Guess James Brown was right when he said this is “a man’s world.”
A new book by writer and activist Caroline Criado Perez says women are significantly underrepresented in the data that informs how everyday decisions are made – from air conditioning temperatures, to bulletproof vest sizes, to crash test dummy design.
Perez says most buildings don’t even feature enough bathrooms for women (which isn’t news to us). And now we’re making the same mistakes with our technology.
According to Perez, algorithms that perform simple tasks like scanning resumes or supporting voice recognition already identify males much more easily.
Even emojis have a gender preference – the icons that display construction workers, doctors and scientists were presented as male figures when the technology first hit our smartphones.
“We need to research women, we need to talk about women, you need to specify women,” said Perez.
We hear you, Caroline – even if our technology can’t!
