"Every gynecologic condition is linked by a common thread: a gross lack of information. [For example] eighty percent of Black women will develop fibro"Every gynecologic condition is linked by a common thread: a gross lack of information. [For example] eighty percent of Black women will develop fibroids in their lifetime, yet no one knows why they occur, so there is no way to treat the root cause or prevent them from returning. Imagine if there was a condition that affected 80 percent of white men and caused hemorrhaging, debilitating pain, severe bloating, constipation, frequent urination, and infertility. I'd wager that scientists would have long ago discovered the exact biological cause, and there would be a range of effective treatment options available and covered by insurance. . . . How are [most] gynecological health issues so abysmally under-researched, underfunded, and undertreated?"
Tired of treating women and people assigned female at birth (for simplicity's sake I am going to use the terms women and female from here on out) who had not previously been appropriately served by the medical community, Dr. Karen Tang wrote this book to educate our population and spark a change in how women seek gynecologic healthcare.
This book, written in clear, understandable language, begins with a brief history of medical treatment for women and an overview of female anatomy. Tang covers common gynecological issues including, and not limited to: fibroids, endometriosis, polycistic ovarian syndrome, pelvic floor dysfunction, urinary incontinence, PMS, perimenopause and menopause, infertility, gender diversity, and cancer. She carefully explains the conditions, risk factors for them, and treatment options.
Tang also reminds me (and all of her readers) that I have the right to choose the treatment plan that best fits my personal health goals and values, and that no treatment is a valid option.
I am always on the lookout for informative, well written books that will serve my patients; this one meets that benchmark. A copy of this book will soon be on my work library shelf.
Peter Attia and Bill Gifford have spent an inordinate amount of time compiling all the latest science in health related fields to come up with their pPeter Attia and Bill Gifford have spent an inordinate amount of time compiling all the latest science in health related fields to come up with their plan for a long "healthspan," the idea of good life quality in a person's later years. Their final product is a fairly comprehensive, though by no means complete, and readable text.
Attia focuses on the four main causes of death: metabolic disease (including insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes), cardiovascular disease, neurogenerative diseases (including Alzheimer's), and cancer. He astutely points out that these conditions begin years before the advanced symptoms show up as disease. His focus is on identifying risk factors and preventing or delaying the full blown states. He notes that every person has a different make up and will react differently to interventions; they should be personalized. He looks at exercise, nutrition, and sleep. I especially appreciate his presentation of the strong link between emotional and mental health with physical health.
While the complete package of what Attia suggests may be more than most people can take on time-wise and financially, there is a lot to be gleaned here for anyone willing to invest in a more vibrant elderhood. You can never start too soon.
The bottom line here is "Isn't everything better with good sleep, real food, plenty of movement, and positive relationships?"...more
Paleoanthropologist Sang-Hee Lee wrote a series of essays on human evolution for a Korean science magazine geared to the general public. Shin-Young YoPaleoanthropologist Sang-Hee Lee wrote a series of essays on human evolution for a Korean science magazine geared to the general public. Shin-Young Yoon, her editor, encouraged her to compile them into what became this book.
If you're interested in the topic, it's a good introduction. Lee's tone is breezy and conversational, eschewing the jargon of the profession. She explains current theories from the loss of fur to the shift toward meat eating to the first physical feature that differentiated our ancestors from apes. (I won't keep you in suspense. It wasn't an enlarged brain, which came later; it was the feet, that we walked upright on two of them.) Lee also does a pretty good job of showing how theories have developed and changed over the course of time.
The essay that was most interesting to me was Lee's thoughts on how the most modern humans (us) are still evolving.
While these essays are not arranged chronologically, I think that it is relatively easy to keep the timelines of these events straight as Lee places these in clear context. Appendix 2 of the book is a chronological summary. A note to the publisher, I recommend including a simple chart here in the next edition if there is one.
