Book of the month: Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.

by Caroline Criado Perez.

Review by Deborah Foy, Global Executive Director, Opportunity International Inc. 

As a young child, one of my favourite books was an old copy of Ripley's Believe It or Not! given to me by my grandparents. I loved its extraordinary, almost unbelievable facts. I hadn't expected a book about gender inequality to provoke the same reaction, but Invisible Women did. The main difference was that this time, my amazement quickly turned to anger.

In her book, Caroline Criado Perez reveals how much of our world has been designed around men, because women's bodies, experiences and needs are so often missing from the data used to make decisions. From crash-test dummies modelled on male bodies, to medical research that has historically overlooked women, the examples are jaw-dropping, sometimes absurd and often deeply shocking. It’s one of those rare books where you find yourself wanting to underline something on almost every page.

The book has prompted me to reflect on our own work at Opportunity and within the international development sector. Where might we be overlooking women's experiences or making assumptions about their needs, simply because we're not asking the right questions or collecting the right data?

Some years after the book's publication, we're still uncovering extraordinary examples of the same biases. For example, a 2024 study of more than 2,300 informal workers in India found that women faced 3 times the risk of heat-related illness compared with men. One of the reasons was inadequate sanitation provision. Imagine working all day in extreme heat but having to consciously restrict your water intake to avoid needing to go to the loo.  

In Ghana, research published earlier this year found that 92% of health workers recognised bilharzia, yet fewer than 17% had adequate knowledge of how it affects women's reproductive organs. Women with this form of the disease can be misdiagnosed with sexually transmitted infections, potentially facing stigma and accusations of infidelity as well as missing appropriate treatment. It’s a powerful example of how an apparently technical gap in medical knowledge can have profound consequences for a woman's health, relationships and dignity.

Closer to home, research published in February 2026 in the UK found that 82% of AI-generated images of doctors depicted men (despite women making up the majority in the NHS training figures used for comparison). More shockingly still, both AI systems portrayed every GP and orthopaedic surgeon as male. It’s alarming to think that even our newest technologies risk perpetuating the very prejudices that have excluded and disadvantaged women for centuries.

I was so fired up by this book that I bought copies for my daughter, niece and friends! I also found myself discussing it at length with equally astonished colleagues across the Opportunity family.

Here in the UK, we often like to think that women have achieved equality. But Invisible Women is a startling reminder that removing legal barriers doesn't mean the playing field is level. As a close friend recently described it to me, women are still swimming upstream, navigating systems, assumptions and technologies that weren't designed with us in mind.

For those of us working to expand economic opportunity for women, Criado Perez's words are particularly challenging: “We have to stop acting as if theoretical, legal equality of opportunity is the same as true equality of opportunity.”

August: Homegoing

by Yaa Gyasi.

Review by Angela Kingston, Senior Resource Development Manager, Opportunity International UK. 

Homegoing is the debut novel by Ghanaian American writer Yaa Gyasi. It tells the arresting and deeply challenging story of the descendants of two half-sisters, born to the same mother but raised in different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to a British officer and becomes the wife of a slave trader, living in relative comfort and colonial privilege in Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to her, her half-sister, Esi, is captured, sold into slavery and imprisoned in brutal conditions in the dungeons beneath the castle, awaiting transportation to America.

The story spans three centuries and two continents. Each chapter introduces a new character and alternates between the two family lines, following successive generations from the Gold Coast through the Anglo-Ashanti wars and Ashanti-Fante conflicts, to the plantations of Mississippi, missionary schools in Ghana, dive bars of Harlem and, eventually, to graduate school at Stanford University. The fragmented structure of the novel reflects the fractured histories of the two families, whose lives unfold on opposite sides of the Atlantic yet remain connected by their shared ancestry.

As the narrative progresses, it offers glimpses of lives shaped by colonialism, slavery, war, systemic racism, addiction and intergenerational trauma. I was struck by how Gyasi wove these themes throughout the novel, illustrating how events experienced by one generation can continue to shape the lives of family members many years later. At times, I found the story shocking and difficult to read - from its unflinching descriptions of the horrors of the slave trade to the devastating effects of Jim Crow segregation on African Americans in the Southern United States.

Yet, Homegoing is ultimately a story of survival, endurance and the search for identity and belonging. What stood out most to me was how, across generations, the wounds of history were carried by people who had no part in creating them. Yet, at the same time, Gyasi succeeds in depicting the courage, resilience, and determination that enable each generation to endure and find its own way forward. For me, it was a reminder that many of the people Opportunity International works alongside are still navigating the legacy of historical injustice, conflict and marginalisation, yet they embody the same grit and determination as Gyasi’s characters to build a better future for themselves and their children.

