INVISIBLE WOMEN: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez covers similar territory to Defined by Design but it’s a much better book. Even on areas where I have some knowledge — that medical professionals are remarkably clueless and insensitive to women’s pains and health issues — Pérez has fascinating stuff to say. And there’s a lot I didn’t know at all. I will note, though, that she doesn’t deal with cis/trans gender issues and is apparently trans-exclusionary.
Pérez shows in detail how the assumption men — their bodies, their lives — reflect a norm and that we should therefore design the world around them works out badly for women. Transportation planning, for instance, assumes the priority for roads is getting wage-earners to work, not parents taking kids to school; the roads that result are harder to negotiate. Ditto mass transit. Snowplowing roads before sidewalks can lead to more accidents, which usually affect women, who are more likely to be on foot.
For another example, while there are extensive guides on how men should lift heavy weights on construction sites to minimize injury, there’s nothing comparable for women in home-health care, even though they routinely lift hefty human bodies several times a day. Safety equipment designed for the “typical” male body doesn’t fit women, making them unsafe. Voice recognition software often doesn’t recognize women’s voices (one techbro suggested they should take classes on how to adjust their voice).
Lack of data makes things worse: there’s simply no research (at least as of 2019 when this book came out) about how women lifting invalids might hurt or how to do it safely. Even medicine has gotten by for years ignoring women’s different reactions to medicine, disease and drugs. Sometimes that makes doctors blind to adverse effects, sometimes they miss out on treatments that would help women more than men. There’s some evidence Viagra massively reduces menstrual pain but nobody’s interested in funding further studies.
It’s a good but infuriating book. However it also makes me optimistic by showing how small changes can generate big results. A bus ticket that allow women two trips within an hour is beneficial as women often multi-task on trips (first to the doctor, then to their kid’s school, say) and that reduces costs. Sweden discovered that it could encourage men to take paid paternity leave by replacing “this block of leave can go to either parent” with “the husband has up to three months — use it or lose it.” Even with that knowledge, the book is still infuriating.
Like The Exorcist, ROSEMARY’S BABY by Ira Levin spends a lot of time on the mundane lives of our protagonist, Rosemary Woodhouse and her actor husband Guy. Landing a fabulous apartment and wriggling out of their lease. Rosemary decorating and knowing the somewhat obnoxious neighbors. Even after she’s impregnated by Satan, there’s still none of the overt horror we get in The Exorcist. Nevertheless it works where the other book did not. Part of that is that Levin is a slicker, better writer than William Peter Blatty but there’s more to it. I don’t quite have the time but I might reread it and try to figure out why.
There is a horror to the book but it’s very much a woman’s horror, fitting in with the Pérez book above. When Rosemary’s demonic pregnancy starts to hurt her, her doctor (part of the Satanic conspiracy) assures her it’s nothing to worry about, just push through. Her regular doctor writes her off as hysterical when she tells him there’s something monstrous going on. Guy sells out to the Satanists for a better career, helps dope Rosemary, then lets Satan rape her in her sleep. When she wonders about the damage, Guy claims he was horny so he didn’t let her passing out stop him (I was pleasantly surprised that a 1967 novel shows Rosemary completely grossed out by this). It deserves it’s status as a modern horror classic.
All rights to images remain with current holders. Top cover by Rachel Willey.