These essays are not works of great depth, but are designed to give the reader an overview. If they whet your appetite in the area of evolution, there is a list of suggested reading at the end of the book. For the most up to date information, so much is happening in the field, you may want to check out the open access journal PaleoAnthropology, a joint publication of the Paleoanthropology Society and the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution (ESHE). (paleoanthropology dot org)
Some of the science and Western medical treatment protocols are out of date, but the basic information that Mate conveys in his book When the Body SaySome of the science and Western medical treatment protocols are out of date, but the basic information that Mate conveys in his book When the Body Says No is sound. Sometimes the body can no longer tolerate or adapt to circumstances and stops one cold.
Mate states that "people do not become ill despite their lives but rather because of their lives. And life includes not only physical factors like diet, physical activity, and the environment, but also the internal milieu of thoughts and unconscious emotions that govern so much of our physiology, through the mechanisms of stress and the unity of the systems that modulate nerves, hormones, immunity, digestion, and cardiovascular function."
Mate does not ignore what Western medicine has to offer. He tells us that in addition to diagnoses and medical treatments, in order to truly heal one needs to include the emotional and spiritual states as they are part of our whole being. Bodymindspirit are one, not 3 discrete components of a human being.
Rather than give a full summary of this book, I will say that over my 12 years in practice as an acupuncturist I have been witness that healing needs to occur across the spectrum of a being. I began my own journey to wellness in 2006. I had to reconnect to my body, learn to recognize what signals my body was sending, what they said about my state of being, and what the appropriate reaction might be.
IMO one aspect Mate does not cover in this work is that there is a difference between healing and cure. Sometimes a being can be healed and not cured, and sometimes both can occur.
If anyone would like to engage in in-depth conversation about any of these topics, please PM me. This is a great book to promote thought and conversation around the topic of disease truly being dis- (not at) ease with some thing or things in our world. There are a lot of rich discussions waiting to be had.
The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters is a vivid and comprehensive look at the icon who smashed the good ole boys news network and chThe Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters is a vivid and comprehensive look at the icon who smashed the good ole boys news network and changed the face of television journalism.
My introduction to Barbara Walters was through Gilda Radner's 'Baba Wawa' impressions on Saturday Night Live. I was intrigued enough to learn who she was and watch her for real. I have been impressed with her drive and determination and her success at paving the way for the women journalists who followed her.
In this biography, Susan Page states:
"She would choose interesting over normal, ambition over three marriages, an interview with a big newsmaker over a planned holiday with her daughter. She would choose power and prominence and fortune, the chance to be . . . at center stage rather than . . . in the chorus."
Barbara Walters made some difficult choices, and lived with the results. Her epitaph reads:
NO REGRETS - I HAD A GREAT LIFE
Page read copiously and conducted over a hundred interviews to put together this biography; it shows. Dozens of photos are included which illustrate Barbara's life and adventures over the years.
For years my husband has complained about not being able to hear dialogue in movies against the backdrop of the score and his inability to ke4.5 Stars
For years my husband has complained about not being able to hear dialogue in movies against the backdrop of the score and his inability to keep up with family conversations in restaurants among the ambient noise (note that we have 2 daughters, so all female). In the past I have shrugged away my irritation and told him to clean the wax out of his ears and suggested a good ENT. Well, it turns out that men's ears don't hear higher frequencies as well as women's and that their hearing loss of the higher frequencies (the range where most women speak) begins at age 25. Apparently this difference evolved as females needed to be able to hear their babies over the sounds in the canopy when they moved about. My husband thanks you, Cat Bohannon, and I have issued my apology.
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution is an evolutionary and social history through the lens of the female body. The seeds of this book were planted with Bohannon's realization that most medical research was conducted on male subjects so the differences in the female body were not taken into account. Female bodies are not just male bodies with breasts and wide hips; there are fundamental differences.
