Criado-Perez to publish feminist 'call to arms' on data gap

Chatto & Windus has acquired feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez’s second book, Atypical, to be published in 2018. 

Editorial director Poppy Hampson acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Tracy Bohan at The Wylie Agency.

In the author's words, the book will be "a forensic examination of the myriad hidden ways in which women are excluded from the very building blocks of the world we live in, and the impact this has on our health and wellbeing".  

Atypical, "a call-to-arms to narrow the global gender data gap", starts with the premise that the world has long been designed by and for men, resulting in "perpetual, systemic discrimination" against women because no one is collecting the data. Drawing on new research and case studies - spanning government policy and medical research, healthcare, technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media - Criado-Perez aims to expose how a resultant "pervasive invisible bias" is impacting upon the lives of women.

Criado-Perez said: "I am delighted to be working with Poppy Hampson and the whole team of amazing women at Chatto. I have always admired Chatto’s books and I was thrilled to encounter such energy and enthusiasm for the idea when we met: it was immediately obvious that they really understood exactly what I am trying to achieve. I know that I and the book have found the perfect home."

Hampson said: "This is the book we’ve been waiting for – a book that makes us see the world anew – and it comes from the hugely impressive, energetic and unstoppable Caroline Criado-Perez.  This will be a ground-breaking work of journalism and activism, and we are excited and proud to be publishing it."

Criado-Perez's first book, Do it Like a Woman, was published by Portobello in 2015. She has a degree in English language and literature from the University of Oxford, and is completing an MSc in Gender at LSE, focusing on behavioural and feminist economics. She was the 2013 recipient of the Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year award, and was named OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2015.

Photo: © Tracy King