‘I am absurdly excited for this book’ Caroline Criado Perez 
Why did it take us 5,000 years to attach wheels to a suitcase? 
How did bras take us to the moon? 
And what would the world be like if we listened to women? 
Bestselling author Katrine Marçal reveals the shocking ways our deeply ingrained ideas about gender continue to hold us back. Every day, extraordinary inventions and innovative ideas are side-lined in a world that remains subservient to men 
But it doesn’t have to be this way. From the beginning of time, women have been pivotal to our society, offering ingenious solutions to some of our most vexing problems. More recently, it is women who have transformed the way we shop online, revolutionised the lives of disabled people and put the climate crisis at the top of the agenda. 
Despite these successes, we still fail to find and fund the game-changing ideas that could alter the future of our planet, giving just 3% of venture capital to female founders. Instead, ingrained ideas about men and women continue to shape our economic decisions; favouring men and leading us to the same tired set of solutions. 
For too long we have underestimated the consequences of sexism in our economy, and the way it holds all of us – women and men – back. Katrine Marcal’s blistering critique sets the record straight and shows how, in a time of crisis, the ingenuity and intelligence of women is that very thing that can save us.

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

Biographies & Memoirs

Marçal, Katrine

Professionals & Academics

William Collins

Product Description 
An illuminating and maddening examination of how gender bias has skewed innovation, technology, and history\nIt all starts with a rolling suitcase. Though the wheel was invented some five thousand years ago, and the suitcase in the nineteenth century, it wasn’t until the 1970s that someone successfully married the two. What was the hold up? For writer and journalist Katrine Marçal, the answer is both shocking and simple: because “real men” carried their bags, no matter how heavy.\nMother of Invention is a fascinating and eye-opening examination of business, technology, and innovation through a feminist lens. Because it wasn’t just the suitcase. Drawing on examples from electric cars to bra seamstresses to tech billionaires, Marçal shows how gender bias stifles the economy and holds us back, delaying innovations, sometimes by hundreds of years, and distorting our understanding of our history. While we talk about the Iron Age and the Bronze Age, we might as well talk about the “Ceramic Age” or the “Flax Age,” since these technologies were just as important. But inventions associated with women are not considered to be technology in the same way.\nThis is a sweeping tour of the global economy with a powerful message: if we upend our biases, we can unleash our full potential. 
 Review 
“[Marçal's] at-once anecdotal and theoretical book seeks to understand what's lost when women's social contributions are limited, as well as ways to move toward a new model. The author's writing shines when she addresses perceptions of women throughout history; she particularly carefully unpacks how Black and brown women have historically been restricted and misrepresented, and the misconceptions that endure... A must-read.” 
― 
Library Journal, *starred* review\n“A smart, witty, and fascinating warning from history. I loved this book.”― 
Caroline Criado Perez, 
bestselling author of Invisible Women\n“[A] quirky treatise...Told in a conversational tone, this feminist directive...fascinates with its wealth of historical tidbits. Fans of Caroline Criado-Perez’s 
Invisible Women, take note.” 
― 
Publishers Weekly\n“The joy of the book is how it manages to weave in stories of women influencing innovation in masculine spaces...Innovation may have been stifled by gender bias in the past, but Mother of Invention shows that we can choose a different future.” 
― 
Science Magazine\n"[A] breezy read... Each chapter uses an animating story...to offer free-flowing ruminations on patriarchy, economics, and invention.” 
― 
Booklist\n“From wheeled suitcases to witch trials, Katrine Marçal makes you look again at history in this funny, clever, and provocative book.”― 
Helen Lewis, 
author of Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights\n“This is an absolute must-read. Equal parts informative and infuriating.”― 
, author of Sex: Lessons from History, 
Dr. Fern Riddell\n“Another eye-opening entry for the ‘Where Are All the Women?’ playbook. A wide-ranging swoop through the history of technology and how game-changing innovations got delayed, dismissed, or forgotten if they were suggested by women or just because they were seen as feminine. Set in an apparently implacable framework of an absolute difference between female and male ideas and life abilities, the narrative can, at times, be infuriating but always thought-provoking and intriguing. It is a clearly needed wake-up call to future innovators not to view the world through a narrowly gendered lens but to pay attention to the skills and lived experiences of all.”― 
Professor Gina Rippon, 
bestselling author of The Gendered Brain\n“Sometimes we are lucky to experience a leap in new thinking. We look in amazement at the world around us and ask: Why didn’t we see this before? This what Katrine Marçal offers us in Mother of Invention. She brilliantly proves how male-driven technology over the ages has limited full human development by neglecting a liberating female narrative and perspect

