male data is recorded.) The most common reaction to these problems where they are recognised is to try and "fix" women to be like men (suggesting voice coaching for women to use voice recognition software that responds to male voices). This is a valuable and useful book. Please buy one for the engineer in your life.
• 
  Rosie Payne

  The brilliance in this book is that Criado Perez presents multiple examples of a blatant male bias in the aggregate data being used to make decisions that affect women and men and leaves it sitting there for all to see that acceptance of the status quo is untenable, for any progressive and healthy society. There is no man bashing here, thankfully. On the contrary, Caroline states that this gender bias is not malicious, it is and always has been unintentional, but it does disadvantage women in terms of vehicle safety, healthcare, and in myriad other ways. As a parent of three girls and two boys, several of whom are pursuing careers in STEM, this text is incredibly relevant to us. I could waffle on about the ways that this bias exists and that my offspring have encountered ad nauseam, from lab coats and goggles in only male sizes to consultants that think girls only exist to make coffee and look pretty. Enlightening, fascinating and mind blowing data presented in an engaging and entertaining format a very worthy 5 stars!I saw Caroline being interviewed at the Edinburgh book festival recently and was impressed by her candour about the online threats she has received simply by putting her head above the parapet to campaign to have just one woman represented on the new bank notes and also by her reticence in being perceived as a strident feminist. What she has written here is simply a factual representation but it has brought her into the line of fire from all kinds of misogynists and people who would wish to silence the voice of truth and reason. These entrenched biases are not going to be corrected overnight, despite how detrimental some of them are to us as women, but the of us who tentatively stand up and say 'actually, we matter as well' then perhaps the likely we are to finally be heard. Although in the current political climate terrifyingly the reverse might be true.