Book SummaryInvisible Women, by Caroline Criado Perez

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Invisible Women

When you read the words “average person,” who do you picture? If you’re like most people, you probably picture a man. In Invisible Women, feminist campaigner Caroline Criado Perez argues that this is because most humans operate under a male-as-default mindset: We consider the average person to be male. This mindset is particularly visible in gendered languages—for example, in Spanish, the masculine el doctor technically means “male doctor” but is often used to refer to a doctor of any gender.

(Shortform note: Perez notes that gendered languages often default to the male forms of words, but some speakers of these languages are pushing back against these gendered words—which suggests that the male-as-default mindset may be waning. For example, some Spanish speakers use gender-neutral endings to words, like -e or -x.)

Perez contends that this male-as-default mindset causes a gender data gap—a lack of information about the female experience—that harms women’s health, safety, and economic standing. This is because we don’t consider women the “average person,” so we don’t collect data on them.

(Shortform note: Although Perez didn’t coin the term “gender data gap,” data suggests that she did introduce it to the public consciousness. Google searches for “gender data gap” remained relatively low for years but spiked in February 2019 and have remained relatively high since then. Given that Invisible Women was published in March 2019 and started to release preview chapters shortly before that, this spike appears to be related to the book’s popularity—especially since the top related queries to the term include both the author and the book’s name.)

In turn, this gender data gap reinforces the male-as-default mindset. When there is no data about women, people (especially men) assume that the experience of the average man represents...

Invisible Women Summary How the Gender Data Gap Harms Women’s Health

According to Perez, our male-as-default mindset results in a gender data gap that harms women’s health. In this section, we’ll discuss how this manifests in everyday products—namely cars—and in our healthcare system—namely medicines.

How the Gender Data Gap Affects Everyday Products

Perez contends that we can see how our male-as-default mindset results in a gender data gap by looking at how everyday products—specifically cars—are created. Perez explains that our male-as-default mindset makes us believe that products that work for men must work for everybody. This leads us to not collect data on women and thus create products that harm women’s health. Notably, our cars don’t properly protect women because we don’t test car safety using female crash-test dummies.

To illustrate, Perez points to how the European Union determines whether a car is safe. In the EU, a car must undergo five regulatory crash tests. These tests determine whether the car is safe for all people, but they require the usage of a crash-test dummy based on the “fiftieth percentile male,” which demonstrates a male-as-default mindset. Since these tests don’t use female crash-test dummies, they...

Invisible Women Summary How the Gender Data Gap Affects Women’s Economic Standing

Perez asserts that the gender data gap, in addition to harming women’s health, also harms women’s economic standing. In this section, we’ll learn how our male-as-default mindset causes a gender data gap by leading us to not collect data separately on men and women—a failure that ultimately results in discriminatory systems that harm women’s finances. Then, we’ll learn how the gender data gap contributes to a male-as-default mindset that ultimately results in workplaces that don’t consider women’s needs and thus harm their ability to succeed.

How the Gender Data Gap Affects Women at the Governmental Level

Previously, we learned how our failure to collect data on women harms their health by contributing to the creation of cars that don’t protect them and medicines that don’t treat them. However, Perez argues that even when we do collect data on women, we still have a male-as-default mindset that ultimately harms women.

Perez specifically contends that due to our male-as-default mindset, we collect data on people and assume that it represents the average life experience. However, women have gender-specific concerns—and by not collecting and using...

Invisible Women Summary How the Gender Data Gap Affects Women’s Safety

We’ve now learned how the male-as-default mindset results in and stems from a gender data gap—but how does the gender data gap reinforce the male-as-default mindset? Perez writes that we can see this in the failure of society to sufficiently protect women’s safety in both daily life and in our responses to disasters.

How the Gender Data Gap Affects Women in Daily Life

To illustrate how the gender data gap affects women’s safety in daily life, Perez points to a ubiquitous feature of many women’s lives: public transit.

As we’ve seen, Perez argues that thanks to the gender data gap, many products work for the average man but not the average woman. The same is true of systems. Notably, many public transit systems don’t adequately protect women: Several statistics indicate that these systems aren’t equally safe for men and women because women are far more likely to be sexually harassed on public transit than men are.

But why don’t public transit systems adequately protect women? Perez believes this is because of a gender data gap that reinforces the male-as-default mindset: Women who are sexually harassed on public transit don’t report the crime.

Perez...

Shortform Exercise: Understand Your Male-As-Default Mindset

Throughout this guide, we’ve learned how various institutions harm women—both deliberately and inadvertently—because they operate on a male-as-default mindset. In this exercise, we’ll examine the ways in which you might be operating in a male-as-default mindset—and how you might start to question those assumptions.

As you read this guide, what examples of a male-as-default mindset did you recognize from your own thoughts and behaviors? For example, perhaps you regularly complain about a female coworker who leaves early to take care of her kids or you’ve always questioned whether women are harassed on public transportation because the statistics suggest otherwise. (Remember that since the male-as-default mindset is societal, you likely have it even if you’re not a man.)