July: In Every Mirror She's Black

by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström.

Review by Afua Hagan, Opportunity International UK ambassador. 

For this month’s Opportunity Reads, I’m recommending In Every Mirror She’s Black by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström. I's a sharp, elegant and deeply affecting novel about what it means to be a Black woman navigating spaces that were not built with you in mind.

Set largely in Sweden, the book follows three Black women whose lives intersect in complicated and revealing ways. Kemi is a successful Nigerian-American marketing executive invited to Stockholm for a high-profile corporate role. Brittany-Rae is a former model and flight attendant whose relationship with a wealthy Swedish businessman brings her into a world of privilege, scrutiny and isolation. Muna is a Somali refugee working as a cleaner while carrying the trauma of displacement, survival and loss.

Through these three women, Åkerström explores race, identity, class, migration, belonging and the emotional cost of being constantly seen, but rarely truly understood. What I found powerful about the novel is that it refuses to flatten Black womanhood into one experience. Kemi, Brittany and Muna are all outsiders in different ways. Their struggles are not the same, but each of them is forced to confront the gap between how the world sees her and who she knows herself to be.

This is a particularly strong recommendation for Opportunity Reads because so much of the book speaks to the experiences of people moving across borders: for work, for safety, for love, for opportunity, or simply for the chance to build a different life. It asks important questions about what opportunity really means when access comes with conditions. What happens when you are invited into the room, but expected to be grateful, quiet or easily digestible once you get there? What happens when your talent is welcomed, but your full humanity is not?

Åkerström writes with insight and restraint. She captures the loneliness of being “the only one” in professional spaces, the quiet violence of everyday racism, and the way systems can make people feel invisible even when they are working incredibly hard to survive.

In Every Mirror She’s Black is not always an easy read, but it's an important one and a beautiful one. It's thoughtful, layered and emotionally honest, a novel that stays with you because it tells the truth about ambition, migration, identity and belonging. I would recommend it to anyone interested in stories about women, power, race and the search for home in a world that too often asks people to shrink themselves to fit.

June: Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day

by Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, and Orlanda Ruthven.

Review by Tamsin Scurfield, Head of Refugee Finance at Opportunity International UK.

Portfolios of the Poor is a fascinating and accessible study of the financial lives of low-income households in Bangladesh, India, and South Africa over the course of a year. It brings a human-centred lens to the concepts we use in microfinance—financial management, planning, and product design—by connecting client behaviours with real people and stories.

It is a rich read: one that you could read it in one sitting, or dip in and out of.

Several things stood out to me. Low-income households often manage complex financial lives, juggling multiple small savings pots and loans at the same time. People save through churches, savings groups (sometimes more than one), at home, on their phones, or in a bank. They may also borrow from many of these sources, as well as from friends, neighbours, shop credit, or informal petty trade. Balancing savings and debt is often a daily task.

As someone who is quite organised in their own finances, I was struck by how complex and uncertain financial management can be for low-income households. The book shows that debt is not always a sign of financial distress; it can also be a practical tool for smoothing daily consumption, investing in small businesses, and covering unexpected illness – something we often see among refugees, where resources are frequently diverted to meet health needs.

Poverty is, above all, about managing uncertainty. It is not only about having too little money, but about not having money at the moments it is needed. Low-income households respond with active, complex financial strategies.

The book reinforces what I see at Opportunity: access to finance alone is not enough to create lasting change. Strengthening savings groups, providing safe ways to save, building financial literacy and management skills, and designing products that address liquidity challenges can help people manage risk and invest in their futures.

Above all, I came away with deep respect for the effort households put into managing daily consumption needs and cash flow. These are the kinds of programmes we should prioritise: approaches that go beyond credit alone and provide financial services shaped around the realities of low-income households.

May: Unbowed by Wangari Maathai

Review by Brigitta Falcin-Dyson, Communications Manager at Opportunity International UK.

Wangari Maathai is one of the most inspiration women I’ve read about - a passionate protector of the planet and a strong, defiant voice for women in Kenya. Unbowed is the autobiography of Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement and the first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize. In the book, she shares her experiences of growing up in colonised Kenya, her education and work as an ecology professor, and her time fighting against a corrupt government to preserve green spaces in Kenya.

