Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez

 Sub-title: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

This is an important book to read to understand how the rise in the use of data has perpetuated bias toward women resulting in the loss of their potential contribution in a multitude of fields.  The author points out the well-reported lack of diversity in medical studies and goes on to address bias introduced via data to other areas of life as well.  She points out how the lack of consideration of women's needs and perspectives skews the  development of everything from phones to automated decision-making to healthcare.  

She points out in the Afterword that there are 3 themes that define women's relationship with the world:

1) the invisibility of the female body; forgetting to accommodate it in design in all fields

2) the visibility of the female body leading to male sexual violence against women and how it is measured and accounted for in design, resulting in limiting women's liberty.

3) Unpaid care work; pointing out that women are doing far and away more than our fair share of this work.  It naturalizes sex and gender discrimination to assume this is the female role.

Quotes and Notes

p 30 - Women do 75% of the world's unpaid care work and this affects their travel needs.  ..."trip-chaining', a travel pattern of several small interconnected trips that has been observed in women around the world."

p 118 - [regarding absorption of chemicals studies not taking into account] endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs)  harmful even at very low concentrations and they are found in a wide range of plastics, cosmetics and cleaners.

p 157 - There is plenty of data showing that women have, on average, smaller hands than men and yet we continue to design equipment around the average male hand as if one-size-fit-men is the same as one-size-fits-all.

p 167 - [discussion of AI systems] used to screen resumes] Has the algorithm been trained to account for socialized gender differences in tone an facial expression?"

p 175 - [women entrepreneurs in tech world, example of pelvic floor trainer] In a field where women are at a disadvantage specifically because the are women (and therefore can't hope to fit a stereotypically male 'pattern'), data will be particularly crucial for female entrepreneurs.  And yet it's the female entrepreneurs who are less likely to have it, because they are more likely to be trying to make products for women.  For whom we lack data." 

p 180 - Across professional computing as a whole in the US, 26% of jobs are held by women compared to the 57% of jobs women hold across the entire US workforce - "sea of dudes" problem.

p 223 - Understanding Girls with ADHD states that women are underdiagnosed because of early clinical studies being done on hyperactive young white boys.

p 247 - ..."the best job-creation programme could simply be the introduction of universal childcare in every country in the world."

Published: 2019  Read: December 2021  Genre: Science