Book Review: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

[DaveC426913]

This is an earth-shaking book; it should be required reading.

It is not a litany of rhetoric and editorializing; it is a bible of facts and statistics (that will be cited for decades to come), supporting an irrefutable picture of a gender crisis that has escaped me and escapes anyone who pretends otherwise.

I'm a typical middle-aged, middle-income, white guy and I thought I had a working understanding of the gender gap. I did not. I had the typical MAMIWG surface level understanding of what I *saw*, and I can say the operative word in this book's title is *invisible*.

We all know that concert theatres have inequitable lineup for the washrooms during intermission. Sure, women need stalls and take longer in general. But it never occurred to me that women are MUCH more likely to have responsibility of care children and/or seniors. That will tend to greatly extend their bathroom time and duties. These factors are cumulative.

It would be revealing if the actual engineered square footage of bathroom facilities were determined by the data based on throughput of visitors by gender. How large would the women's bathroom have to be compared to the men's so that, on average, no woman - including her smaller bladder, her entourage of children/seniors/pregnancy/etc. -has to wait for a stall (let alone stand in a lineup going out the door) longer than a man? How small would the men's washroom have to be to generate a line that stretches across the foyer - long enough long that men choose just to “hold it” rather than miss the cue to return to seats? (Women do this. Did you know that? I did not.)

Just one little example of a thing that was completely invisible to me.

If I personally don't see it, let alone experience it, it isn't happening. This is a recurring theme of the book.

Snow-plowing! We plow the roads first, right? Priority goes to the cars to get to work. Except women are much more likely to walk or bus to their places of employment. Additionally, women are much more likely to "trip-chain" combining multiple, interconnected errands such as childcare, elder-care, household shopping, etc. And they often do this burdened with baby-buggies, strollers and purchases. These things are cumulative.

Unplowed sidewalks invariably make trips longer and more risky. The result is a far higher injury incidence for women than for men.

Don't see it, isn't happening. It's not for want of looking - to those of us who don't *actually* walk a mile in those snow boots, it's invisible. But author Perez puts numbers to all these examples and many, many more.

Female crash test dummies. Women are at much greater risk of getting injured in a car accident, because the standard crash test dummy is a 70kg, 5'9" male. Guess how many crash test dummies are pregnant. I'll leave it to the interested reader to find out when the first female crash test dummy was put in a car (hint: the 21st century)

I gave up highlighting passages that I wanted to save to read to my wife in the morning. The whole book is noteworthy passages. (To *me*. She smiles and nods approvingly as I recount things she's lived her whole life.)

The TLDR message of this book: we lack disaggregated data. Companies collect all sorts of data on the human condition, but don't collect data on gender. So, for example, a dataset of all drivers involved in accidents hovers around the Reference Male (70kg,5'8"), with deviations from that norm falling off to either side. Except about 95% of all women fall below that line (read the book to check my numbers), which means they vastly outnumber men in being underrepresented by the data. And this goes back a LONG time. 21st century policies are still based on arbitrary reference models that simply ignored women. The effect is cumulative. Women can't get jobs or proper healthcare or a hundred other things because we keep using data that's hopelessly outdated and hopelessly biased.

Thing is: why *that* reference model? Women aren't a minority or a special interest group; they're not a fraction of the population they're 50 percent of the human population. But for the flip of a coin, centuries ago, it could have been a (checks notes) 62kg, 5'4" woman. And why not? An alarming number of academics are on record as sating it is because women's physiology is too "complex" with too many "confounding factors". A little tip here: when a factor is 50% of your sample size, it's not a *confounding* factor; it's a *diagnostic* factor.

Imagine: "Patients with arms make it difficult to assess the efficacy of our drug. Arms are a confounding factor, so we only collect data on armless patients. The drug we are releasing to the world (armless and arm-adorned) is based on our Reference armless patient. And we don't tell anyone this of course."

(*My* example, not Perez'. Perez is matter-of-fact in her approach, not facetious like me.)

This is all stuff I has simply did not know until I picked up this book (on a whim, no less. It came up in my list of non-fiction, and I saw the words “data bias” and thought it might make some nice reading or this numberphile.)

Finally, if you want an extant example of the uphill battle faced by women in a male-dominated world, check out some of the one-star reviews. The ones I read are so cliched I wonder how they can possibly be written by real people, they are cartoonish males that make me embarrassed.

A lotta feelings in those reviews.

Feeling attacked for being a white man. (How can you feel attacked by facts?)

