• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
Walking Commentary

Walking Commentary

Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022

  • ManRom22 Cancelled
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

Winter Book Season

December 26, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

It was wonderful to get a selection of books as presents this holiday. One my new treats is this year’s winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, Explaining Humans by Camilla Pang. However, I have a few to finish before I can begin to enjoy the new haul. One of those unfinished treats is last year’s winner.

Books as treats for the sofa.

A world designed for men is quite a subtitle and I’m not quite finished with the story of the world designed by and for men. It’s been a lot fun living as if there’s only one gender but time has been called. Long overdue, we men have often been told how insensitive and exclusive we have been since that first woman produced that first male. If you read Caroline Criado Perez, you will learn how insidious it is and you should conclude that there can be no more excuses. She frames her story, the story of the female human, with data (what used to be called facts) to show that the world is at least half full of Invisible Women.

I predict that the existence of this hidden information will be harder to digest for the average man. It will be even harder to comprehend than the knowledge that the universe is 85% full of invisible dark matter. But both are true. To see either truths does not require an act of faith. Acts of contrition might go some way to resolving the millennia of self-interested gender ignorance but for an egalitarian future, the data says more affirmative action is required.

Some polities are focussed on Black Lives, others on LGBT issues while others work for refugees, children, disease, poverty and worse societal discrepancies. There is never a shortage of challenging issues but sheer weight of numbers suggests that none are more pervasive or more pernicious than gender inequality.

Factfulness by Hans Rosling was a fascinating lesson that helped us recognise how much better things have become in the last decades. ‘Let the dataset change your mindset’ was one his mantras and fits with the data derived message from Criado Perez that there is much yet to do.

Another of Rosling’s quotes seems apt in this context. ‘Thank you industrialisation. Thank you steel mill. Thank you power station. And thank you chemical processing industry that gave us time to read books.’

The reading of books presumes an education. Why not continue and let the Invisible Women show you how much more education can offer the world.

‘There is a better way. And it’s a pretty simple one: we must increase female representation in all spheres of life.’
– Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: booklink, camilla pang, caroline criado perez, hans rosling, royal society

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe

You’ve been successfully subscribed to our newsletter!

Recent Comments

  • Simon Robinson on 2023 Subscriptions
  • Catherine Dunne on 2023 Subscriptions
  • Lia Mills on Apertures
  • Lia Mills on Limerick Walls
  • Simon Robinson on Via Graffiti

Categories

  • Anchoritism
  • Chapbooks
  • Fake Memoir
  • ManRom2021

Tags

ahmet altan albert einstein bbc birds bird watching booklink bracket books ireland brian greene burma cancer chapbook colum mccann computing Covid-19 dog dun laoghaire fabhappy flowers food geology geophysics hans rosling ireland irish times issued lia mills london movies nobel prize pandemic PEN international photo photography photos photozines plants poetry popular simonscarves the uplift kit travel ungrievable volcano walking walkingcommentary

Recent Posts

  • Rounded
  • Watershapes
  • Machine Driven
  • 2023 Subscriptions
  • Apertures

Archives

  • January 2023 (1)
  • December 2022 (1)
  • November 2022 (2)
  • October 2022 (1)
  • September 2022 (1)
  • August 2022 (1)
  • July 2022 (1)
  • June 2022 (1)
  • May 2022 (1)
  • April 2022 (1)
  • March 2022 (1)
  • February 2022 (1)
  • January 2022 (2)
  • December 2021 (2)
  • November 2021 (1)
  • October 2021 (1)
  • September 2021 (2)
  • August 2021 (1)
  • July 2021 (2)
  • May 2021 (9)
  • April 2021 (30)
  • March 2021 (31)
  • February 2021 (28)
  • January 2021 (31)
  • December 2020 (31)
  • November 2020 (30)
  • October 2020 (31)
  • September 2020 (30)
  • August 2020 (31)
  • July 2020 (31)
  • June 2020 (30)
  • May 2020 (31)
  • April 2020 (30)
  • March 2020 (31)

Footer

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
  • ManRom22 Cancelled
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

Subscribe

You’ve been successfully subscribed to our newsletter!

Copyright © 2023 · Revolution Pro on Genesis Framework