Bridging the Gender Data Gap: A Review of Invisible Women
As a woman, I’ve always had an underlying feeling that the world is working against me, but I’ve never questioned why. After reading Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, I not only found the answers I was looking for but learned of problems I didn’t know existed. There is a gender data gap — a lack of information that represents women — because a majority of our world’s data uses men as the “default”. In the context of this book, data is discussed in broad terms ranging anywhere from historical information to research, and even artificial intelligence. Data is the groundwork for building infrastructure, forming policies, and gaining knowledge because we assume it’s unbiased. However, Caroline Criado Perez argues that data fails to include the perspective of women. She claims that biased data is fundamental to a world that’s designed by and for men, not only putting women at a disadvantage but making them more vulnerable. By arguing that the gender data gap is a cause and consequence of aggregated data, Criado Perez reveals that the exclusion of women is not a coincidence. While the author proves that our modern world is based on a male perspective, she fails to propose concrete solutions to this issue, leaving readers with a bitter taste of reality. The information revealed in Criado Perez’s groundbreaking book urges open-minded leaders to rework the past in order to change the future, as female perspectives have historically been excluded from the conversation.
Invisible Women is a research-driven exposé of the gender data gap and its large-scale consequences. Caroline Criado Perez is an award-winning British feminist author, journalist, and activist. Her logically organized text is a huge accomplishment that works to educate readers about disparities in our modern world. Since winning the Financial Times & McKinsey Book of the Year Award in 2019, Invisible Women has been praised for making a female perspective on complicated research accessible to the average reader. Whether it’s answering why female restroom lines are so long, why female pain is not taken seriously by doctors, explaining why women are more vulnerable to injuries and death, or dismantling issues in politics and the workplace, this book addresses every question a woman might have about the world. By seamlessly piecing together numerous stories and pieces of evidence, Caroline Criado Perez explains how data is designed by and for men, and every person who does not fit that description is impacted by systems built on this data.
The first fundamental aspect of Criado Perez’s argument is that there is a massive gap between data on men and women, which she calls the “gender data gap”. Most of the world’s data is aggregated, especially older information, meaning that men and women are inseparable. The author explains the problem with aggregated data through the lens of the “default male”. Lumping men and women together, while defaulting to a male perspective, makes female perspectives and experiences invisible. Men are assumed to be the default for information and research because maleness has been and remains a societal norm. Even the term mankind puts men at the forefront of every conversation. While Criado Perez lists countless eye-opening examples of the default male — smartphones designed for male hands, male crash dummies, and clinical trials performed only on men — her emphasis on unpaid labor stuck with me the most.
In the final section of Invisible Women, Criado Perez argues that the failure to measure unpaid household services and include unpaid labor in Gross Domestic Product calculations is potentially the greatest gender data gap of all (Criado Perez 241). The founding theorists of GDP excluded unpaid labor because it was too difficult to calculate. GDP, a crucial indicator of the economic standing of countries, does not account for those primarily responsible for unpaid labor, women. Criado Perez further explains that unpaid housework “could account for up to 50% of GDP in high-income countries, and as much as 80% of GDP in low-income countries” (242). By including sex-disaggregated data about the percentage of women and men who perform unpaid labor, Criado Perez is able to identify major flaws in our current economic system. Adding to her argument, GDP makes it difficult to compare developed and developing countries because household production typically shifts to the market (i.e., quantifiable by GDP) as countries industrialize (DeRock). In 2019, the International Labour Organization published sex-disaggregated findings that showed women carry out more than 75 percent of unpaid care work, dedicating 3.2 times more time than men on average (Charmes). These statistics are especially important when analyzing non-industrialized countries, where women spend even more time on unpaid services. In the context of economic prosperity, unpaid labor is important because it accounts for services — like education, healthcare, caretaking, and nutrition — that governments are responsible for. Excluding unpaid labor from GDP not only proves men as the default but warps the most significant economic data that government policies rely on. Many economic researchers expect GDP to lose significance due to flaws similar to unpaid labor exclusion and its consequences, which is an optimistic detail that Criado Perez overlooks.