Feeling it's important to point out that Perez is a Feminist Activist (OK, first off - duh! Thanks for pointing that out for the rest of us. But also - you say that like it's A Bad Thing. Like, somehow standing up and fighting for your rights - your HUMAN rights - is to be denigrated. In what world would a rational good-hearted human NOT want a disadvantaged people to fight for the rights the rest have? WTH?)

And here's the best one: several reviewers felt that Perez would benefit from their wisdom about what she *should* have written about. (What's all this about women? What about world poverty? You should be writing about that instead!) How is this not a cardboard cliche of a man condescending to 'splain to a woman what she should be doing in His Not So Humble Opinion? I am not making this up.

Yeah. So. I drank the Gender Wokeness Kool-aid - and now I can't undrink it.

You should too.

Thank you Caroline Criado Perez for enriching my life.

 

[DaveC426913]

P.S. If you find any typos - even the smallest one, please let me know. I spent more time proofing than I did writing, and I'm still finding errors - some my own, but some due to the copy-pasting process from my document.

 

[hmmm27]

We all know that concert theatres have inequitable lineup for the washrooms during intermission. Sure, women need stalls and take longer in general. But it never occurred to me that women are MUCH more likely to have responsibility of care children and/or seniors.

You mean you haven't noticed the number of women, laden down with spawn and elderly charges at the typical symphony concert.

I'll leave it to the interested reader to find out when the first female crash test dummy was put in a car (hint: the 21st century)

that would be the 1976 part of the 21st century, then.

Except women are much more likely to walk or bus to their places of employment. Additionally, women are much more likely to "trip-chain" combining multiple, interconnected errands such as childcare, elder-care, household shopping, etc. And they often do this burdened with baby-buggies, strollers and purchases. These things are cumulative.

There should be women-only storage lockers at their places of employment where they can park the elderly, children and groceries, during the day, while they mine coal.

May be a bit cynical of me, but I doubt Ms.Perez has researched to whether government, insurance agencies and architects are still using data which may have been relevant 50-100 years ago, but may not be, now.

 

[jack action]

It fascinates me how someone can read a single book and suddenly become a believer.

First thing, you say this like there is a conspiracy from men against women. But - as you should know - men don't get together on the first Tuesday of each month to discuss how we could make women's lives more miserable.

If I personally don't see it, let alone experience it, it isn't happening.

Amen to that! I mean, how could anyone possibly live his or her life differently? The real question is: How come 500 million women (let's stay in the Western world you are referring to) DO experience all of these problems and DON'T do anything about it? That is the real question that needs to be explored. I mean, there are no laws against women's bathrooms being different from men's bathrooms, is it?

How small would the men's washroom have to be to generate a line that stretches across the foyer - long enough long that men choose just to “hold it” rather than miss the cue to return to seats? (Women do this. Did you know that? I did not.)

You did not know that and it didn't occur to you because you would not accept such a situation. This is what happens when you don't have an appropriate men's bathroom size:

Men don't "hold it". And if you don't want to clean up your theater's surroundings after each show, you will react and set up appropriate bathrooms.

The real culprit of our society is that women are culturally raised to think they cannot do things by themselves and that there must be somebody else out there responsible for taking care of them. That way of thinking has been out of the window for the last 50 years or so. Laws were changed, men got on with their business, and it seems harder for women to take up responsibilities for their own well-being. Not only women don't complain about public bathrooms, but how could it be possible that no women own, manage, or design a single theater in this world? It is just impossible. Why do they comply?

I did have an eye-opener experience about 25 years ago with a men's bathroom where men were just entering and leaving as needed and there was an amazingly long line at the women's bathroom next to it. Guess what? One woman was fed up and just announced to everybody "I'm using the men's bathroom!" She did. A few others followed. No men cared. Everybody was amused. If this was happening regularly, bathroom design would change. As long as women will "hold it", change won't happen.

Guess how many crash test dummies are pregnant.

Not every woman is pregnant all the time. The fertility rate in Western society is about 1.5 births per woman. Assuming a longevity of 80 years and that the first 3 months of pregnancy are unnoticeable that means that only 0.9% of the women are pregnant at any given time (which represents 0.45% of the population, of course). It is amazing that they are represented at all.

Women are at much greater risk of getting injured in a car accident, because the standard crash test dummy is a 70kg, 5'9" male.

But I'm a 135kg, 6'2" male. And I'm pretty sure there are more people (men and women) of similar size than pregnant women.

Jokes aside, saying that nobody cares about anyone but the average male in crash test dummies is completely false:

In the early 1950s, Alderson and Grumman produced a dummy which was used to conduct crash tests in both motor vehicles and aircraft. The original "Sierra Sam" was a 95th percentile male dummy (heavier and taller than 95% of human males).