I first came across Maathai in a BBC Sounds clip in which her daughter shares her powerful story. I was moved by Maathai’s heroism in protecting the environment. With a background in conservation and anthropology, I connected with her passion and the issues she cared about. In 1977, she founded the Green Belt Movement, an organisation that empowered local women to plant trees and restore their communities. In Unbowed, she reflects on the vital role trees play in sustaining ecosystems and supporting livelihoods – without them, both the land and the people who depend on it suffer.

It’s difficult to capture in full depth all the remarkable events in her life in just a few hundred words. But what stood out most to me when reading her book were the injustices she faced as a woman and her determination to uplift other Kenyan women by encouraging independence and self-reliance. Her story is a powerful reminder of the importance of educating women and girls, and how many of the challenges she faced 20 years ago, are still experienced by women in Africa today.

As I read her book, I saw echoes of the work Opportunity does with women today. Women are resourceful and innovative; they simply need the right tools, access, and education. It’s what Maathai understood back in the 1970s, and it’s what Opportunity continues to champion today.

April: A Training School for Elephants by Sophy Roberts

Review by Kate Holt, photojournalist and Director of Arete. 

A Training School for Elephants by Sophy Roberts, is an ambitious yet eloquent read. It is part travelogue and part deep dive into a footnote in history that acts as a lens through which to examine the mindset underpinning European empires in Africa.

Its central storyline is King Leopold II’s eccentric scheme to domesticate African elephants in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The King’s brutal exploitation of the region’s abundant natural resources resulted in millions of deaths. The premise of training elephants initially feels faintly comic against this backdrop, but it quickly becomes clear that this scheme is just a prism through which to view the deeper elements of Leopold’s relentless extraction and control of land, animals and people that defined his rule.

What stayed with me most were the journeys Roberts traces across the continent, following the remnants of this scheme. The places she visits are not treated as a backdrop to European ambition, but as vivid landscapes with their own histories, cultures and nuance. The deep dives into historical archives sit comfortably alongside present day encounters that quietly challenge the assumptions of the past.

With captivating clarity, the book explores how vast tracts of land were appropriated with no regard for traditional systems of stewardship or shared ownership, and how labour was forced through coercion and violence. It also traces the beginnings of the massive destruction of fragile ecosystems in the name of financial gain and modernisation.

The narrative resists moralising, but the critique is clear. What lingers is not just the strangeness of the elephant school, but a broader pattern of overreach, entitlement, and misunderstanding. It is unsettling precisely because it shows how logical these ambitions once seemed.

The legacy of this destruction remains today. The humanitarian crises across the Great Lakes region, seen in the vast refugee camps in Uganda, Rwanda, eastern DRC, and Burundi stand as a testament to the violence and greed that these ideas helped set in motion.

Kate visited Nakivale Refugee Settlement with Opportunity in 2019. There she photographed several refugees and recorded their stories. She has shared some photos from her visit to Nakivale below, as well as a photo from the DRC that demonstrates the displacement she mentions in her review. 

March: Ten Types of Humans by Dexter Dias

Review by Catherine Manser, Head of Philanthropy at Opportunity International UK.

First things first: this book is long. I picked it up on the recommendation of a friend who founded TogetherintheUK (TGIUK), a charity supporting migrants in the UK, so I knew it would be a thoughtful, challenging read, and probably not something I’d breeze through in an afternoon. At 848 pages, I wasn’t wrong!

Dias’ framework of “types” is ultimately about what drives human behaviour – why some people turn towards compassion and justice, while others turn away. What stayed with me most were the sections set in or focused on Africa. Dias doesn’t treat the continent as a backdrop; he tells real, complex stories – some hopeful, some devastating – that reveal how systems shape people’s lives in ways that are often invisible from the outside. His case studies, from women challenging discriminatory norms to communities navigating conflict or climate shocks, are handled with honesty and respect. Dias gives voice to realities that are all too familiar to us at Opportunity:

• Women farmers carrying the weight of entire agricultural systems while being denied land rights, financial tools, and support.
• Young people pushed to the margins of economic opportunity because of systemic exclusion.
• Communities whose resilience is repeatedly tested by conflict, climate shocks, and entrenched inequality.

Throughout the book, Dias weaves together psychology, human rights, and personal stories in a way that made me reflect on my own assumptions about why people act the way they do, whether courageously, cruelly, or somewhere in between. It’s a book that lingered long after I stopped reading, partly because it forced me to reckon with some really uncomfortable parts of human behaviour, but largely because of the extraordinary resilience I read about in between. Africa is not presented as a backdrop for tragedy, but as a landscape of profound agency, resilience, and courage. Reading these stories through the lens of our own work feels both grounding and galvanising.