Book recommendation: Invisible Women - a very well sourced book on bias (specifically gender bias)

[yrp]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41104077-invisible-women


This book is a very eye opening look on gender bias throughout the world and how it unintentionally gets that way due to biases in data collection and well meaning policies that try to promote equality (that end up doing the opposite).


Every claim made by the author is very well sourced and the whole book is very data driven. I think it would help to read even the first couple of chapters and gain a new perspective.


Go Jackets!

 

[Technut1990]

YRP,

I'm not inclined to read an entire book that starts off telling me that i'm bias or complicit in unknowing bias to begin with. The foreword has already frustrated me. I have lost male loved ones to car accidents, I myself was given the wrong meds for a wrong diagnosis and the buttons on I phones are so small that I can rarely type anything correctly.

Data may indeed point toward an apparent bias but the word bias is used way to much to identify groups when it can only truly be applied to individuals. Bias is a persons actions or thoughts based on THEIR criteria. Meaning i'm bias against Pepsi because I live in a Coke world. I don't think men make things to be hard on women, I think they make things to conform to what they are doing. If a man invented an I phone he most likely made it to fit his hand not to display bias toward a woman's smaller hands.

If I'm wrong on this book please tell me but I owe my entire life to women, my upbringing was done by my mother, grandmother and a few female cousins , none of whom spared the rod. My conservative attitude is because all of the women in my life were no nonsense right and wrong life approaching type women. I'm not conservative b/c of the men in my family and I dont buy the thought process that while objecting to bias, concludes that all men ( or Caucasians, cops, African Americans, Asians etc...) are bias simply because they are members of a certain demographic.

Things are relative, what one sees as manifest bias another (like my grandmother) would see as a challenge -- had my grandmother been alive when the I phone came out she would have been the one to make a mini phone and marketed it to women. She wouldn't have complained that her hands were to small, to her that would be giving up and there aint no giving up when you aren't the one who started it

 

[MWBATL]

it's the feminist matriarchy simply trying to extend their control over the world.

Is it bias that women get custody of virtually all children in divorce cases? Is it bias that there are many, many more jobs as sex workers for women than for men? The silly lists can go on and on...but....c'mon.

 

[Whiskey_Clear]

 

[Technut1990]

it's the feminist matriarchy simply trying to extend their control over the world.

Is it bias that women get custody of virtually all children in divorce cases? Is it bias that there are many, many more jobs as sex workers for women than for men? The silly lists can go on and on...but....c'mon.

Uh I do just fine thank you !!!

 

[yrp]

YRP,

I'm not inclined to read an entire book that starts off telling me that i'm bias or complicit in unknowing bias to begin with. The foreword has already frustrated me. I have lost male loved ones to car accidents, I myself was given the wrong meds for a wrong diagnosis and the buttons on I phones are so small that I can rarely type anything correctly.

Data may indeed point toward an apparent bias but the word bias is used way to much to identify groups when it can only truly be applied to individuals. Bias is a persons actions or thoughts based on THEIR criteria. Meaning i'm bias against Pepsi because I live in a Coke world. I don't think men make things to be hard on women, I think they make things to conform to what they are doing. If a man invented an I phone he most likely made it to fit his hand not to display bias toward a woman's smaller hands.

If I'm wrong on this book please tell me but I owe my entire life to women, my upbringing was done by my mother, grandmother and a few female cousins , none of whom spared the rod. My conservative attitude is because all of the women in my life were no nonsense right and wrong life approaching type women. I'm not conservative b/c of the men in my family and I dont buy the thought process that while objecting to bias, concludes that all men ( or Caucasians, cops, African Americans, Asians etc...) are bias simply because they are members of a certain demographic.

Things are relative, what one sees as manifest bias another (like my grandmother) would see as a challenge -- had my grandmother been alive when the I phone came out she would have been the one to make a mini phone and marketed it to women. She wouldn't have complained that her hands were to small, to her that would be giving up and there aint no giving up when you aren't the one who started it

Don't take the author's thoughts to be blaming you or other men for causing a problem. It's not trying to assign blame to one gender vs the other. It's rather pointing out the man being the "default" is causing a lot of problems that disproportionately affect women, and the fact that we should collect gendered data to see how policies affect either gender.

Your example of iPhone fitting a man's hand is a good one - it shows that lack of diversity in the workplace at, say apple, is causing a bad user experience for 50% of customers. It's in apple's best interest to fix this. And thus in apple's best interest to increase the representation of women in their company, etc.

Again, you don't have to read the whole book, but I'd encourage you to read the first chapter (or even the first few pages of that chapter) and see whatyou think.

Maybe I will post an excerpt if I can find one online

 

[yrp]

Here's 3 pages of it that I screenshotted from the Amazon sample that's available for free (so you don't even have to buy the book to read the first chapter).

Maybe this will convey a point

 

[Whiskey_Clear]

@yrp and @Technut1990 are both being misogynists for assuming the designer of cell phones was a man and not perhaps a woman or sis gender or one of any number of infinite genders I just don’t know the names of.

