In the year 2017 the first female head of
London’s Fire Brigade, Dany Cotton, suggested that we should replace the term
“fireman” with the now standard “firefighter.” As a result of her suggestion,
she was flooded with hate mail.
When in 2013 Caroline Criado Perez campaigned
to have a female historical figure on the back of English banknotes some men
got so angry that they felt compelled to threaten her with rape, mutilation and
death.
According to an article in The Independent
“humans evolved to have an instinct for deadly violence”. The article shared
the statements of an academic paper that revealed that “humans have evolved to
be six times more deadly to their own species than the average mammal.”
However, this generalization may well apply to men, not necessarily to women. A
thirty-year analysis of murder in Sweden found that nine out of ten murders are
committed by men. Similar statistics were revealed by studies in the United
Kingdom, Australia and the United States of America.
The world and the study of history are
designed to fit a male narrative that does not represent women and does not
take into consideration the needs of women. The male perspective is seen as
universal while the female one is considered the “niche”. Biases that
benefit men and ignore women drive policies, research, employment, and other
fields. These biases have serious consequences for women’s health, lifestyle, survival,
employment, safety and several other factors.
It is time to wake up to this reality and
work to change this dysfunctional situation from the inside out. Caroline
Criado Perez’s book is an excellent resource to become aware, to reflect on the
topic and to be inspired to promote changes.
When we hear generalizations about men, we
are expected to assume that the statements apply to women as well, but we
should not assume that. There are several examples to illustrate this.
“We
call the eighteenth century 'the Enlightenment', even though it only expanded
the rights of men and narrowed the rights of women, who were denied control of
their property and earnings and barred from higher education and professional
training.” Even though women comprise half of the population we are expected to
study history from a male perspective and we are expected to repeat information
that does not reflect the truth. One example of this is the worn-out statement
that Ancient Greece was a “democracy". Women were not even
allowed to vote in Ancient Greece.
These biases in favor of men translate into
medicine, education, politics and social policies that continue to make women
irrelevant despite the fact that they make up half of the population. Let’s
examine this topic carefully.
The accomplishments of women have been ignored
or, in many cases, they were attributed to men. For example, textbooks
routinely name Thomas Hunt Morgan as the person who discovered that sex was
determined by chromosomes rather than environment. Yet it was Nettie Stevens
the woman who accomplished this by experimenting with mealworms. The
correspondence between them shows she was the one who did the work to prove it.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin discovered that the
sun is predominantly composed of hydrogen, but, not surprisingly, the discovery
is credited to her male supervisor.
Rosalind Franklin was the scientist who
researched and described the structure of DNA—not Watson and Crick. Watson and
Crick stole her work and took advantage of her discovery. They were the ones
who received the Nobel Prize despite the fact that Rosalind Franklin did the
work.
The
study of history shows that facts have been distorted to benefit men and to
disempower women, and to perpetuate the false belief that women are not as
competent as men. Therefore, women are often “instructed” to use men as role
models in order to succeed. Yet there is no scientific evidence that shows that
men are superior to women.
Women
are expected to behave more “like men” to be respected. Why? Research shows
that when women “behave like men”, they are often criticized and judged
differently, which sets the stage for more biases, stereotyping and unfair
discrimination against them.
Women as leaders
Research shows that the potential and
achievements of women are neglected to the detriment of society. Research
published in 2018 by Boston Consulting Group found that “although on average
female business owners receive less than half the level of investment their
male counterparts get, they produce more than twice the revenue.” For every
dollar of funding, female-owned start-ups generate seventy-eight cents compared
to male-owned start-ups, which generate thirty-one cents. Women also perform
better over time, generating ten percent more in cumulative revenue over a
five-year period. This may be because women are better suited for leadership
roles according to a Norwegian study. The BI Norwegian Business School
concluded that women were better leaders than men. The study identified the
five key traits of a successful leader: emotional stability, extraversion,
openness to new experiences, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Women scored
higher than men in four out of the five.
Biases at schools
Unfortunately, schools teach little girls that
they are not as brilliant as boys. Brilliance bias is taught to children at an
early age (check page 100 for details):
“A US study found that when girls start school
at the age of five, they are likely as five-year-old boys to think women could
be ‘really really smart.’ By the time they turn six, something changes. They
start doubting their gender so much that they start limiting themselves.”
Why I recommend Invisible Women
Invisible Women is a carefully researched book that
provides the statistics to acknowledge that the biases against women are real.
Yet our experiences, observations and reflections are never enough, so Caroline
Criado Perez put the research together to support our voices. She also adds the
stories and experiences of several women to boost the power of her book.
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The Myth of Meritocracy
One of the
long-standing myths appears to be the one on meritocracy.
