Chelsea Swan

Invisible Women talks about the way in which women have been unstudied and ignored by those who collect and collate data, making us objects of inconsequence. It further removes us from our ability to be a self, we are unable to access facts about our bodies and care for ourselves, unable to talk about ourselves with any definitive knowledge. We are still far from equal and there is no desire to change the status quo. If the systems in place control the lack of data on us then it leaves open the opportunities to make up anything biological or psychological and call it fact when it comes to women and the rights they should have and the way they should behave/ desires they should have. So much data fails to consider gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical. Bias and discrimination are integral to the way in which our systems work. Women pay tremendous costs for this bias, in time, money, and often with their lives. This book argues that how women are treated isn’t due to the evil patriarchy, but that how our society ignores women makes how they are treated inevitable. Women are treated negatively and unfairly because most of the people with power, those who get to make the decisions, are men – not consciously attempting to harm women but rather because they are men, they design the world to work for them. The book argues that when that world simply doesn’t work for women, these men don’t even notice because they simply don’t inhabit the same world that women inhabit. It is simply just neglect, self-interest, and wilful blindness, where those with power are focused solely on their own needs. “The result of this deeply male-dominated culture is that the male experience, the male perspective, has come to be seen as universal, while the female experience–that of half the global population, after all–is seen as, well, niche.”