Some fascinating (to me anyway) things I learned:
Adipose tissue (fat) is an organ. Women's fat and men's fat are different. Each fat deposit in our body has a different function. One example is that the fat in women's hips, thighs, and buttocks is full of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids like those found in fish oil. At puberty, females begin storing these fats (which we can't obtain enough of from our daily diet) in order to nourish the brain and retinas of a fetus during a pregnancy and breastfeeding.
Most of us know about the immune system benefits that come with breastfeeding. Those babies who are breastfed get an added benefit. While the milk flows out of the nipple there is an upsuck of the baby's saliva. "Depending on what happens to be in baby's spit that day, the mother's breasts will change the particular composition of her milk. Her milk will actually change to include an agent to fight a specific pathogen or to include hormones to soothe a stressed baby.
Pregnant women with malaria are three to four times more likely to suffer from the most severe forms of the disease, and of those who do, 50 percent will die. . . . The entire reason the United States built the CDC [and located it in Atlanta] is that malaria was rampant throughout the American south. Malaria was finally eradicated in the United States in 1951." My footnote (not in the book): In 2023, for the first time since then, there have been 9 reported cases of locally acquired malaria in the U.S.--7 in FL, 2 in TX, and 1 in MD. Climate change?
Why do women live long after they are no longer reproduce and live longer and more healthfully than men? Bohannon posits that "whatever helps female bodies live on may simply benefit male bodies less, and losing more males may not cost primate societies that much. . . . From a scientific perspective, males don't really need to live as long as females to perpetuate the species." As to the why, Bohannon suggests that "Before we could write stuff down, it was especially important to have someone in the group who could remember earlier crises. It's usually not hard to find someone who can remember a difficult thing that happened ten years ago. It's much harder to find someone who remembers a difficult thing that happened forty years ago, or how, precisely, the community managed to find a workaround." This knowledge combined with gynecological and midwifery skills were the evolutionary pressures that selected women to live longer.
Where I feel Bohannon is less sure footed is in her hypothesis over the evolution of sexism. Do read her thoughts and come to your own conclusions.
Bohannon is an excellent writer--clear, engaging, informative, and entertaining. There is so much more than these bits that I have shared, and all of it is fascinating. If the topic interests you, by all means take the plunge and read this book!
"I kept coming back to Natchez, and staying at Twin Oaks, for two main reasons. The town is so singular, so fascinating, so richly stocked with bizar"I kept coming back to Natchez, and staying at Twin Oaks, for two main reasons. The town is so singular, so fascinating, so richly stocked with bizarre tales, outlandish characters, contradictions and surprises. The mayor, for example, was an openly gay black man named Darryl Grennell. He was elected with 91 percent of the vote in a small, remote Mississippi town that is nearly half white and was once a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan violence. What is this place? I wanted to know. And how did it get this way?"
Richard Grant's most recent book The Deepest South of All, is immensely readable. He tells the history of the town through it's people, past and present. Episodic in nature, he recounts his experiences mingling with the diverse cast of characters who call Natchez home today alternating with chapters about Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori, the African prince who was captured in Guinea and ultimately enslaved by Natchez farmer Thomas Foster in the 1800's.
Sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, and always via stories, Grant shows how this small deeply Southern town is finally struggling to confront the legacy of slavery, to work through bitterness and denial, and to move towards change....more
Sally Adee's book We Are Electric is a fascinating account of bioelectricity which includes “the electrical dimensions and properties of cells, the tiSally Adee's book We Are Electric is a fascinating account of bioelectricity which includes “the electrical dimensions and properties of cells, the tissues they collaborate to form, and the electrical forces that are turning out to be involved in every aspect of life.” Just a few of the applications that are currently being investigated are wound healing, non-invasive detection of cancer cells, changing the frequency of cells to influence growth, recovering sensation in those with spinal injuries.
Adee begins the story in 1780 with the work of Luigi Galvani and traces the research up until the current day. At one point I had a flashback to sitting in Anatomy and Physiology watching the animation of action potentials, all of those ion channels in motion. Adee shares the successes, the failures, and the obstacles to research. She is engaging and enthusiastic. Her writing is clear; with a little effort anyone can understand her explanations. She broaches the questions of ethics, which is a concern across the board in medical research.This work is extensively footnoted, and I have marked a few papers I want to seek out to read.
