Book Club “Counting Feminicide with Catherine D’Ignazio”
MIT Press, Data-Pop Alliance
Data Against Feminicide, Eureka, Data-Pop Alliance’s Data Feminism Network.
The objective of this commitment is to enhance the visibility and impact of feminicide data gathered by activists, journalists and human rights defenders, ensuring that their critical work receives broader recognition and contributes meaningfully to addressing gender-based violence throughout the Americas. By promoting transformative and restorative data science, we seek to challenge traditional approaches to data collection and use, fostering methods that prioritize ethical responsibility and the work of grassroot activists. This approach not only aims to improve the accuracy and reliability of feminicide data but also strives to restore dignity and memory to victims through more human-centered data practices. Ultimately, the commitment is rooted in the broader goal of advancing gender equality, ensuring that data becomes a tool for empowerment and systemic change, rather than mere statistics.
This commitment seeks to address the challenges in collecting and using feminicide data. Official data is often incomplete or inaccurate, leading to underreporting and exclusion of certain deaths. Additionally, media sources may provide unreliable information, further contributing to a lack of comprehensive data on feminicide. These gaps make it difficult to fully grasp the scope of the problem and hinder efforts to address it effectively. We aim to solve these issues by further promoting and giving visibility to innovative grassroots tools and strategies for improving the collection, analysis and use of feminicide data, based on Professor Catherine D'Ignazio's work "Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action". Central to this approach is an emphasis on care, memory, and justice in how the data is collected, analyzed, and applied. Ultimately, the goal is to contribute to more accurate reporting and support the creation of a more just and informed response to feminicide.
The commitment focuses on broadening access to discussions and knowledge surrounding feminicide data, particularly for non-English speaking communities, with an emphasis on Spanish and Portuguese speakers. Key activities include providing access to transformative and restorative data science strategies and fostering connections between different groups interested in this field. A central platform will facilitate discussions about the content of the book ‘Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action”, by Catherine D’Ignazio, and encourage participants to engage with others on related topics.
To achieve this, we employ several strategies:
- Promote access to the “Counting Feminicide” book, through learning guides including summaries in both audio and text formats, in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Provided we are able to secure the necessary resources, we also plan to expand to French.
- Offer a space on the Eureka platform (www.eureka.club) that works as a safe place for the community to discuss impressions of the book and share thoughts in their own language. We also facilitate self-reflection through the creation of “Eureka Moments”, AI generated images that participants can create by themselves to help process parts of the book or share interesting insights, encouraging creative exploration of the subject matter.
- Make available discussions with the author herself, complemented by sessions featuring activists who are deeply involved in feminist data work, to share their experiences and insights.
The intended outcomes include providing a continued platform for activists working on feminicide data and related objectives, expanding access to this critical knowledge. The commitment aims to make the “Counting Feminicide” book content more accessible to non-English speakers through translations, helping to spread the ideas and strategies contained in the book to a broader audience and reaching people across the Americas.
To monitor progress and evaluate the success of this commitment, we will use a combination of participant feedback, engagement metrics, and internal reflection. First, we will conduct survey evaluations at both the midpoint and conclusion of the project, asking participants to complete a brief questionnaire about their experience. This will allow us to gather valuable feedback on the quality of the content, the discussions, and the overall impact of the sessions.
We will also actively monitor engagement across various platforms, including tracking the number of participants, comments, and "Eureka Moments" shared in the forum, as well as monitoring social media activity by counting followers, comments, and likes.
Finally, our team will hold at least 2 internal assessments to reflect on the success of the project. These meetings will focus on assessing the quality of the summaries, the effectiveness of the discussions, and whether the initiative is meeting its intended goals. This internal review process will help us identify any areas for improvement and measure the overall success of the commitment.