Feminist values in design and research

What are we researching in "#WomenAfterDark" WAD research? In our Women After Dark (WAD) research at The Gendered City, we explored the unique challenges women* face navigating urban spaces after dark. Our pilot study, conducted across five European cities—Milan, Amsterdam, Paris, and Rotterdam—revealed critical insights into how #gender shapes spatial experiences at #night. Key emerged terms that are the focus of our research include "#MentalMaps," the cognitive representations women form based on perceived safety and potential threats, and "#FearZones," areas identified as unsafe due to poor lighting, isolation, or prior incidents. Many women reported relying on "#SafeRoutes," familiar paths they feel comfortable using, highlighting the impact of #GenderedGeographies on their movement. More findings underscore the importance of considering #SpatialAgency, or how women navigate and influence urban spaces, often constrained by #InvisibleBarriers embedded in city design. We also observed #TerritorialBoundaries, where certain areas are deemed off-limits after dark, reflecting broader issues of #SpatialFear and #SafetyPerception. #FeministUrbanism, #Womenledurbanism, and through #FeministPlacemaking and #GenderSensitiveDesign lead our research to create safer, more accessible cities for everyone. The goal of our studies to help inform future urban interventions aimed at reducing #UrbanInequality and fostering #UrbanJustice. Stay tuned as we continue to explore how to design urban environments that reflect the lived realities of women* and other marginalized groups.

New Paper at FAccT 2025: "Beyond Semantics: Examining Gender Bias in LLMs Deployed within Low-resource Contexts in India”. In this paper, co-authored with Urvashi Aneja and Aarushi Gupta, we critically examine how gender bias manifests in LLMs when deployed in critical social sectors like agriculture and healthcare in India. 🔍 What we found: LLMs trained and deployed without gender-aware design often replicate and reinforce patriarchal norms. We identify four dimensions of bias in LLMs: 📌 Content-based bias 📌 Relevance-based bias 📌 Risk-based bias 📌 Accessibility-based bias Most LLMs in our study were built without scoping for women’s needs, evaluating for bias, or designing with low-resource users in mind. Developers prioritized minimum viable products and accuracy over equity—leading to tools that systematically exclude and disadvantage women. Fixing gender bias in LLMs isn’t just a technical challenge. It demands structural change, long-term investment, and feminist design practices grounded in local realities. #AIForSocialGood #GenderBias #ResponsibleAI #LLMs #GlobalSouth #AIandSociety

New article ´Building on decolonial feminist scholarship, we show how a commitment to reflexive practice “in the field” has developed further, through a reflection on the self as a researcher and on “the field” as a construct. This ethical and political commitment prompts a rethinking of key concepts in fieldwork (and research more generally), including those of “the researcher,” “the research participant” (or “population”), “expertise,” and what constitutes “data” and “knowledge.” We argue that a preferable approach to critical fieldwork is grounded in feminist and decolonial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist politics. This approach is committed not just to reflecting critically on “the field” and the interactions of the researcher within it but also to challenging the divisions, exclusions, and structures of oppression that sustain the separations between “here” and “there,” “researcher” and “researched,” and “knower" and “known.”´

Feminist Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) is not just an approach—it is a radical shift in how evidence is generated, interpreted, and used to challenge power dynamics and drive transformative social change. Traditional MEAL frameworks often reinforce existing hierarchies, treating beneficiaries as passive data sources rather than agents of change with valuable lived experiences. This document introduces a feminist lens to MEAL, redefining what counts as evidence, who holds knowledge, and how learning can be a collective and empowering process rather than a bureaucratic exercise. At the heart of this approach is a commitment to participation, intersectionality, and power redistribution. It moves beyond extractive data collection and emphasizes collaborative knowledge generation, ensuring that women’s rights organizations, marginalized communities, and frontline actors lead the evaluation process. The document outlines seven foundational principles, including shifting power to participants, valuing context-driven knowledge, and embedding MEAL within broader social transformation efforts. It presents practical strategies for designing evaluations that capture incremental change, respond to backlash, and challenge gender-based discrimination, ensuring that MEAL is not just about measuring impact but actively contributing to feminist movements. This resource is designed for M&E professionals, feminist researchers, and development practitioners who seek to decolonize MEAL practices and create systems that are inclusive, reflexive, and socially just. It challenges conventional donor-driven approaches and offers alternative methodologies such as peer-led evaluations, participatory learning spaces, and ethical data collection that prioritize safety, agency, and the voices of those most affected by inequality. Feminist MEAL is not about ticking boxes—it is about reimagining how we document, learn, and act to dismantle systemic oppression and build a more just world.

