Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

PLEASE tell me you're all reading Invisible Women?!

135 replies

WyeWoman · 22/01/2020 17:56

I keep speaking to people about this amazing book by Caroline Criado Perez called Invisible Women! It is soooo bloody amazing!!
Link here: www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1113605/invisible-women/9781784741723.html

I need to discuss this with people. This woman is brilliant.

OP posts:
Deathraystare · 20/02/2020 12:46

Bum. Just tried to order it on Amazon but they put bloody prime in there so will have to wait . Pisses me off. We don't all want bloody prime.

Photosymphysis · 03/03/2020 21:09

Have namechanged since previous posts (as I do as a matter of routine).

Just finished the bit about car design and the inequality of crash outcome for women because they STILL don't properly collect data on actual women/female crash test dummies.

This is horrifying.

Especially when combined with only 14% of people in STEM are women, and all those stats on how unlikely they are to get funding at all, let alone to research things to do with women.

We're fucked. No wonder the yoof are trying to identify out of being female.

On the plus side, the paperback version of the book is out today/this week. Rather than lend my precious handbook of inequality, I'm going to buy a couple of paper back copies to lend to as many people as I can.

Anonymouse99 · 03/03/2020 22:50

I had the audiobook on pre-order and listened to it the day it came out as I was sitting in a hospital waiting room before an operation. The best and worst thing about it for me was noticing so much male bias that I didn’t see before.

Newwayofthinking · 05/01/2021 13:25

I have just finished reading this book and it is utterly fantastic and shocking and sad and has made me so so so angry and forgotten.

I have now passed it on to my BF to read.

RoyalCorgi · 05/01/2021 13:34

It's good to see this thread being revived - the book is really excellent and definitely worth a read.

I've also recently finished Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage. Another must read.

Scout2016 · 05/01/2021 13:50

It's great. I passed my copy on to MIL, who read and asked if she could pass it on. I was very happy about this, said yes of course! Then missed my copy and bought it again to re-read one day.
One thing though - I heard the author on one of those sciencey radio 4 programmes while I was driving a few months ago and some of the research she had used was being questioned and de-bunked a bit. (CC-P took the whole thing in really good grace.) What's bugging me is I can't remember which part of the book it was, and what the study was. Does anyone know?
Joan Smith's Home Grown is another fantastic book but again has the aspect of making you cross because there's the "it's women, they don't count" mentality again.
Half way through Irreversible Damage which is unravelling the threads of the whole mess in a very straight forward way.

CatVsChristmasTree · 05/01/2021 13:52

@RoyalCorgi

It's good to see this thread being revived - the book is really excellent and definitely worth a read.

I've also recently finished Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage. Another must read.

I'm waiting for the paperback as I want a physical copy so I can pass it on when I've read it. Got to wait until June though!
MedusasBadHairDay · 05/01/2021 13:54

My kindle copy has a huge number of highlights in it, it was so good. Think I'm going to need a physical copy too

SpiderGwen · 05/01/2021 13:55

I got it in hardback for myself when it first came out, sent friends/relatives 3 copies in hardback for Christmas 2019 and another 2 in paperback this Christmas just gone.

I think it’s one of the most important books in years. I think it should be required reading in high schools.

squashyhat · 05/01/2021 13:57

I got it for Christmas but it's in the queue behind one I must finish for my book club. I'm looking forward to reading it.

Newwayofthinking · 05/01/2021 13:58

@RoyalCorgi

It's good to see this thread being revived - the book is really excellent and definitely worth a read.

I've also recently finished Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage. Another must read.

Just about to start that one
Newwayofthinking · 05/01/2021 13:59

My BF said today, the thing is those people who read it are those who are interested already, and the people who need to read it wont

tellmewhentheLangshiplandscoz · 05/01/2021 14:03

I'll look this one up.

Another interesting (although highly depressing) book is The War on Women.