Alderson went on to produce what it called the VIP-50 series, built specifically for General Motors and Ford, [...]

[...]

General Motors, who had taken over the impetus in developing a reliable and durable dummy, found neither Sierra model satisfied its needs. GM engineers decided to combine the best features of the VIP series and Sierra Stan, and so in 1971 Hybrid I was born. Hybrid I was what is known as a "50th percentile male" dummy.

[...]

Hybrid III, the 50th percentile male dummy which made its first appearance in 1976, is the familiar crash test dummy, [...]

GM also needed a test device to simulate a small female for testing of driver airbags. In 1987, GM transferred the Hybrid III technology to a dummy representing a 5th percentile female. Also in the late 1980s, the Center for Disease Control issued a contract for a family of Hybrid III dummies to help test passive restraints. Ohio State University won the contract and sought GM's help. In cooperation with an SAE committee, GM contributed to the development of the Hybrid III Dummy Family, which included a 95th percentile male, a small female, a six-year-old, child dummy, and a new three-year-old. Each has Hybrid III technology.

So it took 25 years to develop the standard crash test dummy, and 11 more years to expand it to the general population, which we've been using - and improving - for the last 35 years. Doesn't sound like the horrible misogynistic, androcentric, stories you have heard. The current family of crash test dummies:

Unplowed sidewalks invariably make trips longer and more risky. The result is a far higher injury incidence for women than for men.

I am a big walker. I could write a book about [bad] sidewalk design & maintenance in winter. Horrible and unjustifiable! But the reality is that this has absolutely nothing to do with a men-women segregation. It has 100% to do with a driver/walker ratio. A higher driver/walker ratio means more weight goes to the drivers in public decision-making. And that ratio is so high that there is no way ALL women are walkers and ALL drivers are men.

 

[DaveC426913]

You mean you haven't noticed the number of women, laden down with spawn and elderly charges at the typical symphony concert.

Pretty sure that's what I said, yes.

that would be the 1976 part of the 21st century, then.

Sorry. I left out the word 'pregnant' (I didn't mean to). That's was a pretty relevant gaff on my part.

May be a bit cynical of me, but I doubt Ms.Perez has researched to whether government, insurance agencies and architects are still using data which may have been relevant 50-100 years ago, but may not be, now.

I'm kind of curious how you would draw such a conclusion about what she's researched without knowng a thing about her or the book. It sounds like a prejudgement.

Still, I think you would be astonished at how relevant her research is. Thanks letting for me segue into this addendum to my review:

Review addendum:
The book is 700 pages long (on my reader). Of that, only 560 pages are exposition. The other 140 pages (that's 20% of the entire book) is citations. In other words, for every four pages of her essay, another page is required just for citations to stats and facts.Still, you arrive at the right answer, albeit by the wrong path. The book addresses, at great length, the fact that, yes, government insurance agencies and architects are using data that's 50-100 years out of date. That's a major theme in her book!

 

[DaveC426913]

Caveat: which I am obliged to prepend to any post that wants to debate the issues:

This is a book review; it is not an essay by DaveC436913. My thoughts about the book are not the sum total of the book and are in fact, entirely inadequate to be the subject of a debate. Debating with me is going to necessarily result in the response : If you want to talk about the issues that I have clumsily transcribed here, you'll have to get them from the horse's mouth and read the book first.

It fascinates me how someone can read a single book and suddenly become a believer.

I did not detail the apth that led me here. It wasn't sudden.

First thing, you say this like there is a conspiracy from men against women.

No, I didn't. And it's pretty inflammatory to suggest so.

But - as you should know - men don't get together on the first Tuesday of each month to discuss how we could make women's lives more miserable.

No, they don't.

The oversight is, in large part, inadvertent and unconscious. Did you not read the parts where I keep hammering on the point that the gender data gap is invisible? If I am a policy-maker, and simply do not realize what different needs women have, that's not a conspiracy.

Amen to that! I mean, how could anyone possibly live his or her life differently? The real question is: How come 500 million women (let's stay in the Western world you are referring to) DO experience all of these problems and DON'T do anything about it? That is the real question that needs to be explored.

And it is. That's the real cost to the gender data gap. It is built on layer after layer. Women, by and large, don't have the same opportunities. They are still snubbed from jobs and roles that allow them to enact and enforce their changes. Policy makers that enable women to move into such positions are basing their decisions on data that is gravely out-of-date. Partly beaue there is very little new data to supplant it.

The real culprit of our society is that women are culturally raised to think they cannot do things by themselves and that there must be somebody else out there responsible for taking care of them.

Yes Because the data - and the people that rely on that data - teach them so. It's a cumulative problem.

