Caroline Criado Perez

I listened to this as an audiobook and boy (or should that be girl), it made me angry and should make everyone angry. I was aware of some of it of course - I am female and a short female at that so I know all about bad design where I can't reach top shelves or the floor on couches or the endless queues for female toilets. But I'd never known or thought about some of the things talked about in this book such as poor urban design which forces women into dangerous situations, poor consideration show more of safety in transport, medical bias towards male testing only, lack of interest in fixing female health issues ( menopause anyone?). This is not mentioned in the book but I wonder if there is a reason medical scandals are often around obstetrics or dementia care where it mostly happens to women?
Now our world will operate on algorithms based on data biased towards men and it will become even harder to overcome. Made me very angry. show less

Oh, this book. Filled with important data pointing out the myriad ways that women have been neglected in building society around the world. And so depressing that it took me forever to read it.

Criado Perez is thorough. She explores not just the commonly known areas where women have been historically unplanned for, like medicine and the workplace, but also transportation, public toilets, the internet, refugee camps, and the list goes on and on. She ends with summing up her work into three show more themes that "define women's relationship with the world". One is the invisibility of the female body - neglecting to take into account the female body in medicine, technology, and architecture - and how it has led to injury, death, and a world where we just don't fit. Two is, ironically, the hyper-visibility of the female body. Male sexual violence against women and how we don't measure it and don't design spaces to account for it or limit it. And third, the unaccounted and unpaid care work of which women do more than their fair share. In our current world, "human" equals "male".

Her main solution to all of this is getting women in the position to be involved in decisions. To me, this seems undoubtedly correct, though I think part of that equation has to be getting men involved evenly in the unpaid care work at the same time. (Please, to all my male friends who are already there and doing their fair share, I see it and acknowledge it - my husband included!) I do love her last line:

"And so, to return to Freud's 'riddle of femininity', it turns out that the answer was staring us in the face all along. All 'people' needed to do was to ask women."

This is a book everyone should read, but fair warning that it isn't comfortable or easy reading. show less

This is a book that once again will be ignored by those who don't want to hear it. I'm sure it has added to the authors litany of threats but it's a book that needs to be read that needs to be thought about and examined. Yes there may be errors, but honestly I want to see your proof and if you're coming at this going "well actually the number is 77% not 78% and with that error how can we trust any of it" I don't want to hear it.
There were two things that stood out for me in this book, one show more was the Policewoman who had breast reduction surgery to make her stab vest safe... the other is that 78% of female pianists (47% of men) have hand pain and that if they just could use the 7/8 DS keyboard that this would be drastically reduced. The reason the second anecdote stood out for me is because I had ganglion surgery at 21 and stopped doing piano exams because the Octave scales were causing pain. I had done 7 of 8 exams before the Diploma. Barely passing the last one so I decided to cut my losses.

I'm a short woman, I wear a padded piece on the seatbelt of the car because otherwise it rubs painfully. I'm also aware that front impact protection bags can kill women my size. But the fact that we're in a world where it's acceptable to ignore 50% (I've seen the numbers at 51% but let's just go broad here) of the population because it's messy to properly do the research. Ignoring the fact that body chemistry can have impact on things. The fact that a lot of tools to help detect that a person has fallen over involves phones in pockets... when most women can't carry them that way.
Read this book, no really, there may be some errors in it but overall it's a book that designers and most men need to read and then ask themselves why women aren't angrier.
I lost sleep over this book.... show less

A look at the state of information on how women's needs differ from those of men. The author outlines what she calls the gender data gap - the lack of comprehensive information on women and their lives, their bodies, and their economics. This data gap is the result of centuries - make that millennia - of treating male humans as the default, and basing all the research on male subjects. She lays out a good case for why this is a bad idea, not just for women, but for everyone. She also show more demonstrates that at least part of this appears to be less oblivious than intentional, and that the challenges women face continue even as many people believe we have closed the gap between opportunities for men and for women. Highly recommended, especially for those who wouldn't dream of reading a book like this. show less