If this work piques your interest, the introduction (it's the sample on Amazon) is a good executive summary of the work. That might be all you want to know, or you may want to continue on to fill in all of the details....more
Henry Marsh's latest book And Finally: Matters of Life and Death is an exploration of questions triggered by his diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer Henry Marsh's latest book And Finally: Matters of Life and Death is an exploration of questions triggered by his diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer. As he considers the end stage of his life, he exudes acceptance and appreciation for a life well lived. He shares his musings with me on what he could have done better in interacting with his patients with terminal diagnoses and thoughts on what the medical community could do differently. Interspersed with these musings are tales of his life including: the wordworking he has done, the doll house he made for his daughter and the one he is making for his granddaughter, his experiences with chemical castration and radiation (interesting to me that he received photon therapy rather than proton therapy which is currently more the norm among the people to whom I am connected), the fairy stories he is telling his granddaughters, and lamentations on the state of our planet due to climate change.
He ponders longevity. We evolved to fear death to keep us alive to be able to reproduce and nurture the next generation. Is it right to keep extending our life if we are scientifically able or do our physical bodies need to end to make way for the next generations? Will a longer life be any more meaningful?
How much does a doctor tell a patient when there is a terminal diagnosis? What is the right amount of hope a person needs? When does a doctor encourage treatment and when does he suggest stepping back? How does one accept that the wearing down of a body is natural? What is a good death?
What is the difference between euthanasia and assisted dying? What is moral and what is humane?
I have been in discussion of these questions over the years with family, friends, and colleagues. They are complex issues and well worth the time and thought. One thing is certain; we all will die at some point.
Dr. Marsh has written an intelligent, considered narrative that is simultaneously light and elegiac; and I am glad to have spent this time with him....more
Beebe Bahrami writes a rambling, casual, and vivacious combination foodie travelogue, memoir of living in an archeological dig, and history of NeanderBeebe Bahrami writes a rambling, casual, and vivacious combination foodie travelogue, memoir of living in an archeological dig, and history of Neandertals in her book Café Neandertal. I feel like I am sitting in that café with her having a good gossip about these other humans. I enjoy all of her digressions, and if you are only here for the science, you may feel frustrated.
Bahrami is a cultural anthropologist and journalist. She knows how to put words on the page to pique my interest, draw me in, and keep me engaged.
For those here for the science here's the quick recap: Neandertals lived in small social groups and moved about to follow plant and animal resources. They were clever and adaptable; they were able to figure out how to use whatever resources were at hand. They made complex tools. They had some type of language, though not necessarily like ours. They used fire, though it is in debate as to at which point they could intentionally make it. They worked animal hides. They built or augmented temporary shelters. They ate a lot of meat, and also ate plants. They had complex cooperation, social organization. They took care of each other.
In her book, Bahrami describes how archeologists and other experts have determined the above.
My one complaint is the lack of graphics in this work. It contains a map of sites and a chart of tools; and it strongly calls out for more. At the very least a table of all of the sites and the dates various groups of Neandertals occupied each as well as a list of all of the "players," their specialties, and their dig locations would be immensely helpful to readers. I am somewhat familiar with all of these, and I still had trouble keeping track, especially with Bahrami's looping writing style.
Bahrami reminds me that at its heart archeology is stories, scenarios of our best guesses; and that we will never really know for certain.
Deborah Levy was asked to write a response to George Orwell's essay "Why I Write." She uses the four motives he proposed as titles for the four parts Deborah Levy was asked to write a response to George Orwell's essay "Why I Write." She uses the four motives he proposed as titles for the four parts of her essay, Things I Don't Want to Know: On Writing.
"Political Purpose" - In her meandering way Levy explores the role of woman/mother.