In the
1950s and 1960s there were only one or two female musicians in the New York
Philharmonic Orchestra. In the 1970s somebody had the brilliant idea of using a
screen for the auditions to select the musicians. That is when the number of
female musicians started to go up.
The biases against women are pervasive and
irrational.
“Women are
asked to do more undervalued admin work than their male colleagues. If they
refuse, they are penalized and considered “unlikeable”. This is a problem
across a range of workplaces: women and in particular ethnic minorities do the
‘housekeeping’.”
The gender double standards influence the way
women are perceived and judged by others. For this reason, gender double
standards harm women and impact society as a whole.
“Female professors are penalized if they are
not deemed sufficiently warm and accessible, but if they are warm and
accessible they can be penalized for not appearing authoritative or
professional. On the other hand, appearing authoritative and knowledgeable as a
woman can result in student disapproval, because this violates gendered
expectations.”
Men, on the other hand, benefit from what we
call positive discrimination toward them. “Less effective male professors
routinely receive higher student evaluations than more effective female
teachers.”
An analysis of 14 million reviews on the
website RateMyProfessors.com found that female professors are more likely to be
labeled as ‘harsh’, ‘unfair’, ‘strict’, ‘mean’ and ‘annoying’. Male professors
are more often perceived as ‘brilliant’, ‘intelligent’, ‘smart’ and a ‘genius’.
Bias in
the news media
A report from 2015 done by the Global Media
Monitoring Project evaluated the world’s print and broadcast media for its
representation of women and found that only 24 percent of the persons heard,
read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news were women. They report
their findings every five years and it was not different from the report
obtained in 2010. I decided to check their latest report. No progress has been
made for women and girls in the news media.
Bias in textbooks
A US study
of eighteen widely used high-school history textbooks published between 1960
and 1990 found that pictures of named men outnumbered pictures of named women
by a ratio of about 18 to 100 and that only 9 percent of the names in the
indexes were women.
Unpaid
work
Research
shows that women do most of the unpaid work that is needed to keep the
foundation of society strong. This is not acknowledged or considered in the GDP
of a country, but it plays an essential role in society.
Data showed that in India 66 percent of
women’s work time is spent on unpaid labour, while only 12 percent of men’s
work is unpaid. In Italy 61 percent of women’s work is unpaid compared to 23
percent of men’s. In France 57 percent of their work is unpaid compared to 38
percent of men’s.
On October
24 1975 most women in Iceland decided to take the day off. They decided that
they would do no work. No paid work but also no cooking, no cleaning, no child
care. Ninety percent of the women took part in the strike. Twenty-five thousand
women gathered for a rally. A year later the country passed the Gender Equality
Act, which outlawed sex discrimination in workplaces and schools.
Why do
people take women’s time for granted?
Just like men, women have bills to pay. They
also have family and job responsibilities. Women even volunteer more of their
time than men, so why do people think it is okay to ask women to work for no
pay? There is nothing “feminist” about expecting women to work for free.
Women have a right to their time and they have
no obligation to please others.
When I stopped allowing comments on my blog
ten years ago to avoid wasting my time on bullies, a follower decided she would
not follow my blog anymore. I explained to her that I had no time to deal with
bullies and she told me that I was supposed to scan the comments first and then
decide if I would publish them or not. (Yes! Men are not the only ones who love
to mansplain women). Why did she assume that I had so much time in my hands? Again,
why do people out there take women’s time for granted?
Women in
the healthcare system
There is a
chapter about how women’s symptoms are consistently disregarded, and how their
medical conditions go undiagnosed for too long because the medical system does
not care enough about their complaints. There are statistics as well as
several experiences shared by women.
Caroline
Criado Perez did a great job of revealing the gender disparities in the medical
field, both in healthcare and research.
Women in
pandemics, natural disasters and wars
Caroline
Criado Perez shares staggering statistics and stories about how women are
treated under these precarious conditions. Chapter 16 is entitled “It is not
the disaster that kills you”. I highly recommend it. Read every page.
Violence against women increases in the chaos
and social breakdown that accompany natural disasters. I was shocked to learn
that several women after hurricane Katrina were sexually assaulted. To make
matters worse, during Hurricane Katrina local rape centers had to close.
“The data gap when it comes to sexual abuse is
compounded in crisis settings by powerful men who blur the lines between aid
and sexual assault.”
In Sri Lanka swimming and tree climbing are
predominantly taught to men and boys. When the December 2004 tsunami hit, men
and boys were better able to survive. The tsunami killed four times more women
than men. There is also social prejudice in Bangladesh against women learning
to swim.
Awards and recognition
Invisible
Women by Caroline Criado Perez was the winner of 2019 Royal Society Science
Book Prize; it was the finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and the Orwell
Prize. It was also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in
Nonfiction.
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