Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When crash-test dummies are built to male proportions, drug trials enroll mostly men, and smartphones are sized for male hands, women end up hurt — not because anyone set out to harm them, but because the data we design the world from quietly leaves female bodies and lives out. Caroline Criado Pérez calls this the gender data gap, and her central point is how ordinary it is. “One of the most important things to say about the gender data gap is that it is not generally malicious, or even deliberate.” It’s the residue of thousands of years of treating men as the default human: “when we say human, on the whole, we mean man.” The habit runs deep — Aristotle cast women as aberrations from the male norm, female organs were named centuries after their male counterparts, and even today the UK has more statues of men named John than of all non-royal women combined.

Caroline Criado Pérez on SummaryShelf

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men