"chased by the women we used to be before we had children. We didn't really know what to do with her, this fierce, independent young woman who followed us about, shouting and pointing the finger while we wheeled our buggies in the English rain."
"Motherhood was an institution fathered by masculine consciousness. This male consciousness was male unconsciousness. It needed its female partners who were also mothers to stamp on her own desires and attend to his desires, and then to everyone else's desires. We had a go at cancelling our own desires. and found we had a talent for it."
"When a female writer walks a female character in to the centre of her literary enquiry . . . she will have to find a language that is in part to do with learning how to become a subject rather than a delusion, and in part to do with unknotting the ways in which she has been put together by the societal system in the first place. She will have to be canny how she sets about doing this because she will have many delusions of her own. In fact it would be best if she was uncanny when she sets about doing this. It's exhausting to learn ow to become a subject, it's hard enough learning how to become a writer."
I appreciate the points Levy makes. She does not, however, tie these thoughts together; and I feel dissatisfied as I move on to Part 2
"Historical Impulse" - Having recently read Damon Galgut's The Promise, I especially appreciate these reminiscences of the first 9 years of Levy's life spent in South Africa, especially the 4+ years during the period her father was a political prisoner. Apartheid, racism, and sexism are more of the things that Levy wishes she doesn't know about. And yet these are the meat of many histories with which societies are grappling.
"There was something I was beginning to understand at seven years old. It was to do with not feeling safe with people who were supposed to be safe. The clue was that even though Mr Sinclair [the school principal] was white and a grown-up and had his name written in gold letters on the door of his office, I was definitely less safe with him than I was with the black children I had been spying on in the playground. The second clue was that the white children were secretly scared of the black children. They were scared because they threw stones and did other mean things to the black children. White people were afraid of black people because they had done bad things to them. If you do bad things to people, you do not fee safe. And if you do not feel safe, you do not feel normal. The white people were not normal in South Africa."
"Girls have to speak up cuz no one listens to them anyway."
"I had been told to say my thoughts out loud and not just in my head but I decided to write them down."
"Sheer Egoism" - In this essay I see 15 year-old Deborah Levy in her black straw hat and lime green platform shoes hanging out in a greasy spoon by the bus station trying to imitate the poets and philosophers who inhabited the French cafes in years past. She already had the living in Exile thing down pat as her family moved to the UK a few months after her father's release from prison. And then her parents separated some time after that.
"Writing made me feel wiser than I actually was. Wise and sad. That was what I thought writers should be."
Writing led her to questioning and she questions her homeland.
"I had so many questions to ask the world from my bedroom in West Finchley about the country I was born in. How do people become cruel and depraved? If you torture someone, are you mad or are you normal? If a white man sets his dog on a black child and everyone says that's okay, if the neighbours and police and judges say, 'That's fine by me,’ is life worth living? What about the people who don't think it's okay? Are there enough of them in the world?"
"Aesthetic Enthusiasm" - The final part of Levy's essay is the shortest. Here she sums up her thoughts on why she, this woman, writes.
"We [women] were on the run from the lies concealed in the language of politics, from myths about our character and our purpose in life. We were on the run from our own desires too probably, whatever they were. It was best to laugh it off. The way we laugh. At our own desires. The way we mock ourselves. Before anyone else can. The way we are wired to kill. Ourselves. it doesn't bear thinking about. I did not want to know that I had been shut down. . .
"To become a writer, I had to learn to interrupt, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then louder, and then to just speak in my own voice which is not loud at all."
"What do we do with knowledge that we cannot bear to live with? What do we do with the things we do not want to know?"
"This book began as an effort to trace the takeover of the Russian economy by Putin's former KGB associates. But it became an investigation into somet"This book began as an effort to trace the takeover of the Russian economy by Putin's former KGB associates. But it became an investigation into something more pernicious than that. First research--and then events--showed that the kleptocracy of the Putin era was aimed at something more than just filling the pockets of the president's friends. What emerged as a result of the KGB takeover of the economy [and media]--and the country's political and legal system--was a regime in which the billions of dollars at Putin's cronies' disposal were to be actively used to undermine and corrupt the institutions and democracies of the West."