DeaconBoo · 05/01/2021 14:06

@Scout2016

It's great. I passed my copy on to MIL, who read and asked if she could pass it on. I was very happy about this, said yes of course! Then missed my copy and bought it again to re-read one day. One thing though - I heard the author on one of those sciencey radio 4 programmes while I was driving a few months ago and some of the research she had used was being questioned and de-bunked a bit. (CC-P took the whole thing in really good grace.) What's bugging me is I can't remember which part of the book it was, and what the study was. Does anyone know? Joan Smith's Home Grown is another fantastic book but again has the aspect of making you cross because there's the "it's women, they don't count" mentality again. Half way through Irreversible Damage which is unravelling the threads of the whole mess in a very straight forward way.
I'd be interested if anyone can help with this! Reading it there was so much I thought "that can't be right..." iyswim... i did check out a few references to get a better understanding of some of the minor points but would be interested if any of it had changed or was less clear cut than it seems. Not to dunk on CCP at all, it's an excellent book with so much to read further on.
FWRLurker · 05/01/2021 15:59

The thing about Shrier unfortunately is that I don’t think she would agree with CCP on almost anything that’s in Invisible Women. She’s a conservative and believes in gender role stereotypes, and thinks that feminism has gone too far.

Meanwhile CCP, even while cataloging women’s sex-based oppression in minute and exhaustive detail, can’t afford to discuss gender identity and keep her audience. Her book has already been cancelled by some women studies departments / book clubs for being trans exclusionary (she says in the prologue that while trans women are women that this book is about the material ways in which being female impacts women - not good enough apparently).

ChattyLion · 05/01/2021 16:25

May I join? I haven’t got further than the introduction of Invisible Women due to other things. It can be my lockdown thing to do Grin

Gurufloof · 05/01/2021 16:48

why isn't that on posters on buses and trains

Indeed this is a fabulous suggestion, and one I will pay towards. Can someone come up with a way to achieve this? Be it crowd funding or some other way.
I actually would but I'm sodding busy for the year. Maybe standing for women or a.n. other could set it in motion. I'd set up,a direct debit so they could be replaced as and when. Or better still get it printed as standard on timetables and other media.

Nothappytohelp · 05/01/2021 17:51

Invisible Women is an incredible book, it really opened my eyes. I seriously thought about leaving my copy in our staff room with the message "read this, feel the rage and pass it on!"

Scout2016 · 05/01/2021 20:34

Deacon I just spent ages searching again for it but no luck. I would think I had imagined it except I remember clearly thinking "bugger, I've just lent that to MIL, hope not too much is wrong" and how well CCP was taking it all. I can even remember the road I was on in the car and time of day, just not the actual research.

DeaconBoo · 05/01/2021 21:11

Ah, thanks Scout!

Socrates11 · 06/01/2021 20:01

Gave five copies as presents this Xmas. Well recieved, still need to finish my Kindle copy!

FestinaLentil · 07/01/2021 14:58

If you cannot afford to buy a copy - please know that you can order ANY BOOK from your local library and they have to get it for you. The maximum charge for this service is one pound.

Alas this is not true. If a book is readily available, likely to be read by several people and not fabulously expensive, we will very likely add it to our order. If a book is out of print, weirdly niche, too academic for a public library or so expensive that it means we have to reduce more popular book orders, we are very unlikely to consider a purchase.

Some libraries charge for investigating orders of "off-list" books, some don't, the charge is different in each authority, and may be over £1.

Happily we have several copies of this book in our system already.

ThatIsNotMyUsername · 08/01/2021 14:19

I haven’t read a book I’m a long time that had me going ‘of course!’ ‘Bastards!’ and ‘why didn’t I see that???’

FireUnderTheHand · 08/01/2021 19:05

I'm halfway through my second read of it - I purchased and read it when it was released... but it warrants another read so I am now reading each page much slower and taking notes.

Also reading Irreversible Damage (it finally showed up last week! I've been waiting for a couple months! yay!).

Confusedmum2001 · 08/01/2021 19:09

I havent seen it in the shops surprisingly