Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

by Caroline Criado Pérez

There is no such thing as a woman who doesn’t work. There is only a woman who isn’t paid for her work.

the traditional workplace is tailored to the life of a mythical unencumbered worker. He – and it implicitly is a he – doesn’t need to concern himself with taking care of children and elderly relatives, of cooking, of cleaning, of doctor’s appointments, and grocery shopping, and grazed knees, and bullies, and homework, and bath-time and bedtime, and starting it all again tomorrow. His life is simply and easily divided into two parts: work and leisure.

The result is that when ‘brilliance’ is considered a requirement for a job, what is really meant is ‘a penis’.

Instead, we continue to rely on data from studies done on men as if they apply to women. Specifically, Caucasian men aged twenty-five to thirty, who weigh 70 kg. This is ‘Reference Man’ and his superpower is being able to represent humanity as a whole. Of course, he does not.

Like so many of the decisions to exclude women in the interests of simplicity, from architecture to medical research, this conclusion could only be reached in a culture that conceives of men as the default human and women as a niche aberration.