Invisible Women Book Summary
Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
Book by Caroline Criado Perez
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Summary
Invisible Women exposes the gender data gap that underlies our male-default world, revealing the hidden ways in which the failure to collect data on women's lives leads to bias, discrimination, and disadvantage in everything from healthcare to the workplace to public policy - and offers a roadmap for closing this gap to build a more equitable future for all.
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1. Daily Life
The Default Male in Urban Planning
Urban planning has historically catered to the default male - that is, plans are made around the travel and mobility patterns of men. This stems from a gender data gap, where the people (mainly men) designing transit systems don't think about women's differing needs. Women tend to make more frequent, shorter trips, often accompanying children or elderly relatives. Their mobility is constrained by their greater share of care-taking responsibilities.
However, city transit networks are often designed for commuters going to and from work, without accounting for women's trip-chaining to multiple destinations. Sánchez de Madariaga, an urban planning professor, notes that not collecting gender-disaggregated data leads to a male bias in infrastructure planning.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
Gender-Sensitive Urban Planning Saves Lives and Money
Urban planners need to adopt a gender-sensitive approach that accounts for women's travel patterns and needs. Some ways to do this:
- Collect sex-disaggregated data on transit usage to identify differing patterns
- Prioritize pedestrian infrastructure like well-lit, obstacle-free sidewalks that make walking easier and safer
- Invest in buses and intermediate public transit that are more flexible than rail
- Develop mixed-use zoning that locates essential services, employment and childcare in proximity to shorten women's trips
Not only is this more equitable, but it has economic benefits in enabling women's workforce participation and reducing medical costs from injuries. It's a win-win to plan cities around women's lives.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
The Pervasive Problem of Potty Parity
The lack of adequate public toilet facilities for women is a global issue. Women often have to wait in long lines because there are insufficient female toilets, while men rarely queue. This is due to several flawed assumptions in restroom design:
- Providing equal floor space for male and female restrooms, even though urinals allow more men to use the facility at once
- Not accounting for women's need to use the toilet more frequently and for longer durations, due to biological factors like menstruation, pregnancy, and higher risk of UTIs
- Ignoring that women are more likely to be accompanied by children or elderly/disabled people they are caring for
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
The Economic Cost of Ignoring Women's Sanitation Needs
A Yale study applied a mathematical model to calculate the cost-benefit of installing public toilets for women to reduce sexual assault in Khayelitsha, a South African township. They found that increasing the number of toilets would result in a net savings, even after accounting for installation and maintenance:
- Currently there are 5,600 toilets for 2.4 million people, and 635 sexual assaults happen per year, at a cost of $40 million
- Doubling the number of toilets would decrease sexual assaults by 30%, saving $5 million per year in medical, legal and other costs
- This is a conservative estimate that doesn't even include the many additional health benefits and increased economic participation of women when they have access to safe sanitation
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
2. The Workplace
The "Invisible" Labor of Women's Unpaid Work
In 1975, 90% of Iceland's women went on strike for a day, refusing to do any work - paid labor or housework and childcare. Chaos ensued as a result:
- Offices and schools shut down, unable to operate
- Fathers scrambled to find food and care for their children
- Sausages, a common ready meal, sold out as men struggled to cook
This "Women's Day Off" demonstrated how much society depends on women's behind-the-scenes labor to function. Despite unpaid domestic and care work being essential, it is not recognized as "real" work because it is not included in economic measures like GDP. This renders women's contributions invisible.
Section: 2, Chapter: 3
The Uneven Division of Unpaid Labor
Globally, women do significantly more unpaid work than men, and this disparity persists even as more women enter the paid workforce. On average, women do 4.5 hours of unpaid work per day compared to men's 1.5 hours.
- In India, women spend 6 hours a day on housework compared to men's 13 minutes
- American women do 4 hours of unpaid work per day vs 2.5 hours for men
- Even in Norway, with a relatively gender-equal culture, women do more unpaid work
Time use data shows that when women reduce their unpaid work, it is usually because they are doing more paid work - not because men are contributing more. Men consistently fail to match women's unpaid contributions, regardless of employment status or income.
Section: 2, Chapter: 3
"A woman's work is never done - or counted"
"Globally women do three times the amount of unpaid care work men do; according to the IMF, this can be further subdivided into twice as much childcare and four times as much housework."