Business & Money

Economics

Harry N. Abrams

Review\n“[Marçal's] at-once anecdotal and theoretical book seeks to understand what's lost when women's social contributions are limited, as well as ways to move toward a new model. The author's writing shines when she addresses perceptions of women throughout history; she particularly carefully unpacks how Black and brown women have historically been restricted and misrepresented, and the misconceptions that endure... A must-read.” 
―Library Journal, *starred* review\n“A smart, witty, and fascinating warning from history. I loved this book.”―Caroline Criado Perez, bestselling author of Invisible Women\n“[A] quirky treatise...Told in a conversational tone, this feminist directive...fascinates with its wealth of historical tidbits. Fans of Caroline Criado-Perez’s Invisible Women, take note.” 
―Publishers Weekly\n“The joy of the book is how it manages to weave in stories of women influencing innovation in masculine spaces...Innovation may have been stifled by gender bias in the past, but Mother of Invention shows that we can choose a different future.” 
―Science Magazine\n"[A] breezy read... Each chapter uses an animating story...to offer free-flowing ruminations on patriarchy, economics, and invention.” 
―Booklist\n“From wheeled suitcases to witch trials, Katrine Marçal makes you look again at history in this funny, clever, and provocative book.”―Helen Lewis, author of Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights\n“This is an absolute must-read. Equal parts informative and infuriating.”―, author of Sex: Lessons from History, Dr. Fern Riddell\n“Another eye-opening entry for the ‘Where Are All the Women?’ playbook. A wide-ranging swoop through the history of technology and how game-changing innovations got delayed, dismissed, or forgotten if they were suggested by women or just because they were seen as feminine. Set in an apparently implacable framework of an absolute difference between female and male ideas and life abilities, the narrative can, at times, be infuriating but always thought-provoking and intriguing. It is a clearly needed wake-up call to future innovators not to view the world through a narrowly gendered lens but to pay attention to the skills and lived experiences of all.”―Professor Gina Rippon, bestselling author of The Gendered Brain\n“Sometimes we are lucky to experience a leap in new thinking. We look in amazement at the world around us and ask: Why didn’t we see this before? This what Katrine Marçal offers us in Mother of Invention. She brilliantly proves how male-driven technology over the ages has limited full human development by neglecting a liberating female narrative and perspective.”―Jan Eliasson, former deputy secretary-general of the UN\n“This second book by the author of Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? is both bracing and highly entertaining. Marcal’s contention is that while women have been coming up with ingenious inventions since the beginning of time, they are routinely sidelined in a world geared to men.”―Bookseller\n“Start ‘Mother of Invention,’ and you’ll be astounded. It’s fun and super-informative with tales of innovations that were largely ignored or irritatingly co-opted by men, and back-stories of how the presence of the feminine, whether real or imagined, changed products and processes...wry and very, very enjoyable...”―Idaho Press\nAn illuminating and maddening examination of how gender bias has skewed innovation, technology, and history—now in paperback\nIt all starts with a rolling suitcase. Though the wheel was invented some 5,000 years ago, and the suitcase in the 19th century, it wasn’t until the 1970s that someone successfully married the two. What was the holdup? For writer and journalist Katrine Marçal, the answer is both shocking and simple: because “real men” carried their bags, no matter how heavy.\nMother of Invention is a fascinating and eye-opening examination of business, technology, and innovation through a feminist lens. Because it wasn’t jus

A funny, clever, and thought-provoking examination of the myth of the "economic man" and its impact on the global economy How do you get your dinner? That is the basic question of economics. When economist and philosopher Adam Smith proclaimed that all our actions were motivated by self-interest, he used the example of the baker and the butcher as he laid the foundations for 'economic man.' He argued that the baker and butcher didn't give bread and meat out of the goodness of their hearts. It's an ironic point of view coming from a bachelor who lived with his mother for most of his life ― a woman who cooked his dinner every night. Nevertheless, the economic man has dominated our understanding of modern-day capitalism, with a focus on self-interest and the exclusion of all other motivations. Such a view point disregards the unpaid work of mothering, caring, cleaning and cooking. It insists that if women are paid less, then that's because their labor is worth less. Economics has told us a story about how the world works and we have swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. This story has not served women well. Now it's time to change it.
A kind of femininst Freakonomics, Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? charts the myth of economic man ― from its origins at Adam Smith's dinner table, its adaptation by the Chicago School, and its disastrous role in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis ― in a witty and courageous dismantling of one of the biggest myths of our time.

Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?: A Story of Women and Economics

Pegasus Books

A funny, clever, and thought-provoking examination of the myth of the "economic man" and its impact on the global economy. How do you get your dinner? That is the basic question of economics. When economist and philosopher Adam Smith proclaimed that all our actions were motivated by self-interest, he used the example of the baker and the butcher as he laid the foundations for 'economic man.' He argued that the baker and butcher didn't give bread and meat out of the goodness of their hearts. It's an ironic point of view coming from a bachelor who lived with his mother for most of his life — a woman who cooked his dinner every night. Nevertheless, the economic man has dominated our understanding of modern-day capitalism, with a focus on self-interest and the exclusion of all other motivations. Such a view point disregards the unpaid work of mothering, caring, cleaning and cooking. It insists that if women are paid less, then that's because their labor is worth less. Economics has told us a story about how the world works and we have swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. This story has not served women well. Now it's time to change it. A kind of femininst Freakonomics, Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? charts the myth of economic man — from its origins at Adam Smith's dinner table, its adaptation by the Chicago School, and its disastrous role in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis — in a witty and courageous dismantling of one of the biggest myths of our time.

Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, believed that our actions stem from self-interest and the world turns because of financial gain. But every night Adam Smith's mother served him his dinner, not out of self-interest but out of love.Today, economics focuses on self-interest and excludes our other motivations. It disregards the unpaid work of mothering, caring, cleaning and cooking and its influence has spread from the market to how we shop, think and date. In this engaging takedown of the economics that has failed us, Katrine Mar�al journeys from Adam Smith's dinner table to the recent financial crisis and shows us how different, how much better, things could be.

Who Cooked Adam Smiths Dinner?

Granta Books

Machonomics: Die Ökonomie und die Frauen

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Beck C. H.

¿Quién le hacía la cena a Adam Smith?: Una historia de las mujeres y la economía

Debate

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Marçal, Katrine. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Marçal, Katrine

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Marçal, Katrine. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

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

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

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

Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?: A Story of Women and Economics

Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?: A Story of Women and Economics

Who Cooked Adam Smiths Dinner?

Machonomics: Die Ökonomie und die Frauen

¿Quién le hacía la cena a Adam Smith?: Una historia de las mujeres y la economía