That way of thinking has been out of the window for the last 50 years or so. Laws were changed, men got on with their business, and it seems harder for women to take up responsibilities for their own well-being.

I thought so too. Read the book.

Not only women don't complain about public bathrooms, but how could it be possible that no women own, manage, or design a single theater in this world? It is just impossible. Why do they comply?

See above. The ability to get into such positions is stacked against them.

As long as women will "hold it", change won't happen.

That's ridiculously simplistic.

Jokes aside, saying that nobody cares about anyone but the average male in crash test dummies is completely false:

I did not say that.

Doesn't sound like the horrible misogynistic, androcentric, stories you have heard.

I did not say that.

I would be more interested in things that were said, or better yet, Perez's facts instead of my book review - over a bunch of strawmen.

I am a big walker. I could write a book about [bad] sidewalk design & maintenance in winter. Horrible and unjustifiable! But the reality is that this has absolutely nothing to do with a men-women segregation. It has 100% to do with a driver/walker ratio. A higher driver/walker ratio means more weight goes to the drivers in public decision-making. And that ratio is so high that there is no way ALL women are walkers and ALL drivers are men.

You raise a point but then shoot it down. Women are, statistically, more prone to be the walkers. (Remember this includes povery-stricken areas of the developed world as well as developing countries). The issue is inadvertantly affecting women as a side-effect of prioritizing vehicle-drivers over walkers.

If sidewalk users were represented proportionately on policy boards and in the data (such as work hours lost to snow storms and injuries) the policies would be different.

 

[Dum Leme]

Women, being what men compete for, will always have some men hating them for being the great prize of humanities evolution. Those men are the losers of those competitions. Suck it up, and get better, would be better than hating. The law should reflect women and children above men. Equality just brings women and children down to where men belong.

 

[jack action]

Women are, statistically, more prone to be the walkers.

Even if this is true, it is not a valid argument for better maintenance of sidewalks. One injured walker is one injured walker. If there was a law requiring women to walk or not drive cars, then it would be an argument against that law.

If sidewalk users were represented proportionately on policy boards

They are represented more than proportionately: There are 11 people on my city council (4 are women, including the mayor), and having just one (man or woman) representing the walkers most likely exceeds the driver/walker ratio among the population. Yet, this will never be enough to prioritize sidewalks.

The ability to get into such positions is stacked against them.

That is simply unfounded for the last decades. Women are easily accessing governing positions nowadays and it has been so for my generation (X) and the one following. And it would not even require a 50/50 gender equality for change to happen. (Assuming gender in decision-makers does make a difference.)

These kinds of statements perpetuate - consciously or not - this prejudice that puts us back to a time when women were seen as requiring help to accomplish anything, most likely by men.

Policy makers that enable

And there is your big problem: the need for policies to manage every individual's life. The more policies you add, especially to a very large population, the less fair it will be.

At one point you have to trust your people to do the right thing. Without that trust, there is no point in living within society. You educated them and you let them go. You let them solve the local problem by themselves. The more policies you create, the more they rely on policies to manage their lives. It is not a question of gender or minorities. Yes, we need to focus on the right problem that solves all problems.

It really doesn't require a policy to make a larger bathroom. It doesn't require national data about the average waiting period for the bathroom based on gender, ethnicity, and religion either. People are waiting in line and complaining, you add another stall, and that's it. There is nothing extraordinary about accomplishing that.

The whole concept of needing policies plays a large role in creating all of these problems.

The other major factor in creating those problems is by insisting on gender differences. If public bathrooms were accommodating everyone like the ones we have at home, we wouldn't see any men-women difference; there would be just one line. It is again because of this old mentality that fragile defenseless women need to be protected against evil men that we still have gender-based bathrooms. Women are not fragile and defenseless; men are not evil.

Another one I like is this one:

Women are 27% less likely to receive bystander CPR for an out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest event than men. Why? There may be a very simple explanation: breasts.

[...]

CPR is required for everyone who goes into sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), and yet the taboo of baring a woman’s chest in public and beginning CPR on her to save her life may sometimes cause men (and even women) to hesitate. A study of 600 participants in 18 different CPR sessions was conducted by Dr. Torben Becker of the University of Florida in Gainesville. He found that of those that were reluctant to step in and perform CPR, 14% said they were reluctant to expose a woman’s chest, and 6% said they were afraid they would be charged with sexual assault. Despite all efforts to lift that taboo by raising awareness of the importance of quality CPR and the use of an AED to treat SCA, women are less likely to receive the care they need from bystanders, which means they are statistically less likely to survive.