Section: 2, Chapter: 3
The False Promise of Meritocracy
Meritocracy is a myth. Despite companies increasingly using supposedly objective measures like performance reviews and scores to evaluate merit, gender bias still creeps in:
- Women face gendered double standards, with qualities like assertiveness being penalized in women but rewarded in men
- Women receive more subjective negative feedback about their personalities, while men receive more constructive feedback about their work
- Women's performance ratings are more likely to be attributed to luck rather than skill
- White men are judged as more competent than equally performing women and people of color
The reliance on merit metrics and "objective" algorithms can actually deepen inequality, by laundering human biases through a veneer of neutrality. True meritocracy requires an honest reckoning with bias.
Section: 2, Chapter: 4
The Petrie Multiplier Effect for Women in Tech
In the early days of computing, women were well-represented as programmers. But as the prestige and pay of the field grew, women were actively pushed out:
- In the 1960s-70s, personality tests and hiring criteria were introduced that favored stereotypically male traits, like introversion and a singular focus on machines over people
- These criteria were not proven to be predictive of programming ability, but they shaped a stereotype of "anti-social nerds" as the archetypal coder that persists today
- Women who remained in the field faced rampant sexism and doubts of their competence, leading many to leave over time
Today, women make up only 25% of computing jobs. This gender gap stems not from innate differences, but from biased assumptions about what makes someone good at the work.
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
Masculine Defaults in Workplace Design
From uncomfortable uniforms to inconvenient bathroom setups, women are an afterthought in many workplaces designed around men as the default worker. For example:
- Standard US military uniforms only started being redesigned to fit women's bodies in 2011, previously leaving women with ill-fitting gear that restricted their movement and safety
- NASA spacesuits come in only medium, large and extra-large sizes, too big for most women astronauts. A planned all-female spacewalk was cancelled due to not having enough suits that fit.
- Offices are kept at temperatures suited to the male metabolism, an average of 5 degrees too cold for women who have lower metabolic rates and less insulating muscle mass
- Desks, chairs and equipment are sized for the male body, causing back and neck strain for many women who don't fit the standard proportions
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
The Exploitative Side of the Beauty Industry
The nail salon industry predominantly employs immigrant women of color, often in exploitative conditions without adequate worker protections. Technicians are exposed to a cocktail of toxic chemicals linked to respiratory, reproductive and cognitive issues, but little research exists on safe exposure levels.
- Nail salon workers are seen as disposable by employers, with rock-bottom pay and few benefits
- Lax regulations mean salons often lack proper ventilation, protective equipment and safety training
- When women do suffer health issues, language and immigration status barriers make it hard for them to speak out
- Dangerous chemicals are used in products with little oversight because beauty standards pressure women to use them
Section: 2, Chapter: 6
3. Design
How Farming Technologies Shape Gender Roles
Ester Boserup, a Danish economist, proposed the idea that societies that historically used the plough developed more unequal gender norms than those that practiced shifting agriculture. The theory posits that:
- Plough agriculture favors male strength because operating the plough requires upper body strength and grip strength that women on average have less of
- Plough agriculture is less compatible with childcare than shifting agriculture, making it harder for women to combine farm work and family responsibilities
- Plough agriculture is more capital-intensive, favoring men who have more access to land, tools and draft animals than women
- As a result, in societies that relied on animal-drawn ploughs, gender roles diverged and men came to dominate economic and public life while women were relegated to the domestic sphere.
Section: 3, Chapter: 7
The Pitfalls of "Pink It and Shrink It" Design
Too often, designers take a "one-size-fits-men" approach, creating products around the male body and then simply "pinking and shrinking" them for women as an afterthought. But this approach fails women:
- Women have different body proportions, center of gravity and grip strength than men, so products designed for male bodies can be uncomfortable, ineffective or even dangerous for women
- Women's menstrual, reproductive and menopausal health needs are routinely ignored in product design, from the lack of period trackers in early smartwatches to the dearth of research on how drugs affect women
- Products for women are often just men's products made smaller and cuter, without accounting for women's actual needs and preferences
- The lack of women in design roles means their perspectives are missing in the design process, resulting in male-biased products G
Section: 3, Chapter: 8
The Gender Data Gap in Smartphone Design
Smartphones are getting ever larger, with the average screen size ballooning from 3.2 inches in 2010 to over 5.5 inches today. The average woman's hand is an inch smaller in width than the average man's, so large phones are harder for women to hold and use comfortably.
