Revealing the Invisible – Book review of Invisible Women
Caroline Criado Pérez offers a valuable perspective in her book, “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.” Pérez explores how the designed world is primarily based on meeting the needs of the male sex and, more importantly, steps we can take to move more toward equity.
Designing for the 50% Plus
The heart of Pérez’s message is very simple – half of the world is female, but the world is not equally designed for both. Pérez suggests that if we want a world designed for everyone, women must be in the room. Yet, the world seems to be consistently built with males in mind first.
Need proof?
Pérez takes most of her book giving example after example of circumstances where the design defaulted to male, or worse, seemed to intentionally leave females out.
Gendered Language and Equity
Language clearly can shape how a culture thinks and acts. Pérez explores how languages deal with gender affect society.
French is a highly gendered language. It is possible to denote male or female by using a different “the” – la vs. el. Further, nouns have been divided into masculine and feminine.
- Pizza – female
- Computer – male
- Dance – female
- Government – male
Similarly, in Spanish, Pérez notes that professions can be gendered, so there is a different word for female doctor vs. male doctor. However, the default in mixed companies is male. She brings up the fascinating scenario if there was a conference of 100 female doctors and one male doctor, the group would be “Los médicos.” The author correctly, asks why one male doctor would change the nomenclature of an entire group.
Pérez notes that gendered languages tend to be the least equitable cultures regarding sex. Perhaps more surprising, a 2011 study found that genderless languages like Mandarin offer less equity than naturally gendered languages (Like English). This is believed to be the result of people defaulting to thinking male when stating a word like “congress-person.”
Language exists both as a reflection of the current society and a tool to change the culture. Therefore, it is no surprise that Pérez challenges the reader to shift language to include female identifiers more often. Likewise, we must work to break out of the paradigm of thinking of a male by default when we hear a term like “doctor.”
Many clear examples
Throughout the text, Pérez can pull example after example of the malpractice of design based on neglecting ½ the population. The design of cars is a clear example of an object meant for both genders but clearly based on the anatomy of males, which can have deadly consequences.
It seems somewhat easy for the author to prove her thesis because male has been default in so many sectors that the examples seem just to surface. Looking into most industries today, it doesn’t take long to see pay-inequity, objects built around male anatomy, or systems that males have dominated for centuries.
Pérez spends most of her book jumping from thoughtful examples to thoughtful examples expressing the concern and consequences of continuing to neglect the 50%.
One critique of the book
This book offered a valuable perspective with myriad examples to help drive the points home. I would highly recommend that anyone, particularly men, read this book.
There was one aspect that was concerning about Pérez’s argument. Among all of Pérez’s ideas, there were a few that seemed only half-baked. These arguments were particularly disappointing because they undermined her clear, solid arguments.
One example of this is the increasing size of iPhones. Pérez claims, while acknowledging no definitive proof, that the larger screens are designed for males. However, while men have larger hands, and so these screens fit better, most men I have met do not have large enough hands to stretch their thumb diagonally across the largest iPhone screen. Perhaps, meaning that iPhone’s screens are not designed around the true anatomy of humans but that other forces are at play.
For instance, increasing a device’s battery size without making it thicker requires a larger device. Further, people today use their phones beyond a communication device extending it as a primary streaming/entertainment device. With that in mind, Apple may design the phone around primary usages over real-world anatomic data. For example, I know many females who have not opted for the smallest phone in Apple’s iPhone lineup but enjoy the larger screen as it is their primary computing device.
Though my examples are antidotal, so are Pérez’s. Her lack of knowledge of industrial design and her desire to use a somewhat gimmicky argument to prove her hypothesis is unfortunate.
This book has so much to offer. There are so many clear and compelling arguments that prove Pérez’s arguments that it is a shame to see anything that could cause individuals to disregard the whole of the hypothesis because of some unnecessary weak arguments.
As said above, I believe her overall analysis is spot on. I would encourage anyone, particularly males, to wrestle through the fact that much of the world has been designed around males. It is a smart business move and the right thing to do to have females very present and active in shaping the world.
