The Appalling Impact of Gender Discrimination

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The Me Too movement has changed the way we view gender discrimination. Yet, nothing could have prepared me for the facts set forth in a new book, Invisible Women, Data Bias in a World Designed For Men, by Caroline Criado Perez.

It exposed the systemic discrimination women face in the workplace and in their everyday lives, sometimes with fatal consequences.

The default male

As a writer, I struggle with the “pronoun issue.” Historically, the default was to use “he” to describe activities engaged in by both genders. I thought it was progress when I substituted “she” or changed the wording to avoid this issue altogether.

I barely scratched the surface.

We tend to avoid including women in statistics that are positive, but group them with men when the implications are negative.

Here’s one example:

Criado Perez notes this headline in a popular newspaper: “Humans evolved to have an instinct for deadly violence, researchers find.”

Yet data from Sweden, Australia, the United Kington and the US found 90% of murders are committed by men.