Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Had to pause my reading on this one because it was raising my blood pressure. Excellent read so far though, I just needed a break.

The worst part about reading this book was knowing that men need to be listening to it at least as much as women do, but far, far fewer of them will. Not to get knocked down a peg by the henpecking regarding what their ilk do wrong (although ok, yes, there is some wry commentary to blow off steam, deservedly so)! Rather because it would make all of their work so much better, more meaningful. All you dudes who are making shitty things that don't serve half-ish of the people who would use it could very easily be doing better if you just like...spoke to a woman. Seriously, just try it. And try this book.

This is a great book, and I think everyone should read it. I'm only giving it three out of five stars because I found the volume of data overwhelming to the point of becoming a bit of a slog. The intro hooks you with an easy-read but subsequent chapters become a bit harder to wade through. I also read this as an audio book, which was both good and bad. It's great to have the book ready by the author herself, you can hear her passion, indignation and frustration at points which makes it come alive. At times I found myself wishing I had a hardcopy to flip back and forth with.

I'd still recommend this tome to anyone and everyone and will likely become that annoying friend who gives copies of this as gifts.

This is an deep dive into how our information world has had, does have, and sadly will mostly continue to have a women shaped gap. Highlighted here are examples from design of transportation, home building, and many more. This goes a long way to explaining why it happened and explains that it would be a fairly easy gap to fill - just start talking to women.

I think the arguments are counterproductive if the desire is equality and equity. Some arguments would increase othering. And some seem lacking insight.
I think the data portion is good, but the interpretation and politics are not my jam. Very neoliberal and trying to solve problems within the framework that creates the problems instead of thinking of changing the framework. (IE: there are no arguments about how the political/social system is failing by necessitating a caste/class system under oligarchical/plutocracy rule)

3.5
This was an enlightening and enraging read

3.25

I doubt there has been any other book published till now that has compiled the gender data gap corresponding to so many sectors/fields in a single place. The structure of the book is mostly smooth but some chapters do have the tendency to jump around a little bit. One thing I do wanna discuss is the references, the author has provided fairly adequate references but there are still some disparities among data, like The minimum paid parental leave duration in Portugal was downright wrong and there was no reference to it, and some other references just have the surnames of the researchers who have done the study and nothing else. I also did not like that she didn't explain some barely believable points like once she said that the average cleaning staff of hotels lift more than average builders per hour and didn't explain how(the reference was just as useless). I also didn't like that she didn't specify countries most of the time (you just have to guess it's about the USA/UK).
Even if I have some criticism for this book I can't explain how informative and essential this book is. I would gladly recommend it to everyone who is interested in learning more about the gender gap.
3.75 stars/4

I greatly appreciated this very dense and far-reaching collection of troubling statistics about the discrimination of women around the world and in all aspects of their lives. Reading the book made me feel mad consistently. The amount of injustice is overwhelming, but I appreciate taking away a renewed sensitivity for the injustice women face in so many areas. I come out of this book with a desire to be hyper aware of any injustice I witness in my life, and to help remedy it as best as I can.

Sometimes needed to take breaks because of all the data being thrown around but it was an exceptional read.

Brilliant and eye-opening. I appreciated the rigorous and academic nature of the book despite being written for a general audience.

EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. NEEDS. TO. READ. THIS. BOOK.

It's not political, it's not biased, it's just a pure fact that the world is built for men. Until you read this book, you'll have no idea the depths of suffering that is directly responsible for that fact. If you're a man, you need to read this and be made aware of the tiny things you may do and how they impact women on a large scale. If you're a woman, you need to be aware of how this system impacts you and how to fight against it.

From health care and data science to political office and disaster response, every industry plays a role in making men the default being. It's not out of hate or even purposeful neglect, but out of missing data and women's voices that the needs of the female species are often completely ignored.

Nothing will change until the vast majority of culture begins to shift, but there are things every single person on this planet can do that will make an impact on how half of the population lives. Literal lives depend on men and women stepping up and making these changes in society, law, culture, and standard practices. Start by just reading this book, then ask yourself how you can make an impact.

Equally frustrating and fascinating! This is a less call to action book, more of just noticing what our reality is currently.

Lots to be mad at in this book all well explained. I will give a TW this book mentions sexual assault often...really something we could guess would be in the book but the author jumps right into it and it can be a bit jarring at times.

Starts out fairly strong becomes drawn out and a little tedious towards the end.
As mentioned by other reviewers this book suffers from a case of White Feminism™ (which can happen even to non-white authors) but it makes good points and is obviously well researched so I don't think you should let it discourage you from reading it if the topic interests you.

This is a must read for all people. It took me a bit longer to read as I would get so angry I would have to put it down for breaks in between.

I am embarrassed to say how perspective shifting and eye opening this book was.

I am also not sure I would have read it if it wasn't for my daughter's influence on my life.

Edit: Other reviews have highlighted there is an oversight of the trans community, for which sex-segregated bathrooms, as an example, is more complicated. However I don't believe this is necessarily an all or nothing issue, bathrooms can still exist in all 3 guises (male, female and gender-neutral) giving users the choice as to where they feel most safe in their own circumstances.

Perfect is the enemy of better, but this book highlights the importance of at least this missing choice and the lack of sex-disaggregated data reinforcing these issues. More investigation would be needed to include the LGBTQ+ issues missing from this book, but it feels a reasonable scope for the book.

Edit 2: If anybody has a similar/related book looking into LGBTQ+ data-gap issues, please do recommend them.

3.5 stars. I expected longer segments on one area, but it was many more topics than should have been covered, so more of a overview than anything in depth.

