Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Conceptualizing Inequality and Insecurity in the Digital Age
- Part II Social Media, Surveillance, and Gender-Based Violence Online
- Part III Futures of Technology, Gender, and Security
- Notes
- References
- Index
2 - Big Data and the Security of Women: Where We Are and Where We Could Be Going
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Conceptualizing Inequality and Insecurity in the Digital Age
- Part II Social Media, Surveillance, and Gender-Based Violence Online
- Part III Futures of Technology, Gender, and Security
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Understanding where we are at and what is at stake with regard to gender, technology, and the security of women involves examining the data. But what happens when the data are part of the problem? The production and dissemination of newer, larger (and, in almost every instance, quantitative) data is in and of itself a technology – one that is inherently gendered. In recent years, a number of authors have raised warnings about how data gaps, misleading interpretations, and algorithms that are both gendered and racialized impact virtually every aspect of women’s lives (O’Neil 2016; Noble 2018; Criado-Perez 2019). Work has also interrogated the gendered, racialized, and intersectional power relationships reflected in data collection, which tends to favour elite perspectives and motivations (Walter and Andersen 2013; D’Ignazio and Klein 2020). Discussion of power relationships has further led to reflection on the relationship between data collection, quantification, and surveillance (Walby and Anaïs 2015). This creates a problem, insofar as the call for gender-disaggregated data is deeply embedded in policy initiatives aimed at gender mainstreaming. If this lynchpin of institutional monitoring and evaluation schemes is flawed, what does it mean for efforts to highlight emerging issues in gender and security?
This chapter seeks to present but also critique the data we have on gender equality and gendered experiences of security. This begins with some background, covering the coinciding rise of ‘big data’ (as a technology and an ethos) and normative frameworks in academic and policy circles that incentivize the collection and dissemination of gender-disaggregated data. From there, I proceed to a discussion of the theoretical, ethical, mathematical, and practical issues involved in the collection and analysis of gender-disaggregated data. Ultimately, I argue that the move towards incorporating big data values into discourse on gender and security has created a problematic environment in which problems including (but not limited to) missing data, subjective coding choices, and the functional erasure of intersectional dynamics abound. Taking these issues into account, I argue that there is a continued need to explore questions about gender and security through a mixed-methods framework.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Digital Frontiers in Gender and SecurityBringing Critical Perspectives Online, pp. 13 - 41Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2023