in Spain were 1,149 deaths from gender-based violence since January 1, 2003 — year in which accounting began sexist crimes– until today. It is one of the most advanced countries in counting and differentiating these murders.
However, these numbers are not compiled under the umbrella of the gender violence nor are they equally contrasted in most nations.
Therefore, a group of researchers, led by Catherine D’Ignazio, director of the Data Lab + Feminism from MIT, published an article in the journal standards where they detail the efforts of ten organizations from the United States, Spain, Bolivia, Brazil and Puerto Rico that are working to complete the data on femicides in the world.
“Femicide, the most extreme result of gender-based violence, is a global problem. In 2017, 87,000 women were murdered worldwide. However, we don’t know how many of these crimes are gender-related. We need access to information about who these women were and what their relationship to the killer was. Those contextual data that are missing are fundamental to understanding violence against women”, say the authors.
Data gap and lack of visibility of femicides
they think that knowledge gap It causes, in part, the lack of visibility of femicide. Furthermore, they indicate that “the murders of black or indigenous women and girls are often not covered by the media because they are not considered newsworthy”. And they reiterate that “many countries do not maintain exhaustive information on the murders of women and girls.”
The research team explores the concept of counter data (contracted), a piece of information that compiles gender-related murder incidents from various sources.
D’Ignazio explains to SINC that these data “are data collected by citizens, social organizations and activists outside official ‘recount institutions’. Individuals and groups are increasingly using the production of this type of information as a strategy to demand that the State, the media or the general public pay more attention to the widespread problem of femicides.
Activists —says this expert—“produce data with the aim of challenging the negligence of governmentsas well as pressuring institutions to measure femicide and gender-based violence differently”.
Activists produce data to challenge government neglect and pressure institutions to measure femicide and gender-based violence differently
For your part, isadora cruxenProfessor of Business and Society at Queen Mary University, London, tells SINC that “the notion of ‘against’ also acquires additional meaning in the work of activists, as they seek to challenge media narratives that blame victims of violence for gender violence and recover, honor and remember the lives of murdered women”
Helena Suarez Valresearcher of CIM Warwick (UK) and another of the co-authors, told SINC that this work “provides a case study of feminist practices of data on femicide. Our analysis is very specific and we do not claim that the results can or should be generalized to other forms of data activism”.
Emotional work with data to document violence
However, he adds, “there are aspects of our methodology that can be replicated. For example, the focus on emotional labor involved in data practices that document violence.
The researchers recognize the enormous burden this information gathering can place on the activists who collect it. “It is not easy to read ten cases of femicide and put them on a table, break them down, have to put a name, an age, some circumstances and all that detail without it affecting emotionally”, says an activist interviewed by the newspaper. team.
The authors consider how their fields of research – the study of critical data, data science, and human-computer interaction – could support and sustain the practices of data activists. And so, they emphasize, “help heal communities and hold the state, corporations and the media accountable for their role in maintaining oppression and violence.”
About denial of gender violenceexercised by movements and parties of the far rightCatherine D’Ignazio emphasizes to SINC that she sees it “as part of the bribe that occurs when the feminist movement achieves important legislative or cultural gains”.
It is “a way of trying to re-privatize gender violence and put it back in the private sphere, in a exclusively interpersonal or domestic matter. This is one of the reasons why feminist conceptions of this violence are so important. Femicide as a concept directly affirms that gender violence is structural and not [solo] interpersonal; it is related to the systemic gender subordination of women; and, therefore, it is a fundamental responsibility of States to ensure that citizens have the right to live a life free from violence”, concludes the expert.