Posted on March 26, 2019 at 8:38 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
If you follow literary news or book-themed news sources, chances are you’ve seen the Emilia Report on gender coverage in the media.
In a nutshell, it found a “marked bias” towards male writers, both in terms of quantity and content of coverage.
(The Guardian has much more reaction to and information from the Emilia Report, should you want or need to catch up.)
The findings probably didn’t surprise many people; as journalist Caroline Criado-Perez pointed out, we expect to see less representation of women and ethnic minorities.
But what did surprise Criado-Perez was learning how much of the seemingly objective data we rely upon is subconsciously biased toward men.
Car safety features, communication about heart attack symptoms, algorithms to find the best coders — all of these systems have a subconscious bias.
Criado-Perez discussed her new book on this topic, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, on Weekend Edition with Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
Listen to their interview below or read a transcript on NPR's website.
Categories: Author Interview