Caroline Criado Perez and Tracy King on the gender data gap that's putting lives at risk
This article has been published to coincide with an episode of Mashable's new podcast, History Becomes Her. Listen here.
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez exposes the erasure of women in a world that’s been designed by men for men — and men alone. In this world, women sit shivering in offices set to male temperatures, they hold phones that are too big for their hands, they struggle to reach the rail on the tube set to a male height.
Writer and activist Tracy King ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to send a copy of the book to every MP in the UK in the hope that lawmakers will take action against the gender data gap at the heart of this systemic discrimination. Those books have now been delivered to every single MP.
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You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
We’re not collecting data specific to women and that means that urban planning, transportation, policy, design, science, and manufacturing are overlooking the needs of half the world's population. But discomfort is just one part of the puzzle. This data gap is also putting women’s lives at risk.
"It's harming women in pretty much every way you can think of," said Criado Perez in the episode.
In this episode — the Season 1 finale of History Becomes Her — Criado Perez and King discuss their campaign to get politicians to take action on the gender data gap.
King also discusses her admiration for Mary Wollstonecraft, writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792.
Criado Perez shares her admiration for Millicent Fawcett, the suffragist who spent her life campaigning for women's right to vote.
Subscribe to History Becomes Her on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast or wherever you get your podcasts.
Topics Activism Gender Health Social Good
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
