Interview about ‘Invisible Women’

On 8 March (International Women’s Day), the Maastricht University Library posted a video, with me talking about the book Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (Chatto & Windus, 2019) by Caroline Criado Perez.

The book explores what the author calls ‘data gaps’. We think we now have data about everything, as all of our online traces are available and more and more material becomes digitised. But there are lots of areas of women’s lives about which we know very little. This book provides lots of examples, and is a very accessible read. It should be read by data and computer scientists to help them understand the sources of bias in their models and algorithms. It is also of interest to urban planners, healthcare specialists and many more, as there are data gaps in many areas of life and work, from ploughing snow to working in a nail salon.

The Library is doing a series of interviews with researchers about books they find important. I’m grateful to Bernadette Corsten (interviewer) and Ilona Steege (video maker) from the Maastricht University Library for the opportunity to talk about this great book.