Reviews with content warning for Medical trauma - Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

I thought this book was engaging, validating, and at times painful but incredibly important. Overall I would recommend it highly, frankly especially to cis white men who don’t understand the very real risks women face every day as a direct result of historic and ongoing patriarchal norms. That said, I wish the author had spent more time on the racial/ethnic and cultural data gaps resulting from imperialist, colonialist, white supremacist culture, and digging into the gap in intersectional analyses. I would also have liked to see more acknowledgment of the queer and trans data gaps. I can understand why the cisgender binary was the focus, and I really appreciated the book for what it was, but it would have been nice to include an introductory piece explaining why she chose not to go deeper into these areas, and possibly a call for additional research on racial/ethnic, cultural, and queer & trans data gaps at the end.

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vrhayes08's review

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challenging informative inspiring fast-paced

4.5

So much of the research in this book is alarming, moving, infuriating, and activating. I am thinking about the world differently now as a result of this book - paying more attention to the small aspects of design that affect our lives, to the ways that designing a world with in mind women would make the world better for everyone, to the absolutely maddening ways that women’s roles in society are undervalued and ignored.

This book shines a light on the experience of women from cultures around the world, not just developed nations. Still, there is more focus on developed nations (in part because we have more data on developed nations!). I did also feel that for a book talking about gender data gaps, this book ironically massively ignores the existence of non-binary and gender non-conforming people. Definitely a worthwhile read, but maybe needs a sequel about the invisibility of nb/gnc and intersex people in data (an even worse problem that also offers so much for society to learn from).

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ampam's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

Eye-opening, and disheartening.

While I have known the world was designed for men (the phone I'm typing on right now is too big for my small, but not unusually sized hands, to be used one-handed easily), seeing the extent of it in everything from air bags to policy was very revealing. The book illustrated in many facets the repercussions of not taking women into account, and none are positive. It is quite daunting how much needs to be changed, and the book unfortunately does not offer any solutions for the world to be made more equitable from the flaws it pointed out in its writing. Additionally, the book does not delve into detail other intersectional identities like race, or at all for more prejudiced-against groups like LGBTQIA* folks. Regardless, it is a recommended read to understand how pervasive the idea of only designing for men and refusing to consider women is.

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