We Need to Close the Gender Data Gap By Including Women in Our Algorithms

Author: Caroline Criado Perez

Publisher: Time Magazine

Publication Year: 2020

Summary: The following article describes the way that so many aspects of our society is designed with men in mind instead of women. Examples of this include the fact that cars are 71% less safe for women because they are tested using make crash dummies, or prominent “comprehensive” health apps that don’t have a feature allowing users to track their menstrual cycles. This is usually an issue of women not being present when these systems were being designed. Other situations, such as a credit lender setting a far high credit card limit for a man than for his wife, even though she had a higher credit score, are explained away by organizations as “just the algorithm.” As the author usefully points out, “algorithms are only as good as the data we feed them.”


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