Apr 2019

Caroline Criado Perez is a writer and campaigner perhaps best known for her successful campaigns to get a woman on Bank of England banknotes and a statue of Millicent Fawcett put up in Parliament Square.

In this book she reveals and explores the data biases that affect women (and therefore society as a whole) in everything from pharmaceutical drug studies to post-disaster humanitarian relief.

So much of what she analyses, with extraordinary precision and clarity, is in plain sight but hasn’t been on the radar of either rights campaigners or data professionals. The content goes well beyond the impact that data has in key areas of all our lives but data is nonetheless the common thread. It highlights beautifully the sheer scale, power and impact of data and its processing in the digital era. Anyone in any doubt that the protection and ethical handling of data is no longer a clinical tick-box exercise, solely the domain of IT or compliance staff, needs to read this.

Even those who appreciate how data impacts individuals and society will benefit from the forceful and academically rigorous narrative of Criado Perez.