I’m reading Perez’s book I quoted above. It’s blowing me away, really. It’s packed full of data, facts, research, studies, and surveys. So it’s a dense read. But mind-blowing.
And the conclusions are undeniable.
She’s done the research to show that data fails to take into account gender. It “treats men as the default and women as atypical”. As a result, “bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay the price, in time and money and often with their lives.”
She admits often it’s not intentional, but rather that men just don’t think about it.
But the number of extra hours women work and live and continually risk their safety, health, and lives to function in a man’s world is overwhelming.
I came across the book when I saw a CEO of a company asking what is the most influential business book he’s read lately, and he mentioned this book. It blew his mind too, and he’s making changes to his business to make it more equal for women and to make life more fair for his wife and daughter.
It could be anything from as minor as the temperature setting in an office. Men generally run warmer than women, and men can wear suits or long sleeves, while women are expected to wear a nice dress and show their arms, etc.
But it could be more serious like in Bangladesh where a woman must not, under any circumstances, leave home without a male escorting her. As a result, when there is a flood, many women drown because they are waiting for their husbands to come to fetch them. But often they can’t or don’t.
She writes a lot about pregnancy, the free and extra labor women provide, the emotional labor, discrimination, abuses, and so on. The thing is, she’s not just speaking her opinion. She’s done the research. She’s got the numbers. It’s devastating.
It reminds me of the popular question of late… would an alone woman rather meet a bear or a man in the woods, and most women chose the bear. The number of men who just can’t understand the question and display their ignorance for all to see is, well, eye-opening… and proof that the question is a valid and important one.
Perez also talks about the myth of meritocracy. She claims that even though America boasts the most about meritocracy, it is the worst offender. Example: It used to be that women were not in the major philharmonic orchestras. Women protested. The orchestra insisted its hiring was totally based on meritocracy. Only the best musicians got the job. Finally, they initiated “blind auditions”, where the musician played behind a blind so the hiring committee couldn’t see them. Suddenly women started getting hired and now there is a fairer representation of women in major orchestras.
It wasn’t necessarily intentional. But like the quote above, they couldn’t see their discrimination because they didn’t believe they were discriminating.
I’m learning some very important lessons.
I’m humbled as I read the book.
It’s reminding me that this blindspot not only happens in the gender realm but in all kinds of other realms as well.
I thoroughly believe that the biggest block to knowledge is what we already think we know.
