Webchat with Caroline Criado Perez on her new book, Invisible Women - on Tuesday 30 April at 12.30pm

[NiamhMumsnet]

Hello

Caroline Criado Perez will be joining us for a live webchat on Tuesday 30 April at 12.30pm, to discuss her latest book: Invisible Women - Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.

Invisible Women looks at government policy and medical research, technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media - and aims to show that biased data excludes women.

Why are mobile phones the size of an average man’s hand and not a woman’s? Why are ‘female’ crash test dummies usually tested in the passenger and not the driver’s seat? Why are typically female presentations of a heart attack systems considered atypical?

She describes the impact that living in a world where the default human is considered to be a man has on women’s health and wellbeing - and makes the case for change.

Caroline Criado Perez is a writer, broadcaster and public speaker. Her first book, Do It Like a Woman, was published in 2015. She is also an award-winning feminist campaigner - her campaigns include getting a woman on the Bank of England banknotes and campaigning for a statue of suffragist Millicent Fawcett to be erected in Parliament Square. As some of you will know from previous guest posts she has written for Mumsnet, she’s also involved in the campaign for a People’s Vote.

Please do join us on Tuesday if you’re around or leave a question on this thread in advance.

Please bear in mind our webchat guidelines (including one question each - follow ups allowed if there’s time). Also following recent chats/guest posts we’ve updated our guidelines to let people know that, if one topic is overwhelmingly dominating a discussion with a guest, mods might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. Rest assured we will ALWAYS let guests know that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Thanks
MNHQ

If you worked for an IT company developing a series of different products, who would you target to read this book so that they’re aware of the data gap?

As someone who has put so much time and energy into the gendered world, I'm curious if you have you been able to come up with a definition of "gender identity"?
And as a woman with a now large audience, will you please challenge the conflation of sex and gender when you see it? Thanks

Excellent interview on LBC with James O’Brien last week. Persuasive and articulate.
I think about the ideas often.

Thank you for writing this book Caroline!

My question is, which area do you think women could make the most difference in redressing the balance? I’m interested in taking action, but your book shows just how all pervasive sexism is. If there was one area (medicine? Product safety? Product design etc) where would you say there is most opportunity for significant change?

I also really enjoyed your book and read it with interest. I'm also an engineer, working in manufacturing so I had a professional interest in much of what you were saying.

However, much of the book was focussed on the problem, with the majority of the solutions being "get more women involved". I am a woman having previously worked in product design and I don't think it is that simple. Women often don't think of other women either. When designing, you mostly use a set of historic data (based on men), but it it often impossible to dig back into the data to find where it came from. This is because designers need numbers, ie tensile and compressive strengths not qualitative description. Historically, over stress has also been considered more dangerous than understress, hence men's data being used. This myth is starting to change, which will hopefully help the flow to more balanced data.

But, do you have any other ideas about how we can close the data gap?

I don't have a question, but a huge thank you for this book: so powerful and I've started so many conversations around it recently. And thank you for all your other marvellous campaigning and awareness reading work. Actually, I guess my question is ... what next?

Hi @SpartacusAutisticusAHF, it is currently stickied in Feminism chat. We will now sticky it in Feminist Theory, Feminist Activism and Feminist Support. Thanks!

Hi Caroline

It's brilliant that your book is getting so much exposure. Crash test dummies and medical symptoms are something which feminists enlightened me about, on this very site.

My question is the same as a couple of others. Have you been approached by anyone, in any of the fields, who want to change the bias?

Thank you for writing this book. It is hugely important and has been eye-opening to us all. My question is on next steps. If you could get 100 women to do something to try to make a difference, what something would you want them to do?

Love the book. A real eye-opener. And hopefully a game-changer too.

My question regards our own view of ourselves as women. So many times on Mumsnet I've seen women asking if they are being unreasonable in asking for help with basic common ubiquitous female medical problems that they have been told they just have to 'grin and bear'. Aside from the really serious biases in research that you mention that can leave women dead, how to you think we can address this chronic background feeling that women's pain isn't something that needs addressing?

I'm talking about undiagnosed endometriosis, thyroid problems, menopause, fibroids, and just plain old 'painful periods' that there is no satisfactory solution to - and that are all life-altering and debilitating.

I think if a man was told that they would be in crippling pain for three or four days a month, and bleeding everywhere, that it would be classed as quite a significant and chronic life-altering illness; yet we meekly go away and get on with the pain because so many doctors dismiss it. I've even seen (multiple) women on here struggling to know what to do with daughters starting their periods and really struggling - and not knowing if they are 'allowed' to feel sympathy and anger - and hesitant as to whether to take the poor girl to the doctor, or to let them have a day off on their first period. How are we going to stop this?

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This is the first webchat in ages where I am really, really excited!

This is a bit under the wire at 12.06 but ... book was great, I was most interested in 'the drugs don't work' chapter. I am awaiting a hip replacement op and I have just discovered that hip replacement prostheses are designed for male pelves, not female. Despite most hip replacement patients being female. And so the failure rate is higher in women. Just wondered if you'd come across this in your book research. It's madness.

What do you think can be done about Twitter? I'm thinking about men who can get away with misogyny by talking about snapping Terfs necks, for example, while women are suspended for apparently hurting their feelings

Hello Mumsnet! Pops and I are here and ready to take your questions...this feels WAY more daunting than going on the today programme but we'll do our best! Going to dive in and start answering some of the questions that have already been posted -- may not get to all of them individually but will try to answer all topics at least! Wish me luck!

