Invisible Women: A Book Review
Despite representing roughly half of the human experience, women are often overlooked, discounted, and forgotten in our world. This ongoing mistake is featured in the 2019 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize winner Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (Abrams Press, 2019, 411p.). Author Caroline Criado Perez details the “gender data gap” in which women are omitted from research and statistics and sets out the real world consequences that are created by the often stubborn unwillingness to consider the female perspective. The book addresses the different areas in which this gender data gap affects women and society at large. The list is long concerning the failure of projects due to this data gap. By organizing the book with specific and global examples, such as the gendered issue of reducing pollution from traditional stoves, the author creates a powerful account of how society should not, and truly cannot, proceed with this gendered blindfold if it aims to solve persistent and widespread problems that touch all areas of life.
Criado Perez cites many different ways in which the gender data gap or the outright refusal to look at the scant data that is available, affects women, from their daily lives to their healthcare. The pervasiveness of the gender data gap spans from the trivial, such as virtual reality headset design, to the deadly consequences of clinical drug trials. Underscoring all of the ways in which the gender data gap occurs is the default male perspective that pervades culture and society. Even when using technically gender-neutral language, historical patriarchy has created implicit understanding that certain genders are relegated to certain arenas, or dismissed out of hand entirely. The author succinctly summarizes this overall flaw of assuming that solutions should be gender-neutral, saying it allows “the unspoken, implicit, profoundly non-egalitarian structure [to] reassert[] itself, with white men at the top and the rest of us fighting for a piece of the small space left for everyone else” (p. 283).
The similarities of the issues presented in this book to racial and other types of prejudice and bias are striking, but the role of implicit and other biases is only lightly touched upon. Criado Perez recounts some ways in which women of color are sometimes more affected than others, such as a high maternal mortality rate for African-American women. But she could address this omission and whether it is due to a trickle-down data gap or the data’s existence elsewhere. As such, this book should be used in conjunction with other resources concerning biases, implicit or otherwise, to ensure all segments are represented.
The exclusive focus on gender bias does not detract from Invisible Women and its argument for the need to address societal bias against women and the resulting gender data gap. Acknowledging the work that needs to be done and having awareness that this bias can have cascading effects is important as we progress. Instead of asking women to adapt to the status quo, we should instead involve women in every step of research, design, and implementation because “without a doubt that [women’s] perspective does matter” (p. 285). (HN)