Women's pockets are on average 48% shorter and 6.5% narrower than men's, so large phones don't fit well in women's pockets, making them easier to drop and break. Women are more likely to suffer from repetitive strain injuries in their hands and wrists, which can be exacerbated by overextending to reach all parts of a large screen
Some features like facial recognition work less well for women, as the algorithms are often trained on mostly male faces
Despite being half the smartphone market, women's needs are rarely centred in phone design.
Section: 3, Chapter: 8
Designing for the Female Body
To create products that work for women, designers need to:
- Collect and use anthropometric data on women's bodies, not just men's
- Conduct user testing with diverse groups of women to identify pain points and preferences
- Include women in the design process, from research to prototyping to marketing
- Challenge assumptions about what is "gender-neutral" and actively design for women's needs
- Provide a range of sizes and fits to accommodate the diversity of women's bodies
- Avoid gendered stereotypes and focus on functionality over aesthetics
- Continually gather feedback and iterate to improve the user experience for women
Section: 3, Chapter: 8
The Invisible Women of Science
Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, making up only 28% of the STEM workforce. This gender gap is not due to innate differences in aptitude, but to systemic barriers and biases that push women out of STEM:
- Gendered stereotypes that portray STEM as a masculine domain and assume that women lack the natural brilliance to succeed
- Lack of representation of women in STEM textbooks, media and popular culture, sending the message that STEM is not for girls
- Biased hiring, promotion and funding practices that favor men and penalize women, especially mothers
- Hostile work environments that tolerate sexual harassment, discrimination and unequal pay
- Lack of family-friendly policies and flexible career paths that force women to choose between STEM and family
Section: 3, Chapter: 9
How Male-Biased Algorithms Perpetuate Inequality
The algorithms increasingly used to make hiring, lending and admissions decisions are not as objective as they seem:
- Hiring algorithms trained on past hiring data conclude that successful candidates look like current employees - replicating the historic male skew
- Algorithms used to predict recidivism in the criminal justice system rate Black defendants as higher-risk than white defendants, reflecting racial bias in policing data
- Credit-scoring algorithms give women lower credit limits and higher interest rates than men, as they are trained on data reflecting the gender pay gap
- College admissions algorithms favor students from wealthy, white, male-dominated schools, as they are trained on data that encodes systemic privilege
Section: 3, Chapter: 9
Strategies to Close the Gender Gap in Tech
To create a more inclusive tech industry and unbiased algorithms, we need:
- Active recruitment and retention of women in STEM education and careers
- Unconscious bias training for educators, managers and HR professionals to combat sexist stereotyping
- Blind resume screening and structured interviews to reduce bias in hiring
- Transparent and equitable compensation structures to close the gender pay gap
- Clear anti-harassment policies and reporting mechanisms to create safe work environments
- Flexible work arrangements and family-friendly policies to support work-life balance
- Intentional collection and use of diverse, representative datasets to train unbiased AI
- Algorithmic audits and impact assessments to identify and correct for bias in AI systems
- Inclusive user research and testing to design products that work for diverse users
- Diverse leadership and governance to ensure accountability and align AI with societal values
Section: 3, Chapter: 9
4. Going to the Doctor
How the Male Default in Medical Research Harms Women
Women have been historically excluded from medical research, with serious consequences for their health.
Clinical trials have long used mostly male participants, assuming that results will apply equally to women. Even in female-prevalent conditions like chronic pain and autoimmune disorders, studies often fail to enroll enough women or analyze sex differences
Textbooks and medical education continue to treat the male body as the default, with women's health seen as a niche topic. As a result, women face higher rates of misdiagnosis, adverse drug reactions and unrelieved symptoms than men The male default in medical knowledge is not just scientifically inaccurate - it is deadly for women.
