Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

As the title Invisible Women makes clear, Perez wants to illuminate the cost of equating men with all humans. Gender neutrality is a myth; the reliance on the male default produces a system biased against women. When the male body and its needs are the standard in product design, architecture, medicine, city planning, workplace conditions, and work schedules, women’s needs are not accommodated, or they are given very low priority. Moreover, because the male default is used as a convenience, there is no or very limited data about women’s needs and the impact of product designs and other factors on them.

What’s worse, lacking gender-disambiguated data, women who are seeking to design products with women’s needs in mind find themselves in a catch-22. Perez explains, “In a field where women are at a disadvantage specifically because they are women […] data will be particularly crucial for female entrepreneurs” (175). Yet such data simply does not exist.

Perez provides a multitude of examples of the male default not working well for women. In everything from city design to snow plow scheduled, the male standard disadvantages women. The gravest examples have dire significance. For example, there are significant differences in the physicality of men and women. The average male size does not fit the average women. This means that even personal protective equipment does not fit women well—a failure that has resulted in the death of a female police officer and has exposed countless other women to peril.

Perez highlights the high cost to women and all humanity of this bias. The risk to female lives is particularly evident in the medical system’s reliance on the male standard. The male body dominates medical textbooks and curricula, and men form the vast majority of participants in clinical trials. Because women’s biology is different from that of men, there are real differences in the reaction to drugs, the symptoms of diseases, and diseases themselves. Given the historical bias in the medical system, women’s complaints have been dismissed if their symptoms or diseases did not mimic those of men. There is no question that women have suffered and died as a result of these biases and data gap in the medical system.

Although women perform 75% of unpaid work globally—essential work including childcare, eldercare, preparation of food, and basic sanitation—this unpaid work is excluded from the calculation of a nation’s GDP. Labeling this “perhaps the greatest gender gap of all” (241), Perez argues that this work accounts for almost 50% of the GDP in high-income countries and as much as 80% in low-income countries. Its exclusion from the GDP makes this work invisible. As a result of its invisibility, it is not accommodated in economic and public systems.

Government policies contribute to women’s economic disempowerment in several ways. First, when governments seek to cut spending, social programs are often the first target. Consequently, women have to pick up the slack—after all, children, the elderly, and the infirm must be given care—typically reducing or eliminating paid work to do so. They suffer economic losses and often take on exploitive part-time work with disproportionately low pay and a lack of job security. Such disparities contribute to the gender pay gap. Another way governments negatively affect women’s economic standing is with tax incentives that frequently reward women’s withdrawal from the paid workforce and fail to collect data on their effects on women. Perez argues that most tax systems enrich men and impoverish women.

In male-dominated fields, including STEM workplaces and politics, women must adhere to male standards and held to an impossible standard. They are expected to behave like men but also punished for doing so. Yet their presence in positions of power is valuable. They contribute a female perspective, noting issues that men frequently fail to see. In the political realm, women are more likely to address issues of concern to women, such as children’s education. Women are leading the charge as well to collect data on the needs of women. However, when women gain power, they are frequently met with a hostile environment or threats of violence. Women are therefore more likely to quit or not get involved in public fields like politics the first place. Because lawmakers impact the distribution of power and shape the rules of the workplace and life, the male perspective thus continues to dominate. The female perspective is simply missing and that matters. In short, women’s contribution, in the form of paid and unpaid labor, is of tremendous value to society yet it is too often uncounted and devalued.

Male violence against women is a constant threat. Yet such violence is neither adequately measured nor considered in the design of public and private facilities. Women’s legitimate concerns about their safety are even dismissed with the citation of bad data in the form of low crime statistics. In reality, sexual harassment and assault are vastly underreported. Even when women do report harassment or assault, there are often no consequences for the perpetrator and the complaint is not processed in any meaningful way, creating a data gap about violence against women.

Ignoring this epidemic of violence against women, men do not take this risk into account when designing facilities, which results in inconvenience, physical discomfort, and health and life risks for women. For example, a lack of public toilets means female farm workers fear assault if they publicly undress and therefore refrain from drinking liquids and/or wear adult diapers during the workday. Conversely, the trip to poorly placed public toilets is sometimes dangerous, so women must make adjustments to stay safe. Similarly, public transportation is not designed with women’s safety from male violence in mind. The problem is so extensive that many female workers conclude that traveling to and from work is the most dangerous part of the day. With minimal cost, steps could be taken to make transportation safer.

Women are most vulnerable in times of crisis, as rape is a common weapon of war. However, even after fleeing male violence, women in refugee camps or detention centers often find themselves at the mercy of male guards. At the other end of the spectrum, women in positions of power are also not exempt from this dynamic. Women who hold political office are at risk of sexual violence. In fact, there has been an increase in such threats to women in powerful positions. The reality of male violence causes women’s freedom to be restricted. Safer designs and procedures are essential to ensure the fulfillment of women’s rights.