Caroline Criado Perez argues in Invisble Women that women are consistently disadvantaged because many decisions are made without taking women into account: for most decision makers, women may as well be invisible.
I am glad I read the book. It has highlighted various pitfalls that I should watch out for and provided various insightful examples.
In many contexts, males bodies or behaviours are considered normal and female bodies or behaviours are considered deviations from the norm. E.g. having ‘anatomy’ and ‘female anatomy’ sections of a medical textbook.
In many contexts, not separating the data by gender or trying to be ‘gender neutral’ can inadvertently increase bias. E.g. in medecine, many studies do not make sure there is mix of women and men. E.g. parent friendly hiring policies which treat fathers the same as mothers could end up giving fathers an unfair advantage over mothers.
In many contexts, women’s perspectives are simply not considered at all. E.g. phone apps designed with assumption that phone is always in one’s pocket. E.g. traffic systems designed to optimise for 9-5 work routines without due consideration for home-makers or people in less traditional work. E.g. no explicit thought put into how the design of a local park is off-putting for girls; and how a park’s re-design lead to more girls making use of it.
Probably the best compliment this book can receive is that I noticed myself falling for one of these traps! In a toy project in which I analysed male and female squash players’ rankings, I phrased my observations for the female players by describing how it was different to the male players. As a result of noticing, I re-structured the descriptions by introducing a separate section in which I discussed the differences between male and female squash players. Hopefully I will be able to make similar changes in behaviour in more consequential situations.
On the other hand, I do think the book could have been better. My main critique is that the book is too long. Many examples of the book do not fit the main theme of the book. E.g., there is long discussion and lists of “shocking” statistics that show how women in India do most of the housework. How is this a data issue, and how is this surprising??
Another issue is that there are various instances of bad argumentation e.g. lacking nuance or being inconsistent. One example of this is that they discuss why GDP is not a useful statistic and then soon after use increases in GDP as evidence that various pro-female policies are good policies.
However, like I said at the start, I am glad I read the book and I would recommend it. You will be more aware of the many subtle (and non-subtle) issues women face, and the behaviour changes that you can make to help improve the situation.