Women in Britain are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack, as heart failure trials generally use male participants. Cars are designed around the body of “Reference Man”. Although men are more likely to crash, women involved in collisions are nearly 50% more likely to be seriously hurt. The average smartphone – 5.5 inches long – is too big for most women’s hands, and it doesn’t often fit in our pockets. Speech-recognition software is trained on recordings of male voices. Google’s version is 70% more likely to understand men. And the list goes on and on and on.
The default male is the standard by which everything is measured, which makes women’s needs, differences and abilities invisible. On this episode, we’ll be hearing from Caroline Criado Perez, author of “Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men”. Caroline will share how human history is comprised of a pervasive gender data gap that effectively ‘silences’ and erases women’s accomplishments, experiences, needs and daily lives – and importantly how we can close this gap once and for all.