Mother of Invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored in an Economy Built for Men

This book explores how gender bias has affected innovation, technology, and history. It all started with the suitcase. Though the wheel was invented five thousand years ago and the suitcase in the nineteenth century, it wasn’t until the 1970s that someone successfully combined them. Writer and journalist Katrine Marçal explains that “real men” used to carry their bags. This book examines business, technology, and innovation through a feminist lens. Marçal draws examples from electric cars to bra seamstresses to tech billionaires to show how gender bias stifles the economy and delays innovations. It distorts our understanding of history, as inventions associated with women are not considered technology in the same way.

This book offers a tour of the global economy with a powerful message: if we overcome biases, we can unlock our full potential.

(This book may contain a sharpie mark on the top or bottom edge and may show mild signs of shelfwear.)