Unlike past events, this one was hosted at the Boiler House on Campus due to the high demand for tickets. The event was a reading by and a conversation with Caroline Creida Perez, a feminist author and activist who had just published her book Invisible Women, a text examining sexism in data collection.
The venue was packed full with every seat taken. I chatted to Melanie on the door and she told me to grab a glass of wine and grab a seat whilst I still could! This event had more energy about it, more people were talking and introducing each other; there seemed to be more excitement from everybody in general.
Theresa came to sit next to me until the event started as she was filming today. We chatted about the event and the author's dog who always comes up on stage with her. He was really cute, however, it sounded as though Caroline and her dog were quite hard work for Theresa throughout the day.
The talk was very interesting and Caroline had a lot to say. She had collected some very interesting data for her book, particularly in terms of medical research. But the most shocking revelation came from the crash testing of cars. She had discovered, in her research, that a female crash test dummy had recently been made in order to test vehicles, however, it is written in the regulations taht this dummy can only be used once during testing and must be in the passenger seat of the car rather than the driving seat. This fact got a large reaction from the audience who were appalled that such regulations existed.
Following the conversation with Caroline, conducted by Rachel Hewitt, the room was opened up for questions. There was so much engagement with the event and everybody had questions that they wanted answering. This was the longest questioning section of all of the events I went to as everybody was so interested by what had been discussed. It is true that 90% of the room was female and 100% of the questions came from females, however it was clear that the men that were in the event were equally shocked by what she had to say.
Following the questioning, Caroline was led to sign books and Theresa dismissed me for the night.