Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, all the best. I remember several years ago,

one of my friends pointed out the fact that at church, women had to bring jackets in the

middle of the summer because it was always so freezing in our church building. I had grown up

my whole life with my teeth chattering in church buildings,

but I had never noticed it. I'd never thought about it. And my friend said, well, yeah, of course,

because men wear suits to church. They wear pants and long sleeve shirts and jackets and socks

and shoes when they come to church. And the church leaders,

who are the ones who show up in the morning to like turn on the lights and check the thermostat

are always men. And so they are the ones who set the thermostats. And without even thinking

about it, of course they're going to set the thermostats to the temperature that's comfortable for them. So they're not being mean.

They're not being rude or intentionally like making women cold. They just don't realize that

half the people in the church are wearing dresses. And I thought of that conversation when I read the preface to the book that we're going to be

discussing today.

It's Caroline Creado Perez's book, Invisible Women, Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.

And I'm going to read just one excerpt from that introduction.

She says that the gender data gap is composed of missing information or silences in all kinds of scenarios.

She says, quote, these silences, these gaps have consequences.

They impact women's lives every day. The impact can be relatively minor,

shivering in offices set to a male temperature norm, for example, or struggling to reach a top shelf set at a male height norm. Irritating, certainly. Unjust, undoubtedly, but not life-threatening. Not like crashing in a car whose safety

measures don't account for women's measurements. Not like having your heart attack go undiagnosed

because your symptoms are deemed atypical. For these women, the consequences of living in a world

built around male data can be deadly."

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