In epidemiologic studies, measurement biases between genders can distort our understanding of health outcomes. Measurement scales, diagnostic criteria, and even data collection methods often reflect historical biases that favor one gender over another (e.g., may not capture gender-specific symptomology). This skewed approach has deep roots. Instead of the default being inclusion, the default was exclusion when it came to women in clinical trials—a choice driven by societal, cultural, and scientific biases. Concerns about reproductive health, like potential risks to fetuses or hormonal shifts from menstruation, were cited to bar women of childbearing age, even when irrelevant to the study. Male physiology was treated as the "standard," with trials overwhelmingly designed for men under the false assumption that gender differences in drug responses or side effects were trivial. Women’s hormonal variability was framed as a problem to avoid, and the absence of women in medical leadership cemented their exclusion for decades. The fix goes beyond solidarity statements on women's day. We need more inclusive approaches in study design: 1️⃣ Stratify by gender—and age—when sampling in clinical studies: Stratifying by gender during recruitment ensures enough women are included. But in some cases, gender alone isn’t enough—older women are often underrepresented, missing issues like perimenopause or menopause. Stratifying by age (e.g., <50 vs. 50+) and gender creates four groups—older men, younger men, older women, younger women—letting us probe treatment effects or disease patterns across diverse groups. 2️⃣ Test for effect modification by gender: Analyzing whether gender alters an intervention’s impact can reveal critical biological insights. If a treatment helps everyone but benefits one gender more, that’s a key finding, for better or for worse. 3️⃣ Seek female co-authors deliberately: Especially for women’s health topics, diverse teams matter. An all-male group risks missing key variables only flagged late (say, in peer review) because no one saw the female perspective. This can introduce unmeasured confounding. Once the work’s done, don’t judge author contributions by nouns or pronouns (Jack, Jill, him, her)—that’s the wrong lens. Focus on verbs and adverbs (analyzed, wrote, thoroughly, expertly): what was done and how well. 4️⃣ Power Studies for Subgroup Analysis: Design trials with enough statistical power to detect gender-specific differences, avoiding the trap of underpowered, one-size-fits-all conclusions. Gender sensitivity isn’t just about methods—it’s also about language. 🗣️ Words shape perception, and outdated terms entrench exclusion. Small shifts matter: ❌ Chairman → ✅ Chair or Chairperson ❌ Mankind → ✅ Humanity ❌ Man-made → ✅ Synthetic or Artificial ❌ Manpower → ✅ Personnel ❌ Layman → ✅ Layperson ❌ Middleman → ✅ Intermediary It’s time our science mirrors reality—for everyone. 🌍 #Chisquares #GenderBias #InclusiveResearch

Some reflections on feminist research from our recent work: Before I share these thoughts, I want to say upfront I am no expert. I am learning through my everyday work, interactions, and collective experiences. These reflections stem from co-authoring the paper “Urgent Imperatives: Advancing Gender Equality in Climate Action” with my colleague Saumya Shrivastava. The roots of this work lie in a commitment to social change generating new knowledge, and ensuring that the concerns of women, especially those facing intersectional vulnerabilities, are truly at the center. It felt natural to ground this research in feminist principles as it came from lived experience, collective need, and a desire to challenge systems rather than tick boxes in neoliberal academia. The framework we developed is not static, it is imagined to be tested, adapted and reshaped with time and context. It has been an osmotic process that seeps into our shared thinking and practice. One of the most powerful tools for this was "listening" 👂 : not just as a method, but as a relational practice. We listened deeply, online and in-person, to the women whose experiences are often missing from dominant discourses. We asked open-ended questions, and held space for pauses, silences and stories without steering people to neat conclusions. The conversations that shaped this framework were diverse, honest, and often pushed us to reflect critically on our own assumptions. It was also challenged and strengthened through dialogue with those, whose voices are critical for a truly gender-transformative approach.  Feminist research means centering methodologies that expand our own understanding and create space for those rendered invisible by our institutions and action. 📄 You can read more about the methodology we adopted, here 👇 https://lnkd.in/gGn6QrJP #FeministResearch #GenderEquality #ClimateAction #ListeningAsPractice #TransformativeFrameworks