I picked this up for a few reasons. First, I am a data scientist so I like anything that looks at large data sets and analyzes it. Two, I’m trying to learn about all of my own biases and the privileges that those entail. This book is enraging. I’m not sure how or why women tolerate any of us.
This book is about all of the different ways women are excluded from the narrative, usually without their knowledge and certainly without their consent. For example, did you know that most crash test dummies are male and that when they use female dummies, they are usually placed in the passenger seat? That means that every bit of safety data essentially ignores what happens to female drivers of vehicles. A five-star safety rating might really be for cars with male drivers only. I’m not terribly surprised by that. I would go so far to say that not much of what is in this book is surprising. It’s disappointing and when faced with story after story like this it becomes anger inducing. The worst part of it all, is that most of this ignoring of women is not malicious, it is just ignoring. Women aren’t in the rooms that devise the studies or make the decisions so their input can’t even be offered, which is the real problem, in my opinion.
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