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I really dislike conspiracy theories �� in fact, few things make me angrier. The reason is that a conspiracy generally involves people plotting and planning and those people who are assumed to have the power to bring the conspiracy into effect generally have been shown in history to be pretty stupid �� in fact, far too stupid to do the conspiracy and keep quiet about it. Conspiracy theories also tend to involve improbable leaps of faith along the way, you know, like the one that the US government was involved in bringing down the Twin Towers at 9/11. These theories become so convoluted and improbable that eventually it would be easier to just blame aliens.

But the real reason I hate conspiracy theories is that a conspiracy implies that the bad shit that happens in our world is hidden from us by powerful elites �� and the fact is that the really, really bad shit in our world isn’t hidden from us at all. I think conspiracy theories have an appeal to us because they basically pardon us for our inaction. How were we supposed to do something about stuff we didn’t even know was happening? �� Damn you, you evil conspirators! But really, whether it be climate change, third world debt, HIV/AIDS, American gun laws, the Iraq war, the slaughter and man-made famine in Yemen, the pollution of our oceans, referring to fossil fuels as ‘freedom fuels�� (no, I didn’t make that one up, even though I wish I had ) �� none of this is hidden from us. None of this needs a conspiracy to explain it. All of the murder, all of the destruction, all of the ‘let’s end all life on the planet for a bit more money�� is done in broad daylight with our noses pushed right up into it. And all of this is a million times more terrifying than the idea that the US government blew up a couple of buildings. Yet we watch our nightly news, yawn, roll over and fall back to sleep.

This book is about one of those non-conspiracies we sort of know about but do stuff all to fix. The way we treat women is so breathtakingly appalling it would be nice if there was some sort of conspiracy theory involved here to relieve us of our complicity. This book argues that how women are treated isn’t really due to the evil patriarchy, a bit like the Elders of Zion plotting the overthrow of the Tzar, but that how our society ignores women makes how they are treated inevitable. It says that many of the reasons that women are so badly treated in our society is because most of the people with power, most of the people who get to make the decisions that make a difference in the world, are men �� and it isn’t that men consciously go out of their way to make life shit for women (even though you would have to wonder sometimes) but rather, they do this because they are men, and as such they design the world to work for them. And when that world simply doesn’t work for women, these men don’t even notice because they simply don’t inhabit the same world that women inhabit. There is no conspiracy theory required �� just neglect, self-interest, and perhaps a little dose of wilful blindness based on those with power focused solely on their own needs.

The author blames a lot of the problems here on gaps in the data. There were lots of things I didn’t know. I didn’t know that car crash dummies are mostly ‘male�� �� particularly driver dummies �� and that they are based on what you could call ‘middle man��, about the average in terms of weight and height and everything else. I didn’t know that many drugs that are often almost exclusively given to women (think antidepressants say) are often almost exclusively trialled on men. I didn’t know that Viagra could potentially help cure PMT, but that the drug companies don’t want to put it through the clinical trials to do this since it is such a profitable drug that if they find out it causes problems in women it might cause problems that would kill the goose that laid the golden egg. There are lots of examples here of instances of things like men getting free condoms and women not having access to sanitary products that just make your blood boil. When it is pointed out it is hard to not come to the conclusion that we men really are arseholes.

This book gets depressing very quickly. There is just case after case of things that made me say, ‘Oh, for god’s sake �� who makes this shit up?�� Like how women are often excluded from drug trails altogether because they have hormones that change over the month and so that might make testing the drug a bit more difficult. Which is a bit like designing trousers for men assuming they don’t have penises because, well, it just makes it easier. And before you laugh, the author gives at least half a dozen examples where things are poorly designed to fit women because women have the audacity to grow breasts.

This is an infuriating book. We are effectively murdering women �� in fact, often we are actually murdering women and too often we do this by paying no attention at all to the physiological, social, cultural and power differences that exist between the sexes.

There was a bit early on in this book where I got a bit worried. She started to discuss the problems associated with women in academia �� what has become my world �� and while all of these problems are very, very real, I was worried that this book might end up a kind of ‘glass ceiling�� book. And after reading Feminism for the 99% A Manifesto �� I’m going to have to get around to reviewing that eventually �� I’m worried about ‘feminist�� books that only notice the issues that impact rich, white women. But this book brought intersectionality into its analysis too �� you know, if you are black and female, you might want to travel out of the US to give birth, I’m just saying.

This book ought to make you angry. Not least because the answer to many of the problems identified would simply involve listening to women. I knew many of the things discussed here. For instance, that many more women than men died in the tsunami in 2004. The reason? Women look after children and old people, women are often in locations where they can’t hear the warnings signals, women are less likely to learn to swim, women are less likely to learn to climb trees, women are constrained by ‘modesty�� in clothes that make escaping rising water almost impossible �� and if they do escape they are likely to be raped and possibly bashed by men. If you are not made angry by this book you have no humanity left. But the solution is often also painfully simple. We need to listen to women. We need to place them in positions of power. We need to involve them in decision making processes that impact them. I know, radical ideas, but we might as well start big and work down from there.

The instance that will stay with me from this book was about public transport �� it had just never occurred to me. Most public transport users are women. Men drive cars, women catch the bus. But public transport systems are designed by men. So, they are designed to radiate out from the centre of cities �� much like fingers splayed out from the palm of a hand. Which is great for men going to work and then back home again �� but not so great for women who might need to get the kids off to school, check on their aging parents, and then work in three part-time jobs that are close enough to home to collect the kids again from school, all of which might not be in a direct line into the centre of the city. Public transport systems are designed by men to suit the needs of men, but are mostly used by women, and so often don’t meet the needs of the majority of its users. Shit like that has really got to stop.

Thanks Avolyn for recommending this to me.