This will change the way you think about the world around you. It hit me the same way that books like Caste and Race After Technology did – well-researched, extremely thorough and convincing.

Criado Perez’s thesis is that there are myriad ways that our society is setup to disadvantage women: in business, politics, government, economics and employment, among others. Each chapter is filled with data about where the impact on women isn’t measured: car impact safety tests, unpaid labour, medical trials, and lots more.

She also uses the idea of ‘the default male’ to show how design of almost everything from clothing and offices to voting and education systems is hostile to women, in ways that were surprising.

What is best though is that she provides solutions. Simple, inexpensive, easy-to-implement ideas to begin to level the playing field, often things that have been tried and effective in certain industries or countries. Usually the first step is simply to collect the data, and keep collecting it. She provides many examples of systems that start collecting gender-based data, then stop, for reasons unknown (or more accurately, unstated).

Some of this book is overwhelming. Criado Perez presents so much data that her thesis is irrefutable, but was sometimes also simply too much. I skimmed some sections where the material was familiar, but that’s won’t be the case for all readers. 

The old adage applies here: you can’t control what you don’t measure, and this book is essential to understanding the types of data we should be collecting and analyzing if we want a fairer world.