Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
By Kayla Bilderback
About the Author
Caroline Criado-Perez is a British feminist, activist, journalist, and best-selling and award-winning author. Her notable campaigns include getting a female historical figure (Jane Austen) on the Bank of England’s 10-pound banknote, getting Twitter to introduce a ‘report abuse’ button, and getting the first female (Millicent Fawcett) statue erected on Parliament Square. She wrote her first book in 2015 titled, Do It Like A Woman. It aims to change the narrative of what it means to do something like a woman. Telling stories of remarkable women being brave, speaking out, stepping up, fighting back, and changing the world. It focuses on women’s courageous experiences moving through the world and struggling with injustices. Her second book which I will be talking about, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men builds on the way the physical world is built without women in mind. It was published in 2019 and was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller. It has won several awards such as the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize and named book of the decade by the Sunday Times.
The Book
Imagine a world where you are more likely to be misdiagnosed or given the wrong drug by a doctor, where you are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, one where your smartphone doesn’t fit your hands and you spend countless hours doing work that’s not recognized. Welcome to the world of being a woman. Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, addresses the gender data bias that has persisted through history. It covers the wide scope of gender inequalities that exist in our society, the small but significant absences that affect women in their everyday lives.
Intersectionality
I think Criado-Perez does a fairly good job of addressing intersectionality. She focuses on women and gender gaps but includes intersections of nationality, race, class, and ability. My only critic would be that she does leave out sexuality. The examples she uses through the book are how women move through the physical world and the systematic forces that may influence how they do that. For example two instances she may have been able to include sexuality would be including statistics of transwomen in bathrooms or information on sexual violence and abuse against LGBTQ+ individuals. Despite this absence, the book is still able to address the difficulties and needs of women from numerous different backgrounds. To get a feel for what the book is about, I have included two examples of gender bias that is discussed in Invisible Women.
The first chapter of the book, “Can Snow-Clearing be Sexist” examines the way that transportation is designed and the ways that women use public transportation. One of the examples that Criado-Perez uses addresses both nationality and class. It discusses the effects of zoning, the way that land is divided and used in areas, in Brazil. In 2009, Brazil planned to help those living in inadequate housing, specifically in Rio. The complexes that were built were further away from the city and discouraged public housing in order to prevent more ‘ghettos of poverty,’ typically referred to as favelas. This drastically changed how women were living. Women are more likely to public transportation and make multiple stops. The women living in these complexes now had further to travel and was taking them significantly longer to get to where they needed to go. All of these things made getting to work more difficult. The complexes were designed for a traditional nuclear family and did not account for the large intergeneration families that Brazilians typically live in. The favelas relied on a sense of community, children didn’t need childcare because they were always outside and someone watching them. Without that community, mothers were left without childcare. Essentially, the Brazilian government moved women, who were already struggling economically, away from their formal workplaces, provided them inadequate public transportation, and no childcare. These women were then forced to turn their homes into workplaces, but in Brazil is illegal. Criado-Perez explains that women spend more time per day than men on household chores and childcare. But keeping women in mind while making simple changes to housing complexes and public transportation can alleviate some of that stress and give women a little more time in the day.
The next example comes from chapter 11, “Yentl Syndrome.” This chapter is based on ‘Yentl syndrome’ which Criado-Perez says is, “is the phenomenon whereby women are misdiagnosed and poorly treated unless their symptoms or diseases conform to that of men.” This syndrome can be deadly. She talks about how diseases present differently in women than men, the socialization of women and how that may affect diagnoses and testing, and women’s pain not being taken seriously. She also talks about the dangers of being a black woman in the United States. The US has the highest maternity mortality rate of all developed countries, the problem is especially prevalent for black women. Criado-Perez cites the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the fact that pregnant black women have a death rate that matches those in lower-income countries such as Mexico and Uzbekistan. They’re more likely to suffer from childbirth-related issues and complications. She mentions that race is the major determinant and it’s not a matter of social class or economic reasons. She also points out that tennis superstar Serena Williams almost died following an emergency C-section. The health outcomes of black women are significantly worse than other racial groups regardless of education level or income. There is research that could be done to save these women, but it’s not being funded because it’s deemed as not a high enough priority.
No matter what your interests, this book will reshape how you see the world. From transportation and city planning, to how technology is designed, and diagnoses made by doctors, this book shows the consequences of living in a world dominated by male data.
Context With Other Feminist Works
“The situation of woman is that she— a free and autonomous being like all human creatures—nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other”
The book is inspired by Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. de Beauvoir was a French writer and existential philosopher. She is considered a pioneer for modern-day feminism because of her book, The Second Sex. It remains an influential piece of literature for the feminist movement. She is often cited as one of the first to articulate the distinctions between sex and gender. The distinctions being that sex is biological and gender being made of social and historical constructs. In her book, Beauvoir writes about the myths of female inferiority and her objections to the secondary status of women. She discusses the male default that exists and the ‘othering’ of women. Invisible Women addresses this ‘othering’ using research and the experiences of women across the globe, from Sweden to Brazil and everywhere in between. Criado-Perez shows that in our rational world run by super-computers, women today are still the Second Sex and the dangers of living in a world designed for men.
If you need a little more convincing or want to hear about some of the other cool topics in the book from Caroline Criado-Perez herself, check out this video!