Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men – Caroline Criado Perez
Written by Elisa Garbil – 30.05.2025
Invisible Women is a great book to dive into the different ways men and women live throughout life. Criado Perez dives into the different ways women get penalised for being women. May it be medically, at the office, at home, or at university. She argues that the people in power are men, meaning that they design the world for men, forgetting that the realities women face are different. For example, car crash dummies, especially driver dummies, are based on a male physique. This entails that we do not have the data on how women would survive a car crash. Think of a seatbelt – designed by men for men. Another example would be that prescription drugs, for example antidepressants, have been (mostly) exclusively trialled on men, stating that female hormones skew with the data. Yet, aren’t those hormones the ones that make the female experience wildly different? Exactly.
International risks flowing from this are simply the fact that we are in a world that does not take women into account. A world that only takes half of the population in account is not a thriving world. If your company would only take the wishes of men into account there would be no room for growth, as women often bring different viewpoints, different aspects, and different solutions to issues. Cooperation between men and women is beneficial for everyone. In addition, if the world does not think of women, it does not accommodate for women. Risks include prescription drugs not working on women as well as they do on men and therefore leading to more resistance and can even lead to more harm to women’s bodies.
Globally, 75% of unpaid work is done by women, who spend between three and six hours per day on it compared to men’s average of thirty minutes to two hours.
Invisible women – caroline criado perez
Women tend to be the ones having to stop working when they get children, even if there is good paternity and maternity leave. Women tend to have to take up most of the domestic work in the house, even if there are no children. Do look at your own relationship and consider who does what most? Women tend to do the repetitive tasks – like cooking, groceries, cleaning, laundry – while men do the occasional tasks – mowing, fixing things. Leading to a disparity in the amount of work women and men do. Often these repetitive tasks are expected even when women work full time, leading to a risk of burnout and, unfortunately, due to the medical world not believing women, a strain on the health services. Issues that could be solved by just sharing the work, and having medics listen to you when you come to them with a problem.
Women’s physical pain is form more likely to be dismissed as ’emotional’ or ‘psychosomatic’.
Invisible women – caroline criado perez
The lives of men have been taken to represent those of human overall. When it comes to the lives of the other half of humanity, there is nothing but silence.
Invisible women – caroline criado perez
Quotes That Might Make you Read the Book:
Quotas, which, contrary to popular misconception, were recently found by a London School of Economics study to ‘weed out incompetent men’ rather than promote unqualified women.
Invisible women – caroline criado perez
The real reason we exclude women is because we see the rights of 50% of the population as a minority interest.
Invisible women – caroline criado perez
Male bias is so firmly embedded in our psyche that even genuinely gender-neutral words are read as male.
Invisible women – caroline criado perez
Whiteness and maleness are silent precisely because they do not need to be vocalised. Whiteness and maleness are implicit. They are unquestioned. They are the default.
Invisible women – caroline criado perez
When women join an industry in high numbers, that industry attracts lower pay and loses ‘prestige’, suggesting that low-paid work chooses women rather than the other way around.
Invisible women – caroline criado perez
There is no doubt that women are dying as a result of the gender data gap in occupational health research.
Invisible women – caroline criado perez
Failing to account for female socialisation can also lead to women living for decades with undiagnosed behavioural disorders.
Invisible women – caroline criado perez