I can't see how to watch/listen to it. Help!

Best of luck Caroline - you'll be great.

Back in 2014 (before most of us here had even heard the word) you wrote a blistering blog post about rejecting the label 'cis' and the idea that women have 'cis privilege' over transwomen, and about the duty for women to SPEAK and to not feel scared and cowed.

I wanted to say Thank-you for that (and please can you find the old blogpost and reinstate it!)

Is this something you still feel able to speak about, or are there commercial or other pressures not to?

@GeordieGenes

Yay! I loved your book. It was long overdue.

What inspired you to write the book? Was there a particular object that highlighted this problem to you?

Hello! I'm so glad you enjoyed it! That is a question with an extremely long answer, but I'll try to keep it short(ish) so I can get to some other questions! So it was a few things. Ever since becoming a feminist at the age of 25 I had been angry about default male, because discovering it in my own head is how i became one. I read Debbie Cameron's Feminism and Linguistic Theory (highly recommend!) and found out that feminists asking for the end to generic male (he to mean he or she) was not the trivial issue I, as a non-feminist growing up in the 90s) had assumed, but that women actually picture a man when they hear these supposedly gender neutral words. I was so shocked that for 25 years i'd never noticed i was always picturing men. So that primed me to notice default male and for it to enrage me when i saw it.

And then then I found out about the gender data gap in medicine. I discovered that women are more likely to die following a heart attack because typical female symptoms are called "atypical", with the male symptoms (only one in eight women experience chest pain for eg) being seen as the typical.

I found out that the vast majority of drugs have not been tested in women. And I found out that in 2013 the FDA had to tell women to cut their dosage of the popular sleeping pill Ambien in half, because women were metabolising the active ingredient twice as slowly as men, and so were driving to work still under the influence, and crashing their cars.

I was horrified and furious to discover that in science, in medicine, this area we are taught is objective, was in fact anything but objective. and was riddled with the subjective positioning of the average male as the average human. and that women were dying as a result.

@Unburnished

Fantastic book. I was shocked to read some of the findings (car crash dummies and medical testing) - not so much the mobile phone issue though as I think they became bigger due to men complaining how small they were - I definitely remember there being articles on men not being able to use the tiny key pads due to the size of their fingers (when everyone had either a Nokia, Motorola or Blackberry). Showing my age now!

How have men in the public eye and positions of influence reacted to your book? Have any supported you? What do you plan to do to promote the book further (in terms of an equality campaign)?

Hi unburnished, there has actually been a really positive response from most men, which has been really gratifying! Men and women have got in touch to tell me it has changed the way they are approaching work projects they are involved in which is exactly what I wanted. The book was meant to open all our eyes to how it's been great to see how open people have been to it. In terms of what i plan to do to promote the book further, I think I've done the thing by writing it! What's needed next is for experts in every field to apply the findings of the book to their specific area -- they are the best people to address it as they will know where the changes can be made. So I guess what mumsnetters could do is buy a copy of the book for every manager/designer they know :D

@AncientLights

This is a bit under the wire at 12.06 but ... book was great, I was most interested in 'the drugs don't work' chapter. I am awaiting a hip replacement op and I have just discovered that hip replacement prostheses are designed for male pelves, not female. Despite most hip replacement patients being female. And so the failure rate is higher in women. Just wondered if you'd come across this in your book research. It's madness.

Hi AncientLights, I actually don't think that was something I came across or I would have included it because that is outrageous! And it seems so baffling -- while there is a lot about sex differences we don't know, because we simply haven't done the research, one sex difference we do definitely know is that female pelvises are not the same as male pelvises! But on the other hand it's not that surprising. The vast majority of medicine is designed for the male body, whether it's drugs, diagnostic tests. and the fact is that women have less effective treatment and more side effects as a result.

@BernardBlacksWineIcelolly

I have the audio book and it has been lovely having your company in my car

this feels like a very important book to me - one that will be talked about for a long time

what shocked you most when researching the book?

God. it's so hard to pick one thing because it's ALL SO SHOCKING! But ultimately i think the thing that shocked me most was not a particular data gap, but the excuses that come up. The most common of which is that women are just too complicated to measure. Our travel patterns are too complicated, the way we work is too complicated (too complicated to design auto enrolment pensions around 😡) our bodies are too complicated! And so again and again, for reasons of simplicity, researchers distort the reality they are supposedly trying to measure, by excluding half of humanity. It's enraging because it just makes NO SENSE. What is the point of mesauring a distorted reality? There is no point. And the result is that women end up poorer, sicker, and sometimes, we die.

@okaasansan

Out of all the examples of data bias covered in your book which one gets the biggest reaction? Were you surprised by this?

I think probably car crashes is the one that gets picked up most often, and mobile phone handsets -- I guess because these are things that women experience on a daily basis. Other than that the most common reaction has been people getting in touch to tell me about how a woman in their life died from an undiagnosed heart attack which is just heart breaking and enraging. It's far too common

@MyNameIsJane

I’ve read and loved the excerpt and now need to read the book.

Can you do a bit more campaigning for pockets in women’s clothing please?

haha I'm doing my best! I have several pocket rants in the book! I'm still waiting for someone to take my FREELY GIVEN idea for setting up a website that collects all the clothes with pockets from all manufacturers into one website. WHY DOESN'T THIS EXIST?? A one stop pocket shop for all brands. please someone do it!