The second component of the author’s argument is that the world is designed for men. Whether it’s in daily life, the workplace, the doctor’s office, or in public life, the author’s research reveals that women struggle because systems are not designed for them. Criado Perez brings gender data disparities in the medical field to life halfway through the text, and this discussion horrified me the most. In medical training, the human body that’s practiced on and learned about is most commonly a male body. The consequences reveal themselves in failed prescriptions. Criado Perez explains that drugs have been tested on males because researchers believed their hormones were more stable, and therefore easier to test. The National Institutes of Health mandated testing on men and women in human subject research in 1993, but drugs prior to the mandate remained in circulation (Mazure and Jones). With that in mind, modern FDA trials for generic drugs still underrepresent females (Criado Perez 204). To my surprise, women are prescribed FDA-approved drugs that have not thoroughly been tested on their bodies, creating drugs that don’t properly work on women. It was difficult to find sex-disaggregated data in my own research, however, a study on sex differences and drug reactions re-investigated years of aggregated clinical trials. This study found 86 drugs with significant sex differences in which women had higher levels of exposure, resulting in higher rates of adverse side effects in 96% of cases (Zucker and Prendergast). This suggests that women are overprescribed, causing adverse side effects from drugs such as aspirin, morphine, and antidepressants like sertraline.
The default male perspective in the medical industry also produces misdiagnoses. Recent research shows that the medical field lacks information on endometriosis and PCOS, conditions that primarily impact women, leading to prolonged diagnoses and misdiagnoses. Similarly, a study led by John Hopkins University professor found that women were 33% more likely to be misdiagnosed with a stroke (Newman-Toker et al.). Criado Perez shared research which found that women are 50% more likely to die from a heart attack, partly because they do not present the ‘typical’ symptoms of chest and left-arm pain but rather the ‘atypical’ symptoms of stomach pain, breathlessness, nausea, and fatigue (218). The fact that even medical professionals associate women with the word ‘atypical’ disappointed me. All of these examples illustrate that a lack of information and misdiagnoses are disproportionately killing women, attributing high mortality rates to a misunderstanding of the female body. Combining Criado Perez’s claims of sexist data in medicine and my own research, I agree that biased data still negatively influences doctors’ ability to save female lives. The medical field needs to conduct and re-conduct research with sex-disaggregated data, knowing male and female bodies are different and require separate diagnoses and prescriptions.
Criado Perez has a stack of evidence to defend each of her claims, making it very difficult to disagree with her argument. I found myself fact-checking the author after reading the most unappealing examples of the gender data gap’s consequences, and came to the conclusion that Invisible Women is an accurate account of female data. An unfortunate truth that I questioned was the misleading information in historical education, located at the start of the book. When teaching about history, “the exclusion of women from positions of power is often given as an excuse for why…we teach children almost exclusively about the lives of men” (Criado Perez 19). Women have repeatedly been taught that they were excluded from leadership in history, but this is not the truth. There have been many powerful, intelligent, and influential female leaders that don’t make it into textbooks simply because this data is recorded and recounted by men. The author explains that female researchers discovered that sex was determined by chromosomes, the sun is mostly hydrogen gas, and, most famously, Rosalind Franklin discovered DNA. However, textbooks give credit to these researchers’ male counterparts. The exclusion of female leaders in history is a perfect example of how Criado Perez illuminates issues of representation and information that most people are not aware of.
It’s difficult for me to disagree with Criado Perez’s argument because most women I know have experienced some of the consequences that she discusses. I know I’ve felt frustrated with my health, safety, and hardships and reflected inward, rather than questioning the world. It brings me both peace and discomfort knowing the gender data gap is a major contributor to systemic misogyny. As info-storing capacity increases, the gender data gap is becoming a more prominent risk factor for inequality. It’s shocking that half of the world’s population, women, are impacted in their daily lives and have no idea that the gender data gap is at the root of their problems. At the surface level, this book takes a very pessimistic view of the modern world and can evoke hopelessness. After reflecting on Criado Perez’s core argument, I understand that this book’s purpose is to draw attention to the problem and inspire others to create innovative solutions.
