Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
Personal takeaways
Female bodies, minds and perceptions are routinely ignored in all modern human societies. It is so prevalent, that without specific data points it is hard to notice. We are so used to it.
Every claim author makes is backed up with data. It is so rare to see a book in such high quality in this regard.
This book has validated a lot of my personal struggles and shown that I am not alone in them:
- There is a reason I am more shy and cautios than my guy friends. Women (me including) are indoctrinated to be like that and society expect us to be dolls and punish if we are not.
- There is a reason I don’t dress too pretty and act boy-ish in stressful situations. That is a self-defence mechanism to avoid unwanted sexual attention and abuse. (It has worked well so far!)
- There is a reason I don’t know too many bold and strong women and why women often seem boring to me. Because men are “supposed” to be high achievers while women are “bitches” if ambitious. Taylor Swift in the Man gets it, too.
- There is a reason some places, tools and cars don’t feel comfortable. They are designed by men for men. I hate the tiny pockets on women’s clothing!
Reading the stories from others makes me appreciate how lucky I am for not suffering nearly as much as my fellow women. We are being punished for existing and being so “complicated” and not being like men.
If I remember just one thing from the book it should be this.
The aha! moment: GDP
Global GDPs are based only on the paid work. Paid work is overwhelmingly done by men, so by our measurements mostly men contribute to the economy.
But paid work is not the whole thing. Women overwhelmingly do most of the unpaid work such as care for children and elderly and housework as cleaning, cooking and groceries. Overall, women work way longer hours than men, but are not rewarded for it. I knew this already from an Aeon video about a female economist Marilyn Waring’s ideas, but now it really clicked.
Whenever a government cuts spending on social services, they don’t remove the need for the service, just put on an extra unpaid hours for women that way decreasing efficiency for everyone.
For example, by cutting down kindergarden availability, moms have to stay at home with their 1-2 children - a job that could involve much better ratio for kids vs grownups (5 to 1? 7 to 1?) and let the mothers work in paid jobs and use their brain for work.
The fact that we don’t measure these unpaid hours is the reason we don’t see how stupid such social service cuttings are to all of us. Sex disaggregated data is a must!
For work
Gender specific issues are a very real thing, especially (but not only) in developing countries. We have to include women in every aspect of work because their viewpoint widely differs from men’s for super valid reasons.
- having lockable and separate toilets and sleeping areas with good lighting improves the changes that girls won’t get sexually asaulted.
- not being able to attend a whole day seminar about improving agriculture is not a sign on lack of interest, but lack of opportunity to leave the house work (fuel, food, nursing) to someone else.
- avoiding the last transport or going through a safer but longer route reduces the chances of getting attacked. That is not nearly as big of a problem for men as it is for women.
- It makes sense to put women in powerful positions against vulnerable women. The chances for power abuse (and especially sexual one) reduces dramatically.
We are not the wrong gender, we are the coolest gender. Men just are too scared to acknowledge that.
We do leadership better, we are more thourough with our decisions, we are wiser in our thinking and more empathetic. All of these are social skills women excel at, plus by being women we automatically include the women related aspects way more than men could ever do.