Isn't this terrible? All of these policies that are supposed to protect women end up making them more vulnerable in other ways. The more you differentiate humans (gender, race, etc.), the more problems you cause.

This is what we should work on, not making policies or focusing on data set interpretations reinforcing those prejudices.

 

[Dum Leme]

I do not like equality. As a man, I hold women and children above myself. Equality under the law of the land I have to give, but if push came to shove, there is no way I would lower women and children to my level. FMPOV, you all are talking of women and men, where your focus should be the weakest and not the fittest.

 

[DaveC426913]

Women, being what men compete for, will always have some men hating them for being the great prize of humanities evolution. Those men are the losers of those competitions. Suck it up, and get better, would be better than hating. The law should reflect women and children above men. Equality just brings women and children down to where men belong.

No. They should not be elevated.

In particular, what they should not be is what others (such as you) think they should or should not be. That's part of the problem!

Ask them what they want. What they want is equity.

 

[DaveC426913]

Even if this is true, it is not a valid argument for better maintenance of sidewalks. One injured walker is one injured walker.

Perez' research shows that, on average, a woman being off for a week has a greater impact of the overall health and welfare of the household than a man being off for a week. Again, for a host of inteconnected reasons. By-and-large, the women look after the dependents, clean the home, cook the meals, tend to the animals, and - this is all unpaid labor. A man off his paid job is more likely to have vacation and sick leave, meaning stopping his job has no impact on that contribution.

There was an incident in Iceland in 1975 called the Long Friday, when all (actually just 60%) of the women on the island went on strike for a mere 24 hours.

Chaos ensued. Iceland's parliament passed a law guaranteeing equal pay the following year. The strike also paved the way for the election of the first democratically elected female president in the world five years later in 1980.

They are represented more than proportionately: There are 11 people on my city council (4 are women, including the mayor), and having just one (man or woman) representing the walkers most likely exceeds the driver/walker ratio among the population. Yet, this will never be enough to prioritize sidewalks.

Personal anecdotes are not data. Especially anecdaotes from the far end of a Bell curve with 8 billion data points.

One of the things I have always known about myself is that I am very priviliged to live where and how I do. I am way, way up near the top of the world standard of living. Considering you have a computer and an internet connection, I'm gonna bet you are too.

That is simply unfounded for the last decades. Women are easily accessing governing positions nowadays and it has been so for my generation (X) and the one following. And it would not even require a 50/50 gender equality for change to happen. (Assuming gender in decision-makers does make a difference.)

I look forward to your well-researched book with citations to make that case. Takes a couple of years to write a book.

Perez did the work.

These kinds of statements perpetuate - consciously or not - this prejudice that puts us back to a time when women were seen as requiring help to accomplish anything, most likely by men.

We are still in that time. I too thought we were out of the dark. We're not.

And there is your big problem: the need for policies to manage every individual's life. The more policies you add, especially to a very large population, the less fair it will be.

That's a rationalization to discourage change and growth.

It really doesn't require a policy to make a larger bathroom. It doesn't require national data about the average waiting period for the bathroom based on gender, ethnicity, and religion either. People are waiting in line and complaining, you add another stall, and that's it. There is nothing extraordinary about accomplishing that.

That's a rather idealistic view of how things work, IMO. A more accurate view is that developers won't add in things they don't have to without regulations to do so.

There was once a time food places (such as food courts and small restaurants) did not have restrooms - at least nowhere nearby . Why would any developer waste square footage on something that doesn't make money? History shows that, generally, developers will do whatever they can get away with (that doesn't mean 'corrupt'; it simply means they are a business). Planning committees wouldn't exist if this were not true. Regulations forced developers to put in restroom facilities that benefited individuals' quality of life over profits.

The whole concept of needing policies plays a large role in creating all of these problems.

If I'm a smoker, why would I enact a no smoking policy in my own store?

Why would I install accessibility features that I don't use myself? The few customers I might lose don't trouble me. It actually helps me save money on accomofating them.

Policies make sure that our broader communities are inclusive of all, whether or not it is profitable.

The other major factor in creating those problems is by insisting on gender differences. If public bathrooms were accommodating everyone like the ones we have at home, we wouldn't see any men-women difference; there would be just one line.

Yes. That is actually the best solution and will eliminate square footage issues. It'll be a long time coming but it's already starting. Some sports organizations are going for gender-inclusive change rooms. Counter-intuitively, this appears to lower the level the sexual harrassment.

It is again because of this old mentality that fragile defenseless women need to be protected against evil men that we still have gender-based bathrooms. Women are not fragile and defenseless; men are not evil.

No one said that. I'm more interested in debating the issues than any erected strawmen.

