Invisible Women is about how women are missing from data collected and used to, say, create crash test dummies for cars, plan bus routes, design cell phones, etc. She points out that disparity in collecting data about women leads to dangerous situations for women. For instance, women are more likely to die in a car accident because seat-belts are designed to safely hold a man in place, and does not account for the difference in body composition and fat / lean mass location. The bus routes are planned around where men go to work, and not so much around shopping trips, which are more often performed by women. This creates very inconvenient travel for women.
The thoughts in this book were well-expressed, and interesting. I did feel at times that she was over-stating her case, but that is often true of books with a strong bias (in this case feminism). Not that I’m saying feminism is a bad bias, only that it IS a direction that can be leaned too heavily upon at times (like every other social issue). Overall, a highly suggested book for those interested in feminism.
This seems to be a real problem in the way that we gather data and plan out society. I would hope that there has been improvement in these areas in the past few years. Does the author give any indication that things are getting better?
I agree, we need to avoid bias and misinformation, no matter how important a particular topic is.
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The author overstates things, so does not give much indication of whether things are getting better or not. But I suspect it’s getting better at some level, since awareness of the situation is increasing.
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I’ve long thought that seatbelt design is a problem for women, especially busty ones like me! This book sounds really interesting, thanks for sharing your thoughts
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Yes, it was quite interesting. I had heard of the seatbelt problem before, but didn’t realize that it was as bad as all that!
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