In 2019, Caroline Criado Perez published her book “Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men”, highlighting how our society fails to account for women.
The way in which women are excluded can range from phones being too big for their hands and offices that are on average five degrees too cold for them, to more grave issues. The aforementioned issues include the fact that women are 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash than men. The reason for this is that crash dummies are often modelled after the male body of the 50th percentile, meaning cars’ safety procedures do not take into account the female anatomy. In an EU car safety test, only one female dummy in the 5th percentile (meaning only 5% of women will be shorter than the dummy) is required. Yet, the dummy used has not been tested in the driver’s seat and is not even representative of women; it is simply a “scaled-down male dummy”.
Women are omitted from the data. For example, the rise of AI analytics produces trends favouring men and forgetting women. Amazon had to abandon an AI program when it was discovered that it favoured men over women for suggested hiring.
From health to city planning, a lack of data on women has resulted in a lack of catering to them.
Written by Josie
Artwork by Delicia
Comments