 

[LibertyTurns]

@yrp and @Technut1990 are both being misogynists for assuming the designer of cell phones was a man and not perhaps a woman or sis gender or one of any number of infinite genders I just don’t know the names of.

If women’s hands are such that larger phones are annoying, how come every woman I know has the biggest damn phone she can find. Methinks size matters, at least to them.

 

[GT_05]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41104077-invisible-women


This book is a very eye opening look on gender bias throughout the world and how it unintentionally gets that way due to biases in data collection and well meaning policies that try to promote equality (that end up doing the opposite).


Every claim made by the author is very well sourced and the whole book is very data driven. I think it would help to read even the first couple of chapters and gain a new perspective.


Go Jackets!

Everyone can appreciate this short podcast by Mike Rowe that is somewhat related to the @yrp post. The podcast series is called “The Way I Heard It” and the episode you need to listen to is #1 - The $25 Million Dollar Kiss. Most of these are a few minutes long and they somewhat remind me of how Paul Harvey would tell a story.

https://mikerowe.com/podcast/


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Animal02]

If there was a market for small phones for small hands, you can be damn sure there would be a product made. It really comes down to economics. I don't have a great choice of shoes since I wear a 15- 1/2. And the shoes that are available tend to be more expensive. Do I get to whine about discrimination? My gf when I was at Tech was able to buy designer clothes in the kids department because she was only 5 ft.....at half the cost I would have to pay. Again, discrimination against tall people (not really, just economics) I could go on and on with examples about how life is so unfair.

 

[Animal02]

If women’s hands are such that larger phones are annoying, how come every woman I know has the biggest damn phone she can find. Methinks size matters, at least to them.

Was at a party years ago...a wife of a friend of mine started talking about an idea she had for tools for women. I, being the snarky jokester, said they already have them. She looked at me sort of bewildered and ask where. I told her they were everywhere......mops, brooms, vacuums, etc.

She did not speak to me for months.

 

[B Lifsey]

And here I thought right handed people were the issue

 

[yrp]

Now you guys are focusing on the phone thing instead of the example that the author clearly spells out in the screenshots i posted. Please have a look at that and let me know your thoughts

 

[yrp]

Everyone can appreciate this short podcast by Mike Rowe that is somewhat related to the @yrp post. The podcast series is called “The Way I Heard It” and the episode you need to listen to is #1 - The $25 Million Dollar Kiss. Most of these are a few minutes long and they somewhat remind me of how Paul Harvey would tell a story.

https://mikerowe.com/podcast/


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Pretty interesting, thanks for the link!

 

[Milwaukee]

Here's a stat for you: there are 3.8 billion women in the world...and yesterday for lunch I had to make my own sandwich.

 

[LibertyTurns]

The problem with gender bias is it’s way oversold. These people systematically compared apples to oranges and it just turned people off, sadly much in the same way our nation’s racial dialogue has gone.

Here’s some alternative questions:

A. Why should someone that works 180 days a year get paid the same amount as a person that works 265 days a year?
B. Why should you pay someone in management more if they have less tenure? Does experience not count?
C. One person works in a physically demanding job that over time wears your body down the other does not. Should they be paid the same?
D. One person gets here early every day to cover the people on OT at work at 5am or stays until 6pm with those working late, the other cannot arrive until 8am due to personal reasons and cannot stay late for the same reasons. Do you pay them the same?

I tell you what I face every year & that’s a gender equity analysis before pay raises can be administered. Now the rationale behind it is admirable, pay equity. We do a fantastic job of compensating high performing female employees, because I understand the challenges & develop my Team not biased towards diversity but I assemble them with different philosophies and approaches which leads to gender diversity naturally. I’d stack our record against anyone. But what it does it diminishes the high performers & raises the low performers to squash them all in a box. We’d be a lot better off with a straight across the board raise percentage & the hell with performance.

This gender bias this is a crock. You book may be just fine, but what makes your case difficult @yrp are the decades of baiters that did not present facts but irrationally spewed BS to the extent that people stopped listening & chose up sides. They did not examine the root causes & effectively addressed them. They demanded an outcome not an opportunity. Once again the core of our country’s main issues, an outcome not an opportunity.

Some female could have launched Apple, but the fact is she didn't. It certainly wasn’t because America held her back.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

If there was a market for small phones for small hands, you can be damn sure there would be a product made. It really comes down to economics. I don't have a great choice of shoes since I wear a 15- 1/2. And the shoes that are available tend to be more expensive. Do I get to whine about discrimination? My gf when I was at Tech was able to buy designer clothes in the kids department because she was only 5 ft.....at half the cost I would have to pay. Again, discrimination against tall people (not really, just economics) I could go on and on with examples about how life is so unfair.

“My feet are so big”

 

[Animal02]

“My feet are so big”

I did have a woman ask me once if it was true what they said about guys with big feet.
My response was "Of course"

 

[AE 87]

Was at a party years ago...a wife of a friend of mine started talking about an idea she had for tools for women. I, being the snarky jokester, said they already have them. She looked at me sort of bewildered and ask where. I told her they were everywhere......mops, brooms, vacuums, etc.

She did not speak to me for months.

She didn't speak for months?

What did you say, exactly?