I'm also more interested in academic debate over facts that don't resort to purple prose designed to drag the discussion into an emotional arena.

Isn't this terrible? All of these policies that are supposed to protect women end up making them more vulnerable in other ways. The more you differentiate humans (gender, race, etc.), the more problems you cause.

This is a powerful image:

It highlights the problem with aggregating data and then treating everyone the same.
It also highlights what happens when you differentiate the data to better know provide what people need.

Women are underrepresented in the data. Metaphorically, we are still producing a one-size-fits-all box and doling them out one per person (specious anecdotes notwithstanding). True, there are some men who need boxes and there are some women who do not. But the policy in place for one-sized-box per person results in penalizing women more than men.

That is what Perez' extensive research shows, documented over 560 pages, with citations over another 140, which I am very clumsily recounting my introduction to.

 

[hmmm27]

Pretty sure that's what I said, yes.

Been awhile, but I don't offhand remember long lines of stroller/wheelchair laden women waiting for the jakes at intermission.

Sorry. I left out the word 'pregnant' (I didn't mean to). That's was a pretty relevant gaff on my part.

Oh, okay ; in that case, 1996.

I'm kind of curious how you would draw such a conclusion about what she's researched without knowng a thing about her or the book. It sounds like a prejudgement.

Well, apparently you have yourself to thank for that, re" "hint: the 21st century". Actually, 1971, GM shared their design for a female CTD with other manufacturers.

Still, I think you would be astonished at how relevant her research is. Thanks letting for me segue into this addendum to my review:

Review addendum:
The book is 700 pages long (on my reader). Of that, only 560 pages are exposition. The other 140 pages (that's 20% of the entire book) is citations. In other words, for every four pages of her essay, another page is required just for citations to stats and facts.
Still, you arrive at the right answer, albeit by the wrong path. The book addresses, at great length, the fact that, yes, government insurance agencies and architects are using data that's 50-100 years out of date. That's a major theme in her book!

And what, prithee is the "right path" ? Since, I'm obviously on the "wrong" one.

Ask them what they want. What they want is equity.

By "equity", you/they mean... what, exactly ?

I'm not rich, but I don't think there's as many calories on them as people seem to think there is.

 

[DaveC426913]

Been awhile, but I don't offhand remember long lines of stroller/wheelchair laden women waiting for the jakes at intermission.

Kinda Perez' point. We should ask the people who are actually inconvenienced, rather than going on what we condescend to think we know about them.

What you just said is a textbook example of the very problem Perez highlights. Lots of people (such as myself) and, importantly, policy makers, are blind to things they do not experince first-hand.

Studies she cites have shown that, when women are introduced into an otherwise all-male focus group, the breadth of solutions is enriched.

She cites multiple studies (New Orleans and Sri Lanka) where new homes were built to rehouse entire communites after natural disasters - and in te design of the new houses, the all-male committee just ... forgot to build kitchens and animal pens - both considered women's work.

It doesn't mean the committees should be all women; it means the women need representation - by women. Not by those who think they know what women need, as several posters in this thread have done (including you - lookin' at lineups in theatres).

Oh, okay ; in that case, 1996.

My figure says 2003. Volvo. I might be wrong.

Well, apparently you have yourself to thank for that, re" "hint: the 21st century". Actually, 1971, GM shared their design for a female CTD with other manufacturers.

What I said was "the first CTD that got put in a car". The road to hell is paved with "designs for".

And what, prithee is the "right path" ? Since, I'm obviously on the "wrong" one.

You said: "I doubt Ms.Perez has researched to whether government, insurance agencies and architects are still using data which may have been relevant 50-100 years ago, but may not be, now."

It sounds like you're suggesting that stale data somehow weakens - if not invalidates - her concerns. (Or did I misinterpret you?)

On the contrary, you're confirming her argument: Yes - the data government, insurance agencies and architects are using is many, many decades out of date! That is her very point!

So, you got the same place she did: the data is way out of date, but the path you chose was to ... somehow blame the widespread use of stale data ... on her?

And yes, that is indeed what her research turned up. (I'm also not really sure how you came to the conclusion that she didn't do reseearch on the very thing that is the core of her book. That sounds simply contrariwise.)

By "equity", you/they mean... what, exactly ?

I'm not rich, but I don't think there's as many calories on them as people seem to think there is.

Equivalence, as opposed to equality.

In the trivial restroom example (that can be scaled up to bigger issues):
- equality would mean both genders get the same square footage (This is also known as a gender-neutral solution.)
- equity means both genders have equitable, convenient access to restroom usage i.e. on average, everyone has to wait (or not wait) a similar amount of time because throughput is balanced to actual demand.

