Gender Data 4 Girls?: A Postcolonial Feminist Participatory Study in Bangladesh

TL;DR

This study uses participatory action research with young women in Bangladesh to critically examine gender data initiatives, highlighting how participatory approaches can empower women and align data collection with their priorities, countering Western-centric development practices.

Contribution

It demonstrates how participatory methods can address postcolonial feminist concerns by ensuring gender data reflects the priorities of majority world women rather than external NGOs.

Findings

Participatory approaches empower women to influence gender data collection.

Community-led events can challenge external development priorities.

Data initiatives can be reoriented to serve local women's interests.

Abstract

Premised on the logic that more, high-quality information on majority world women's lives will improve the effectiveness of interventions addressing gender inequality, mainstream development institutions have invested heavily in gender data initiatives of late. However, critical empirical and theoretical investigations into gender data for development policy and practice are lacking. Postcolonial feminist theory has long provided a critical lens through which to analyse international development projects that target women in the majority world. However, postcolonial feminism remains underutilised for critically investigating data for development projects. This paper addresses these gaps through presenting the findings from a participatory action research project with young women involved in a gender data for development project in Bangladesh. Echoing postcolonial feminist concerns with development, the 'DataGirls' had some concerns that data was being extracted from their communities, representing the priorities of external NGOs to a greater extent than their own. However, through collaborating to develop and deliver community events on child marriage with the 'DataGirls', this research demonstrates that participatory approaches can address some postcolonial feminist criticisms of (data for) development, by ensuring that gender data is enacted by and for majority world women rather than Western development institutions.