My primary criticism of Invisible Women was that the pile of evidence revealing the gender data gap is quite depressing and left readers with few tools for resolution. Chatto & Windus, a book publishing company, has signed Caroline Criado Perez to write a follow-up book. This book will be even more accessible in that it will be shorter and focus on how to fix the gender data gap (Chandler). The new book will take a more optimistic approach, which I think will address the limitations of her currently published argument. Academics tend to agree with Criado Perez in that there is missing data and data that needs to be acquired in order to close the gender data gap. Gender researchers Miriam Temin and Eva Roca emphasize that sex-disaggregated data needs to be expanded on in terms of availability and quality. In their research, they outline more specific suggestions on how to acquire this data, like adding gender-responsive policies and programs “with specific content on gender norms and power” (Temin and Roca). Historical and current gender norms and power dynamics are misunderstood because we refer back to the idea that women have always been excluded from society, but fail to investigate further. The solution that Temin and Roca propose is much more complicated than it seems. In order to add gender-responsive policies and programs, governments must be concerned with the gender data gap. I believe the gap can be closed with time and monetary investments in sex-disaggregated data. For example, the formerly mentioned studies about gender in biomedical research (Mazure and Jones) and sex differences in pharmokinetics (Zucker and Prendergast) provide comprehensive recommendations for the National Institutes of Health and FDA to resolve gender disparities in healthcare. However, bridging the broader gender data gap requires harnessing widespread recognition of it. A majority of the world is not familiar with it yet, but Invisible Women is a great first step in making groundbreaking data research more accessible and digestible for a general audience.
Policymakers, business leaders, spousal partners, and researchers, especially those who are men should take this information about the data gender gap and think critically about what change can be made. I extracted and dissected three of my favorite topics from the book: failed economic models, medical disparities, and female representation in education. I found that these topics are active conversations within their respective fields, as researchers are constantly coming up with innovative and concrete solutions. Criado Perez’s argument is very relevant to current discussions about diversity, equity, and inclusion. This book claims that things start to shift when women can step out of the shadows with their voices and bodies (Criado Perez 25). I agree that women must be in leadership positions where they can design and build new infrastructure. However, I believe it’s the women and men who acknowledge the gap and are willing to act on it that will actually make the change. Men will remain in positions of power and women will acquire new leadership roles, but it’s crucial that leaders of all genders take the female perspective into account. By including hundreds of references, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men reveals the dark truths of data and how it impacts women, demonstrating how now more than ever, the gender data gap must be closed.
Works Cited
Chandler, Mark. “Chatto Signs Invisible Women Follow-up from Caroline Criado Perez.” The Bookseller, 30 Aug. 2020, https://www.thebookseller.com/rights/chatto-signs-caroline-criado-perez-invisible-women-follow-1213803.
Charmes, Jacques. “The Unpaid Care Work and the Labour Market. An Analysis of Time Use Data Based on the Latest World Compilation of Time-Use Surveys.” International Labour Organization, 2019, https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---gender/documents/publication/wcms_732791.pdf.
Criado-Perez, Caroline. INVISIBLE WOMEN: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Abrams Press, 2021.
DeRock, Daniel. “Hidden in Plain Sight: Unpaid Household Services and the Politics of GDP Measurement.” New Political Economy, vol. 26, no. 1, 2021, pp. 20–35, https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2019.1680964.
Mazure, Carolyn M, and Daniel P Jones. “Twenty Years and Still Counting: Including Women as Participants and Studying Sex and Gender in Biomedical Research.” BMC Women’s Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 26 Oct. 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4624369/#:~:text=1993%3AThe%20NIH%20Revitalization%20Act,men%20in%20human%20subject%20research.
Newman-Toker, David E., et al. “Missed Diagnosis of Stroke in the Emergency Department: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of a Large Population-Based Sample.” Diagnosis, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014, pp. 155–166., https://doi.org/10.1515/dx-2013-0038.
Temin, Miriam, and Eva Roca. “Filling the Gender Data Gap.” Studies in Family Planning, vol.47, no. 3, 2016, pp. 264–69, https://doi.org/10.1111/sifp.70.
Zucker, Irving, and Brian J. Prendergast. “Sex Differences in Pharmacokinetics Predict Adverse Drug Reactions in Women.” Biology of Sex Differences, vol. 11, no. 1, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1186/s13293-020-00308-5.
