I am very rarely amazed by non-fiction books with social justice focus as we live in a fake data-biased world. And now, THIS BOOK: This book has shown me that contradiction is futile. Caroline Criado-Perez sets off a firework of facts and provides a source appendix that makes up one seventh of the book. As Perez bluntly puts it, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Invisible Women is about the Gender Data Gap when it relentlessly reveals the gender differences in the collection of scientific data. When reading it, one often does not know: am I amazed, appalled, speechless or angry?
This is - luckily - not another book being an empty manifesto full of world-weariness, but a collection of uncomfortable, proven facts where the "Kopf-in-den-Sand-tactic" is sheer futility. I think, the book is a chance to become a better, more inclusive, more empathetic person. This is especially true for men, but also for women and everyone else. Possibly, however, especially for male feminists who believe that everything is easy with equality. Fiddlesticks. In a world that relies on data based on the male gender, nothing is simple.
I also learned that I personally belong to the priviledged "unencucumbered women workers": my life is (fact-based in comparison with most women in the world with caring responsibilities) simple and easily divided into two parts: work and leisure. Perez argues that a failure to account for women’s unpaid care work has created a world where the traditional workplace is designed to suit the male workers...
This book is as instructive as it is worth reading, and it seems very challenging and ambitious to summarise it meaningfully in just a few characters. You can already tell that Caroline Criado-Perez researches intensively and that her knowledge, which she documents on 75 pages of appendices, has hand and foot. And it is all written in a precise, factual and easy-to-understand manner. Only the density of information, data and studies kept me from consuming the book in one go while lying in bed smoking blunts... But even if you enjoy it in bites: "Invisible Women" is a powerful book in which Caroline Criado-Perez makes clear, without any dogmatism, how our world can benefit from a change in consciousness. A stirring book that everyone should have read and that makes us see the world with new eyes.