Data Feminism

Data science is a powerful tool for exposing injustice, improving health outcomes, and toppling governments, but it can also be used to discriminate, police, and surveil. Catherine D Ignazio and Lauren Klein's 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. It is about power, who has it, and how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 328 pages
Publication date: 01 August 2023
Publisher: MIT Press Ltd

“Without ever finger-wagging, Data Feminism reveals inequities and offers a way out of a broken system in which the numbers are allowed to lie.”— WIRED 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.
Data science is a powerful tool that has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. However, it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good and harm 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 that is informed by intersectional feminist thought. They illustrate data feminism in action by showing how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how 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. They also 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. However, 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.

Dimension: 229 x 203 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780262547185