Why grassroots data activists in Latin America count feminicide—and how this vital social justice work challenges mainstream data science. What isn’t counted doesn’t count. And mainstream institutions systematically fail to account for feminicide, the gender-related killing of women and girls, including cisgender and transgender women. Against this failure, Counting Feminicide brings to the fore the work of data activists across the Americas who are documenting such murders—and challenging the reigning logic of data science by centering care, memory, and justice in their work. Drawing on Data Against Feminicide, a large-scale collaborative research project, Catherine D’Ignazio describes the creative, intellectual, and emotional labor of feminicide data activists who are at the forefront of a data ethics that rigorously and consistently takes power and people into account. Individuals, researchers, and journalists—these data activists scour news sources to assemble spreadsheets and databases of women killed by gender-related violence, then circulate those data in a variety of creative and political forms. Their work reveals the potential of restorative/transformative data science—the use of systematic information to, first, heal communities from the violence and trauma produced by structural inequality and, second, envision and work toward the world in which such violence has been eliminated. Specifically, D’Ignazio explores the possibilities and limitations of counting and quantification—reducing complex social phenomena to convenient, sortable, aggregable forms—when the goal is nothing short of the elimination of gender-related violence. Counting Feminicide showcases the incredible power of data feminism in practice, in which each murdered woman or girl counts, and, in being counted, joins a collective demand for the restoration of rights and a transformation of the gendered order of the world.

Why grassroots data activists in Latin America count feminicide—and how this vital social justice work challenges mainstream data science. What isn’t counted doesn’t count. And mainstream institutions systematically fail to account for feminicide, the gender-related killing of women and girls, including cisgender and transgender women. Against this failure, Counting Feminicide brings to the fore the work of data activists across the Americas who are documenting such murders—and challenging the reigning logic of data science by centering care, memory, and justice in their work. Drawing on Data Against Feminicide, a large-scale collaborative research project, Catherine D’Ignazio describes the creative, intellectual, and emotional labor of feminicide data activists who are at the forefront of a data ethics that rigorously and consistently takes power and people into account. Individuals, researchers, and journalists—these data activists scour news sources to assemble spreadsheets and databases of women killed by gender-related violence, then circulate those data in a variety of creative and political forms. Their work reveals the potential of restorative/transformative data science—the use of systematic information to, first, heal communities from the violence and trauma produced by structural inequality and, second, envision and work toward the world in which such violence has been eliminated. Specifically, D’Ignazio explores the possibilities and limitations of counting and quantification—reducing complex social phenomena to convenient, sortable, aggregable forms—when the goal is nothing short of the elimination of gender-related violence. Counting Feminicide showcases the incredible power of data feminism in practice, in which each murdered woman or girl counts, and, in being counted, joins a collective demand for the restoration of rights and a transformation of the gendered order of the world.

A new way of thinking about data science and data ethics that is informed by the ideas of intersectional feminism. Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In Data Feminism, Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought. Illustrating data feminism in action, D'Ignazio and Klein show how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show why the data never, ever “speak for themselves.” Data Feminism offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But Data Feminism is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who doesn't, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed.

This volume explores in depth femicide and feminicide, bringing together our current knowledge on this phenomenon and its prevention. No country is free from femicide/feminicide, which represents the tip of the iceberg in male violence against women and girls. Therefore, it is crucial and timely to better understand how states and their citizens are experiencing and responding to femicide/feminicide globally. Through the work of internationally recognised feminist and grassroots activists, researchers, and academics from around the world, this handbook offers the first in-depth, global examination of the growing social movement to address femicide and feminicide. It includes the current state of knowledge and the prevalence of femicide/feminicide and its characteristics across countries and world regions, as well as the social and legal responses to these killings. The contributions contained here look at the accomplishments of the past four decades, ongoing challenges, and current and future priorities to identify where we need to go from here to prevent femicide/feminicide specifically and male violence against women and girls overall. This transnational, multidisciplinary, cross-sectoral handbook will contribute to research, policy, and practice globally at a time when it is needed the most. It brings a visible, global focus to the growing concern about femicide/feminicide, underscoring the importance of adopting a human rights framework in working towards its prevention, in an increasingly unstable global world for women and girls.

Increasingly there is global attention on the prevalence of women’s deaths resulting from intimate partner violence. Campaigns such as ‘Counting Dead Women’ in Australia, the ‘Femicide Census’ in England, the Canadian Femicide Observatory, and the emergence of family violence death review teams globally, build on the work of agencies such as the United Nations and the World Health Organisation, highlighting the fatal consequences of intimate partner violence for women around the world. This book considers the need for and the steps to be taken towards creating a meaningful framework for a global index of women’s deaths from intimate partner violence. While there are global indices for deaths that relate to public violence, such as terrorism, there is to date no systematic global count of killings of women by their intimate partners. It considers the possibilities and challenges that arise in counting intimate femicide. It argues that such an exercise needs to avoid narrow empiricism and instead be part of a broader feminist political project aimed at ending violence against women. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, law, policing, and politics.

"Increasingly there is global attention on the prevalence of women's deaths resulting from intimate partner violence. Campaigns such as 'Counting Dead Women' in Australia, the 'Femicide Census' in England, the Canadian Femicide Observatory and the emergence of family violence death review teams globally, build on the work of agencies such as the United Nations and the World Health Organisation highlighting the fatal consequences of intimate partner violence for women around the world. This book considers the need for and the steps to be taken towards creating a meaningful framework for a global index of women's deaths from intimate partner violence. While there are global indices for deaths that relate to public violence, such as terrorism, there is to date no systematic global count of killings of women by their intimate partners. It considers the possibilities and challenges that arise in counting intimate femicide. It argues that such an exercise needs to avoid narrow empiricism and instead be part of a broader feminist political project aimed at ending violence against women. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, law, policing and politics"--

The global struggles against racism, capitalism, and patriarchy revealed by the Black and Indigneous women and trans communities leading its resistance.