"For Putin's regime, wealth was less about the well-being of Russia's citizens than about the projection of power, about reasserting the country's position on the world stage."
"The Ukranians had been the first to warn that a resurgent Russia was seeking to sow division in the West. 'Everyone thought the Russians were just stealing.' said Konstantin Batozsky, the aide to the former Donetsk governor. 'But they're working to create their own circle of corrupt politicians. This has been going on for a long time, and Russia will undermine Europe. Russia is laying a huge bomb in the foundations of the European Union. Russia is looking for vulnerable points to split Europe. This is a gigantic risk today. Russian NGOs are working very actively, giving grants to groups on the ultra left and ultra right [to create instability].' "
Belton's extensively researched book, Putin's People, lays out the return of power of Putin's KGB colleagues, beginning with the cooperation of the Stasi in 1980's East Germany and continuing to their public dominance in 2020. She outlines the symbiotic relationship between the KGB and organized crime that helped grow the power of both. And she unflinchingly reminds us that we in the West have been complicit in turning a blind eye to the state plundering of Russian businesses as our corporations have rushed in to benefit financially from these sell offs as well as having laundered billions of dollars of "dirty money."
Belton's account is a challenging read. There are many players, and I struggled to keep all the names straight. I was slowly drawn into her chilling account of how this rise came about. I hope our leaders have read her work and are taking note.
In her book Formidable Elisabeth Griffith writes an engaging, readable, multi-racial, inclusive overview of women's history in the U.S. covering the lIn her book Formidable Elisabeth Griffith writes an engaging, readable, multi-racial, inclusive overview of women's history in the U.S. covering the last 100 years. She includes moments to celebrate and moments we need to reckon with. "It took formidable women against formidable opponents, taking a long time to reach these victories." The power of this work is that it acknowledges that women are a complex group, that each sub-group may have different goals, and that the achievements thus far are the cumulative efforts of thousands of women, many who are named in this chronicle.
Here are just a few tidbits that were new to me and that I found interesting:
Mississippi, the last state to ratify the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, ratified in 1984.
Until 1960, Asian women in New York City had to register annually at the police department, producing proof of literacy in English.
Pediatricians seceded from the American Medical Association (AMA) and formed the American Academy of Pediatricians in 1921 when the AMA would not endorse legislation to train visiting nurses, license midwives, and establish maternity clinics in rural areas.
During FDR's 12 years as president, Eleanor hosted 348 press conferences inviting only women journalists, forcing news outlets to hire women correspondents.
In 1979 Louisiana became the last state to repeal head and master laws, property laws that permitted a husband to have the final say regarding all household decisions and jointly owned property without his wife's knowledge or consent.
A poll conducted in 2020 by the Fund for Women's Equality found that 80% of Americans think the Equal Rights Amendment was passed.
One takeaway for me is that these successes have come from the deep commitment of many women who have devoted much of their lives to achieving them and that continued progress will require strong and steady efforts.
As Griffith concludes: “Until activist allies can increase their political power, secure racial justice, safeguard reproductive rights, insure equal economic opportunities, provide affordable childcare, and address historic inequities, the work of the women’s movement is not only incomplete, but at risk.”
Helene and Frank (as well as the rest of the London bookshop staff) become friends through letters and parcels exchanged overSuch a lovely confection!
Helene and Frank (as well as the rest of the London bookshop staff) become friends through letters and parcels exchanged over the course of twenty years as Helene submits requests for many old and unusual works.
This blossoming friendship parallels those that have grown with my GR friends over the past few years. You are a special tribe and I appreciate you all.
I enjoy Helene's sense of humor and her kindness and generosity. And letters, how I love that I still receive an occasional one in the mail!
I confess to being taken aback by the fact that for the most part Helene does not care for fiction. And I have decided to forgive this flaw.