 

[hmmm27]

Just so we're clear : you make a "mistake", claiming women crash test dummies weren't used in vehicle testing until the 21st century ; I pick up on that obvious lie and - rather than attack you, personally - decide the book has some obvious issues. You then start and continue to make some rather specious conclusions about me, personally, because of that generosity on my part.

I don't know Ms Perez. I have no clue if her 140 pages of citations are scientific, statistical, or merely circular in nature.

A quick trip to Wikipedia, and apparently she's the daughter of Safeway's CEO, moved around a bit as a kid, attended posh schools, and her actual claim to fame is successfully petitioning to have a statue of a suffragette erected somewhere in London, and having the 10pd notes not have Churchill on them. Oh, and the Twitter backlash from that one cause her difficulty eating and sleeping for two days.

Ironic that she's demanding inclusion at top levels to represent things she knows nothing about : I don't see where she even knows what snow is, much less what happens to pedestrians traversing four foot drifts, with or without babes in buggies, elderly in sleds and a week's worth of groceries in multiple backpacks.

I also have no clue if her studies include current practices, or are limited to usage of archaic data because it makes her "point" better. Neither, apparently, do you. Have you checked her cites ?

The outrage because of men deciding things for women, then the further outrage when they leave kitchens and animal pens open for the women to have done the way they want it, themselves.

Long story short, take an emetic, or a colonoscopy-prep regimen ; that should clear the Kool-Aid out of your system.

 

[JT Smith]

Yeah. So. I drank the Gender Wokeness Kool-aid - and now I can't undrink it.

You should too.

Glad you found enlightenment. But it's presumptuous to assume the reader of your book review hasn't already arrived there by other means than this particular book. And of course understand that a lot of men are simply not interested in it.

 

[vela]

If I personally don't see it, let alone experience it, it isn't happening. This is a recurring theme of the book.

Reminds me of a thread here years ago where a poster decided there was no bias against women, conscious or unconscious, in STEM fields because he never witnessed it.

 

[256bits]

View attachment 1697395946246.webp
Equality vs equity?
Of course the difference is noted in the picture.

Equality is whereby everyone has the same level playing field, lest we not forget which was what the women's suffrage movement was originally all about.
Equity is where the playing field is distorted so that equal outcome irrespective of ability becomes the criteria of choice.
Equality is based upon the individual.
Equity is based upon the group to which the individual belongs.

No reason to debate the value of either as each has their place in a comprehensive society.
Just to add though,
An example of equality would be two job candidates rated upon a performance criteria of some sort, such as education, work history, etc. ie personnal achievement, fairness assessment all other things being equal.
An example of equity would be that the two candidates eligibility for the position is based on other non performance criteria such things as race, gender, and all that other stuff. ie group representation within society.

One can imagine that neither achieves desired outcomes at all times.

Note that equity requires more resources to uplift the disadvantaged individual ( the shorter person in the picture has two crates to stand on ) while taking away from the advantaged taller individual. Since resources are limited, in most cases this would apply.

No one argues anymore about wheel chair access, diaper changing rooms, sidewalks for people who do not drive, handicapped parking, express aisle for items under 8, ... , subsidized housing, as these seem now worthwhile 'causes, and the cost is born by someone else ie the taxpayer or the business.
Equity has been part and parcel of western democratic society fo quite some time, and it does ivolve transfer of funds from one area to another even if not so transparent.

Ultimately, the taxpayer is not a bottomless money tree ( pardon the mangled expression ) , and businesses are in the business to make a profit - limited resources if you will. Full equity for all groups ( I am a group of one, and so are you, or do you believe you belong to a particular group - which one based upon race, creed, colour, gender, pursuasion, height, weight, age - do you belong to more than one group - and do 'they; want you in that group ( ie the current gender change issue is sports ).

Perez talks ony about one group - women - a vast group of individuals that have only one thing in common, a double XX chromosome ). Of this group she talks about she would give the presentation as if all women group think, and so should you - as if a 20 year old has the same wants and desires as an 80 year old - as if a black woman with six kids has the same life difficulties as a college student ).

Her book does serve a purpose of showing some valid non- equity.
But,

Unplowed sidewalks invariably make trips longer and more risky. The result is a far higher injury incidence for women than for men.

If this is one of her inequities regarding snow clearance, then this one is invalid. Another consideration is that women have tendancy to wear riskier foorwear that are prone to be accident inducers. Very few women wear gollashes with good rubber grip and heat retention- they somwhow grew out of that after grade 4 ?? a person-anal choice of fashion over safety. ( Societal pressures perhaps much like high heals - negative and positive reinforcement until they conform - a feminist viepoint )

Nevertheless, if she is a self proclaimed feminist, she should be writing about equality and not equity( she can do what she wants but sho do not ascribe this as being a feminist viewpoint ).
Equity is social engineering above and beyond feminism, and does not take into account only the separation of males and females based upon birth sex alone.