It's a man's world.

Sure, I'm familiar with income disparity, about how office temperatures are dialled to male physiology, and the head scratching oversight from Fitbit tracking various health statuses but not menstrual cycles. Obvious annoyances but this book outlines how much more is at stake.

How about the fact that it wasn't until 2011 that the US started using a female crash-test dummy. Up to that point they simply used a small male version which leads to cars being completely designed around the male body. As a result, females are nearly 50% more likely to be seriously hurt in a collision and 17% more likely to die.

How police protective armour is specifically formed to the male body leading to female officers having a higher likelihood of dying from a stab wound due to ill-fitting gear. How women are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed after a heart attack because trials tend to use and research predominantly male participants.

Or how about that miraculous drug that helped alleviate menstrual cramps being deemed non-viable and unlikely to turn a profit that would go on to find life as a little blue pill to address male erectile dysfunction instead.

This book is filled with tidbits that spotlight our patriarchal data bias that go beyond the obvious to things like transit routes, snow removal and discovering the story of Mozart's older sister.

This is wall-to-wall knowledge that will having you nudging your partner, friend or co-worker with a “didja know?” that still leaves you shaking your head if not outright pulling your hair. Well worth the read, can't recommend it enough.

Good overall read. It can get a bit repetitive and some time throws out too many numbers for you to really comprehend and remember everything it talks about, but very interesting overall. It can be a hard read as well, because if you're like me, you'll find yourself getting angry at all the ‘subtle' ways sexism and inequality exists and how much if affects women in ways you may not even think about.

Everybody should read this. But especially fellow men. Sound the alarm!

Actual review coming eventually.

Really good, really important book. Brought up plenty of examples I'd heard before, but absolutely devastating ones I hadn't, and definitely argued its point really well. I'd recommend it to anyone working with data or involved in policy decisions at any level.

It's interesting to read this book and think about the media trying to scare us about China's “oppressive social credit score” system.

Meanwhile we have a patchwork of far less transparent black box systems that control...
• if you get into college
• if you get offered a job
• If you get a mortgage
• If you get targeted by scam universities or scam credit systems
• if you get approve to rent a home
• if you get fired or promoted
• if you get stopped by the police
• if you get bail
• if you get a longer criminal sentence
• if you get probation

And more. Existing systemic bias is coded into these algorithms, resulting in a venire of “science” and “objectivity” used to justify further systemic oppression.
Racist cops find more crime in poor non-white neighborhoods → algorithms designed to find “where crime might happen” takes this garbage data and outputs garbage results → Cops further oppress these neighborhoods, locking up more poor people → An algorithm looks at the material conditions of a defendant and determines that since he's poor, his friends and family are and have had run-ins with the law, and he has few professional prospects, he is likely to reoffend and gets a more stringent sentence.

This feedback loop reinforces our racist, classist criminal justice system while claiming to use “scientific, non-biased” tools. This is just one of the many examples of “big data” run amuck outlined in ths book.

Many more include leveraging big data to suck as much money out of poor people as they can possibly get away with. Because when we have a global economic system primarily driven by profit instead of helping people, the newest technological revolutionary tools will be used not to push humanity forward, but to suck up all our personal information to serve us targeted ads, many of which include ads to scam us.

Great book. highly recommended

“Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth” - Simone de Beauvoir

This is such an important book and I wish more people would read it. I had no idea of the severity of the gender data gap and its impact in our lives and future.
As a woman, I tend to be more aware of the invisible an unaccounted work we are doing. However, and probably naively, I had no idea of how much being a woman was ignored in the construction of the world we live.

Did you know men and women are physically different? Why don't doctors get taught that? Why don't vehicle safety tests take that into account? Why is medical and drug research heavily biased towards male subjects with minimal effort to evaluate the physiological differences that do show up?

The Invisible Woman takes a look at all the small (and big) things that get overlooked when women's input isn't considered. It discusses UI, personal protective equipment, company policies, city design, medicine, and more, with much of the discussion supported by some academic tier research.

I don't universally agree with all her positions on political/policy changes to address the issue, but she does make a compelling case that this is something people need to be aware of and make deliberate effort to mitigate.

The introduction is a bit rough, barraging you with numbers that in my opinion don't work particularly well to introduce you to the topic, but it's worth powering through.

I also, as someone broadly interested in intelligence on the individual, collective, and artificial levels, took it more broadly as a cautionary tale of making decisions without making effort to understand a variety of positions, and the dangers of treating groups of people as one homogenous entity. In some ways, while the subject matter is different, there are a lot of parallels to David Epstein's Range. You can't make effective decisions without some understanding of several distinct perspectives on a problem.

So, from multiple angles, this book is worth reading. It does get a little dense at times and makes some points strongly, but if you let yourself you should learn a lot.

This was really well researched and written, it felt like a huge fact dump without the tedium that usually comes with it.

The points here are unfortunately not too surprising, almost universally products and ideas are designed with the average person in mind, but the average person is actually the average man. In examples cited in this book, the failings repeated the most seemed to be the unaccounted for difference in size of the average male to the average female and the fact that women are far more likely to be the primary caregiver to dependents, though the book also dives into much more specific sex-based differences as well. Often times, it just reads as an inditement of capitalism in general, just point out that it treats women extremely disproportionately worse.

I like to think that I consider this sort of thing in my day-to-day life and work, but this book will certainly make me think harder about it and be more aware.

I listened to this via audiobook narrated by the author herself, which was really well done and felt more personal for it, I think. Highly recommend.