While this slim volume of letters can easily be devoured in one sitting, like I did today, be sure to read slowly to savor and take in the little details and delight in the writing.
Maus II picks up where Maus I leaves off, beginning with Vladek and Anja's separation at Auschwitz and ending with their reunion in Poland at the end Maus II picks up where Maus I leaves off, beginning with Vladek and Anja's separation at Auschwitz and ending with their reunion in Poland at the end of the war. Spiegelman chronicles the hardships they endure and how Vladek's skills and ingenuity keep them alive.
This volume also delves more into the father-son relationship and illustrates the long-lasting effects on the survivors and how they spilled over onto the next generation.
"Maybe your father needed to show that he was always right--that he could always SURVIVE--because he felt GUILTY about surviving. . . . And he took his guilt out on YOU, where it was safe . . . on the REAL survivor."
In some ways Vladek reminds me of my maternal grandfather who was a child of the depression. His whole family worked hard to keep food on the table and to keep a roof over their heads. My Grandpop never threw anything away and found a use for most of it. He was the neighborhood handyman and could fix almost anything. He could also be cantankerous and was very cautious with his money.
This is a superb follow-on to a spectacularly successful first volume. I hope Spiegelman was able to achieve some catharsis by writing this story, and he has created a lovely monument to his father. ...more
The following paragraph from her preface gives a good summary of Caroline Criado Perez's work Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed 4.5 Stars
The following paragraph from her preface gives a good summary of Caroline Criado Perez's work Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.
"The female-specific concerns that men fail to factor in cover a wide variety of areas, but as you read you will notice that three themes crop up again and again: the female body, women's unpaid care burden, and male violence against women. These are issues of such significance that they touch on nearly every part of our lives, affecting our experiences of everything from public transport to politics, via the workplace and the doctor's surgery. But men forget them because men do not have female bodies. They, as we will see, do only a fraction of the unpaid work done by women. And while they do have to contend with male violence, it manifests in a different way to the violence faced by women. And so these differences go ignored, and we proceed as if the male body and its attendant life experience are gender neutral. This is a form of discrimination against women."
Perez is careful to point out that these issues are not "malicious, or even deliberate". They are thoughtless, as in not giving thought to women, half of the population.
Perez's writing is clear and engaging. She combines statistics, stories, and examples to breathe life into her thesis. Here are a few examples to get you thinking:
"When a woman is involved in a car crash, she is 47% more likely to be seriously injured than a man, and 71% more likely to be moderately injured, even when researchers control for facts such as height, weight, seat-belt usage, and crash intensity. She is also 17% more likely to die."
How could this be you ask? Most crash-test dummies are designed to match the 50th percentile male. They don't take women's anatomical differences and seat positioning in account. Could we design cars to be safer for women? You bet!
In the area of disaster relief-- houses rebuilt without kitchens, medical relief that doesn't include birthing kits or menstrual products, and refugee areas without gender segregated sanitary facilities (which leaves women vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse).
PPE is designed for men. Uniforms, gloves, and body armor frequently don't fit (breasts and hips aren't figured in and sizes are often too large), and safety is compromised. My note- not in the book--one of the gifts of the pandemic is that face masks are now readily available in a small size that fits women's faces. This is especially important as most caregivers are women.
The list goes on for pages.
I do not agree with all of Perez's economic conclusions, and I appreciate all of her arguments. The rest of her suppositions, I can see illustrated all around me. Perez's main suggestions for solutions are to bring more women to the leadership table, to disaggregate data by sex, and to collect more data on women. Common sense ideas. First we have to wake up the male population to the fact that there is a problem.
It's probably asking a lot because of the quantity of data, and I would love to see this work updated every decade.
I recommend this book to every woman and to every man who cares about women. And know that you will most likely walk away from this read angry. I suggest you pick one action and channel this anger to compel you to complete it, whether it be to write a letter, make a donation, or buy someone a copy of this book (preferably a male policy maker).
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