 

[Dum Leme]

No. They should not be elevated.

In particular, what they should not be is what others (such as you) think they should or should not be. That's part of the problem!

Ask them what they want. What they want is equity.

From GOOGLE. -- What is Equity? The term “equity” refers to fairness and justice and is distinguished from equality: Whereas equality means providing the same to all, ----- equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances."

We do all start from the same womb. True that we are not all born equal.

I balance women and children above myself. How is putting a weaker base to our demographic pyramid making it stronger?

It is not so even nature refutes what you think.

How is lowering women and children to a man's level more fair or just?

 

[jack action]

So I got my copy of the book today from the library. It's the French version, so I might have difficulty translating back what I read from this translation. I don't have a lot of time to read this but I'll do what I can.

I already read the preface and introduction which basically explains how the world is viewed as masculine by default.

Nothing is shockingly new about that since our societies are based mostly on sexist societies that used to be ruled by men.

What this introduction did for me is to reinforce my idea that the concept of ruling individuals based on a common set of policies, rules, or protocols has its limits and we most likely have reached them. To compensate, we are dividing people into subgroups (gender, race, etc.), getting closer to a point where every subgroup is composed of a single individual.

She begins by talking about male/female subgroups and quickly introduces us to black-female and black-female-in-a-wheelchair sub-subgroups that don't necessarily relate to the "female" subgroup. This is why focusing on giving value to the subgroup system is in my opinion a wrong approach. The rules that apply to a group must be true to every member of this group. Otherwise, the existence of the group becomes pointless and we better let everyone make their own decisions.

She also gives a hint about what justifies the writing of this book: AI and big data coming into our lives. This is the epitome of setting out simple policies to rule our lives, based on questionable data and methods to analyze it. Again, this has nothing to do with gender but more with the relevance of letting ourselves be guided as a whole by common policies (whether it be done by AI or not).

She raises a question that I have myself by saying women are treated as a minority even though they are not: Why is that? This is what really fascinates me. The mere size of this group should be large enough to be able to do anything they put their mind to. How come this group - apparently - isn't able to take its place in society?

There are also some examples that she's using to make her point but also misses the whole picture. One of them is the theory that humans evolved to become one of the deadliest species. She raises the question: Is this we as humans or is it only men? She gives a supporting argument with many studies stating that 96% of murderers across the world are men. OK, the point being made is that we assume all humans are men.

Then - two paragraphs later! - she brings up another argument for the male-by-default thinking by giving the example of a Viking skeleton that was discovered near a set of weapons, so everybody assumed it was from a male. A hundred years later, DNA showed it was the skeleton of a woman. Then she attempts to show us that female warriors might have been a lot more active than we thought: Citing that up to 37% of females in certain regions of the world probably were. Again, the point is that we assume every human is male by default; but it also contradicts the previous statement about violence being related to men only throughout evolution. So stating earlier that "humans" evolved to become the deadliest species is actually correct since it includes both men and women. She just brought down her first point with the second one.

There is also this argument about video game heroes being mostly male. I think this needs more context than just suggesting this is a consequence of a male-dominated society. Video games were initially created by nerds. Not the "cool" nerds of today. Being a nerd back in those days was an insult. It applied only to boys and they were bullied. They weren't part of the "Boy's Club" and certainly did not get the girls. They were a subgroup of males because not all males are alike. (The author does acknowledge not all females are the same but doesn't seem to apply this to the same extent for males.) Rejected, they retrieved in their mother's basement and developed a way of life, based on their fantasies, that somehow finally paid off decades later. It is normal that all of the heroes in their stories are males. If women being hurt would do the same, no one would be shocked that their heroes are all females either. This brings me back to my earlier question: Why does it seem to be so difficult for a group of women to take their place in society?

 

[fresh_42]

To my best knowledge, there is indeed a serious - and as far as I can tell - well-known gender difference in some diagnostics (e.g. heart attacks) and in the application of pharmaceuticals, too. Such fields have been heavily biased towards a male centristic view, and things change slowly, especially as the medical sector is still dominated by male researchers.

Unfortunately, this thread about a serious subject with a scientific background changed quickly into a discussion about gender in general and lacks references - to say it politely. The discussion should be on a scientific, medical level in the according forum, not a "general discussion" where people can celebrate their prejudices.

This thread is closed.