Muneel Zaidi's Reviews > Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

An extremely solid, well researched, and eye-opening analysis of bias in data collection with respect to women. Highly recommend to all readers, especially men, and even more so to leaders in any field (regardless of their sex). Criado-Pérez presents an onslaught of data clearly demonstrating inherent inequities in many spheres of life, all of which can easily be overcome by including women in the design and data collection process.

She highlights the issues with data that is currently available, as a lot of it is not gender-disaggregated or disregards female data points altogether. This is especially alarming in certain areas, such as drug trials, where subjects are almost exclusively male, leading to many issues with proper dosage and side-effects. Similarly, most automobile crash test dummies are only required to model the male body, disregarding both the average difference in size and seating posture for female drivers.

Attempts to fix inequality problems are also discussed, as some leaders will blindly "make thing equal" in a noble effort to make things better. This might seem like a perfect solution, but often the bias against women is actually increased by doing this; as men and women have different bodies and needs. Her example of how an organization trying to make things more equal by making all their bathrooms gender-neutral, only ended up significantly increasing average female wait times and slightly decreasing male wait times is an excellent illustration of this. Similarly, she explains how this "equalization" has happened in other fields, such as university tenure, job promotions, and paid maternity/paternity leave.

Finally, she addresses the technique of having women try to emulate the male standard to get ahead, "lean in" if you will. She explains how this is both futile for women in the long run, and detrimental to both the woman and the organization she is part of. Women should not be trying to emulate male behaviors to get ahead in a flawed system; the system is what needs to be fixed, not the women.

Definitely a worthwhile read or audiobook, and certainly epiphany invoking for at least 50% the population, including this male reader.