Book Review: Invisible Women

Rashei
4 min readJan 29, 2024

My sister was losing her mind making small talk and minding her three year old all day long, for days on end. In an effort to help her out, I accidentally chanced upon this book named ‘Invisible Women’ by Caroline Criado Perez.

It is a captivating read replete with solid data backing each nuanced conclusion in the book. Basically someone who prefers meandering biographies, I got hooked because I found the book addresses so many real-time issues that women face. Like how tampons are classed a ‘luxury’ product in most countries and taxed accordingly. While condoms are not. Seriously.

The book basically points out how the world is designed to fit men — which is still only 50% of the population. Generally: whether in medicine or tech or town planning — women’s bodies and lives are seen as too complex and heterogeneous to track and plan around.

So instead of spending the extra time planning: we’re just conveniently omitted. This may not seem like a big deal but when it comes to aspirin doses for heart attacks that are measured for men… or car safety systems designed for men.. there are real consequences. Like death.

The sad fact is: it’s still not enough to make people (doctors, medical research bodies) go back to the drawing board.

What’s more disheartening is how women are routinely over medicated for depression or related symptoms though its men who often confess to depression on the whole. There seems to be stemming from propensity to medicate women quicker for being ‘hysterical’ rather than trying to handle the situation in a holistic manner.

Sex disaggregated data is not only routinely missing from planning efforts, it’s thought to be irrelevant. Especially in the instance of handing out tax credits. The child tax credits go to the account of the major breadwinner — usually men — in families with children ; though it’s proven time and again that it’s when the income reaches the woman that it results in better nutrition for the child (not to mention clothing and so on).

Particularly infuriating was the information that in Japan — there are tax credits available to married men provided their wife doesn’t earn above a certain amount. As a result — you guessed it — many Japanese married women voluntarily leave their jobs or go part time.

This gets even worse when poverty is involved.

Generally: women can be in poverty in households where the overall income itself is above the poverty line. Especially in India: due to patriarchal norms and the complete dependency on the man to be provided for.

Specifically when it comes to unpaid labor, it is taking away routinely from the gross domestic product (GDP) of every country because it assumes that the only work a woman does that is of value — is if she does a man’s job. Women routinely are having to drop out of work to care for children or the elderly — which is seen as taking away from the GDP. If the overall decision is to exclude household labor from the GDP — then a good way to increase it would be to invest enough money on a good child care or elder care system ? But no. There’s never enough economic growth to afford that!

If all this wasn’t maddening enough: the final piece on disaster relief (or lack of it) did it. In Bangladesh: women are never supposed to venture anywhere without a male escort. As a result: three times more women died than men in a hurricane because they were waiting for men to escort them to the shelter! Or they simply didn’t know because the warnings were given in public spaces like malls or markets where women can’t go ! Even in New Orleans — when the hurricanes hit — no one cared about what kind of treatment the women in the shelters were meted out. From sexual harassment to robbing : every incident possible occurred though police reports don’t reflect it (more than anything because most facilities were shut down in the disaster aftermath). Women always suffer more during disaster. I’m not mentioning the part about how most harm during armed conflict happens to civilians — mostly women — who are targeted by the marauding army for acts of widespread violence. Yet, when it comes to ruling the country so as to put better policies : it’s amazing the hurdles we have to face in order to do so. Studies show that Hilary Clinton lost the election simply because everyone disliked her ambition. When, as First Lady, she spoke of women’s rights at an International conference meant to address the situation in Rwanda and Bosnia: she was scorned for picking ‘soft issues’. So basically: once the revolution is done : the rights of women will be sorted out like an afterthought.

One would almost think we weren’t half of humanity. Women-in-power face the same sexism as anywhere else; and are given higher ratings if they don’t espouse women or minority issues in their term. Even in European Parliaments, women congress-members are shushed while talking or intimidated into silence.

If there was enough sex disaggregated data to support the inclusion of women’s bodies in medicine… to include the voices of women in town and disaster planning.. there could be a more just and equitable and possibly : peaceful world.

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