Section: 4, Chapter: 10
"Women Are Not Just Smaller Men"
"Sex differences appear even in our cells: in blood-serum biomarkers for autism; in proteins; in immune cells used to convey pain signals; in how cells die following a stroke. A recent study also found a significant sex difference in the 'expression of a gene found to be important for drug metabolism'. Sex differences in the presentation and outcome of Parkinson's disease, stroke and brain ischaemia (insufficient blood flow to the brain) have also been tracked all the way to our cells, and there is growing evidence of a sex difference in the ageing of the blood vessels, 'with inevitable implications for health problems, examination and treatment'."
Section: 4, Chapter: 10
The Vicious Cycle of Gender Bias in Heart Disease
Heart disease is often thought of as a "male disease", but it is actually the leading cause of death for women worldwide. However, women with heart disease face a vicious cycle of gender bias in medical care:
- Diagnostic criteria for heart attacks are based on male symptoms, so women's heart attacks are often missed or misdiagnosed as anxiety or indigestion
- Risk calculation scores underestimate women's risk of heart disease, as they are based on male-pattern risk factors and outcomes
- Clinical trials for heart disease treatments often exclude women or fail to analyze sex-specific effects, leading to less evidence-based care for women
- Women are less likely to receive aggressive treatment for heart attacks and heart failure, even when they have the same severity of disease as men
- As a result, women have worse outcomes and higher mortality rates from heart disease than men. Closing the gender data gap in heart health is crucial to saving women's lives.
Section: 4, Chapter: 11
5. Public Life
The Invisible Labor of Women's Unpaid Work
Unpaid domestic and care work is overwhelming performed by women, yet it is excluded from conventional measures of economic activity like GDP. This exclusion renders women's labor invisible and devalues their contributions to society.
Estimates suggest that unpaid work could account for up to 50% of GDP in high-income countries and 80% in low-income countries. Unpaid care work is often seen as a "costless" resource to exploit, allowing governments to cut public services and shift the burden onto women.
Recognizing and valuing unpaid care work as "real" work is essential for gender equality and sustainable economic development. We need to close the gender data gap in economic statistics.
Section: 5, Chapter: 12
"Womenomics: The Costs of Excluding Women's Work"
"If we really want to start designing transport systems that serve women as well as men, it's no good designing transport infrastructure in isolation, cautions Sánchez de Madariaga, because women's mobility is also an issue of overarching planning policy: specifically, the creation of 'mixed use' areas. And mixed-use areas fly in the face of traditional planning norms that, in many countries, legally divide cities into commercial, residential and industrial single-use areas, a practice that is called zoning. Zoning dates back to antiquity (what was allowed on either side of the city walls, for example), but it wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that we started to see the kind of explicit division of what could be built where that legally separated where you live from where you might work."
Section: 5, Chapter: 12
The Hidden Gender Bias in Tax Systems
Tax systems around the world often have implicit or explicit gender biases that disadvantage women and reinforce gender inequalities:
- Joint filing of income taxes for married couples, as practiced in many countries like the US, can create a "marriage penalty" for women, as their income is taxed at a higher marginal rate than if they filed individually.
- Tax credits or deductions for dependent spouses, as provided in countries like the UK and Japan, can discourage women's labor force participation and reinforce traditional gender roles.
- Consumption taxes like VAT often apply to goods and services that women disproportionately consume, such as childcare, menstrual products, and basic necessities, making them more regressive for women.
- Tax systems that favor capital gains, property, and corporate income over labor income tend to benefit men, who own more wealth and assets than women.
- Lack of sex-disaggregated data and gender analysis in tax policy-making means that these biases often go unrecognized and uncorrected.
Section: 5, Chapter: 13
Strategies for Gender-Responsive Tax Policy and Advocacy
To create more gender-equitable and pro-poor tax systems, we need:
- Collection and analysis of sex-disaggregated tax data, to identify and address gender biases and impacts in tax policies and practices.
- Gender impact assessments and budgeting of tax policies, to ensure that they promote gender equality and women's rights, and do not exacerbate inequalities.
- Progressive and fair tax systems that tax wealth, assets, and high incomes more than consumption and labor, and that provide adequate revenues for gender-responsive public services and social protection.
- Challenging gender stereotypes and norms that undervalue women's paid and unpaid work, and that justify unequal and unfair tax systems and public spending.
Section: 5, Chapter: 13