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A review by drjoannehill
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
informative
medium-paced
4.5
4.5 ish
How does a "male = neutral" worldview stem from and lead to a lack of data about women's health, finances, political representation, etc because it is wrongly assumed that data about men is relevant to all ... which then has negative consequences for, precisely, women's health, finances, and representation? This book tells us how.
The research that has gone into writing this must be immense, and it is an important book, lots to learn and a great way to show the value of quants or science to feminism and critical research. I read this in the context of a sport science student claiming that feminism is biased in class last week, and that I should have responded that all research is biased, at least feminism acknowledges it.
While Perez's stats/quants research review seems solid, her writing about qualitative research is less so and I felt there was a lack of writing about experience or consequences of the data gap.
Also, it seems in Perez's world, trans and NB people just don't exist. Talk about a data gap? There's a gaping hole in her construction of the world. I don't think there is a single mention in the whole book. Who knows, maybe she worries that acknowledging trans women will break apart the argument that we need data about (cis)women's bodies (especially in health, medicine etc) ... Or maybe she's a TERF, I'm not sure.
In the first chapter is a pretty flimsy definition of sex as "XX or XY chromosomes". Otherwise, there's an ok job of discussing what is sex and what is gender and how a lot of things that are explained (in science or society) as sex/biology are actually related to gender and the social construction of women/femininity, but this is not really what she is trying to do and I had to pick apart a couple of bits because I was looking for it. She seems very keen on evidencing physical differences between men and women, and you have to be careful with this because it is easy for people to use this as evidence that women are lesser than men, that their bodies are not as good - this whole thing is not something discussed in this book.
I would have liked her to acknowledge the existence of women in right wing politics because again in the construction of her world, women make progressive politicians who make things better for all, and I wish that was true but take women in the senior levels of the Tory party over the last 40 years as one example and it sadly isn't true.
Informative, gave me some ideas for teaching and research, but not an academic-level critical text - it isn't meant to be.
How does a "male = neutral" worldview stem from and lead to a lack of data about women's health, finances, political representation, etc because it is wrongly assumed that data about men is relevant to all ... which then has negative consequences for, precisely, women's health, finances, and representation? This book tells us how.
The research that has gone into writing this must be immense, and it is an important book, lots to learn and a great way to show the value of quants or science to feminism and critical research. I read this in the context of a sport science student claiming that feminism is biased in class last week, and that I should have responded that all research is biased, at least feminism acknowledges it.
While Perez's stats/quants research review seems solid, her writing about qualitative research is less so and I felt there was a lack of writing about experience or consequences of the data gap.
Also, it seems in Perez's world, trans and NB people just don't exist. Talk about a data gap? There's a gaping hole in her construction of the world. I don't think there is a single mention in the whole book. Who knows, maybe she worries that acknowledging trans women will break apart the argument that we need data about (cis)women's bodies (especially in health, medicine etc) ... Or maybe she's a TERF, I'm not sure.
In the first chapter is a pretty flimsy definition of sex as "XX or XY chromosomes". Otherwise, there's an ok job of discussing what is sex and what is gender and how a lot of things that are explained (in science or society) as sex/biology are actually related to gender and the social construction of women/femininity, but this is not really what she is trying to do and I had to pick apart a couple of bits because I was looking for it. She seems very keen on evidencing physical differences between men and women, and you have to be careful with this because it is easy for people to use this as evidence that women are lesser than men, that their bodies are not as good - this whole thing is not something discussed in this book.
I would have liked her to acknowledge the existence of women in right wing politics because again in the construction of her world, women make progressive politicians who make things better for all, and I wish that was true but take women in the senior levels of the Tory party over the last 40 years as one example and it sadly isn't true.
Informative, gave me some ideas for teaching and research, but not an academic-level critical text - it isn't meant to be.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny and Sexism