HISTORICIZING FEMINIST DATA ACTIVISM: A MEDIA GENEALOGY OF THE WOMEN’S SAFETY AUDITS

Resumen

This paper historicizes feminist data activism, particularly as it relates to the use of grassroots data by feminist activists to address gendered violence in public spaces. It seeks to address the following question: How did grassroots data become widely accepted as a legitimate means to combat gendered violence in public spaces? This historical perspective allows us to unpack what seems to be a novel action repertoire within contemporary feminist activism. I use media genealogy to trace the history of a particular grassroots data type: the Women's Safety Audit (WSA). The data for this study come from historical records published by the feminist organisation that pioneered the WSA and different UN agencies, spanning four decades since the emergence of the WSA in the 1980s (n=41). I also drew upon modern data initiatives' documents and interviews with data activists and stakeholders who funded data activism efforts. This paper reveals three significant forces that have shaped the WSA and how it came to be accepted as a means to address gendered violence in public spaces: the Crime Prevention through Environmental Design approach, the dominance of evidence-based practices, and the imperative of scalability. Rather than signalling the emergence of innovative epistemic cultures as some scholars suggest, this genealogy of the WSA showed that grassroots data approach has indeed been folded into other hegemonic interests throughout the history. Grappling with this entanglement and the hierarchy of power/knowledge it enacts is crucial for feminist activism to not reproduce the power relations they seek to address.