Invisible Women: inexplicable lady reasons

in a workforce that is over 70% female a whopping 65% of PPE is default male

Apr 22, 2024

∙ Paid

Hellooo GFPs! This week I’ve given you an extended default male of the week, so no gender data gaps for you. Well, tbh there are many gender data gaps involved in the default male section, so actually, gender data gaps for everyone! Hurrah! Enjoy…

Default male of the week

This week we’re talking PPE, wait come back! I know, I know. I have dedicated A LOT of newsletter inches to this topic, but, well the stories keep coming. And in this case, the stories are…well, if not good exactly then at least trending in the right direction.

First up, the Women’s Engineering Society, who GFPs may remember not only from the reports of theirs that I cited in Invisible Women (pp.124-25), but also from this newsletter…

Invisible Women: the Rosalind Franklin of Ozempic

Caroline Criado Perez

October 5, 2023

Invisible Women: the Rosalind Franklin of Ozempic

As treatments based on GLP-1 biology have gone from backwater to blockbuster [chemist Svetlana Mojsov], now in her early 70s, has been left out of virtually all public recognition, even though she conceptualized and proved the structure of the active GLP-1 hormone and then helped show that it triggers insulin secretion — a key finding that paved the way for drugs to be developed.

Read full story

…wherein I asked all PPE-wearing GFPs to fill in their latest survey on the state of PPE for women, and GFPs, the results are in! Sadly, that’s where the excitement ends, as in a finding that will surprise precisely no-one, they’re pretty much the same as the results of the previous two surveys from 2009 and 2016: women who wear PPE remain massively underserved with Reference Man still riding high on his default male PPE supply.

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