Measurement Imperatives and Gender Politics: An Introduction

Buss, Doris

doi:10.1093/sp/jxv030

Cited by 15 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Anthropologists and feminist scholars have documented how the creation of quantitative indicators is part of a gendered, racialized, and politicized process of knowledge production, rather than an observation of objective truth (Merry 2016; Adams et al. 2016; Wendland 2016; Suh 2019; Brunson and Suh 2020; Brunson 2019; Buss 2015). This critique of indicators and their tacit ideologies is much less acknowledged in the quantitative social and biomedical sciences, but has important implications for how we understand and make use of the metrics we inherit from the scholars who came before us.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supply‐Side Versus Demand‐Side Unmet Need: Implications for Family Planning Programs

Senderowicz¹,

Maloney²

2022

Population & Development Rev

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Despite its central importance to global family planning, the "unmet need for contraception" metric is frequently misinterpreted. Often conflated with a lack of access, misinterpretation of what unmet need means and how it is measured has important implications for family planning programs. We review previous examinations of unmet need, with a focus on the roles of access and demand for contraception, as well as the role of population control in shaping the indicator's priorities. We suggest that disaggregating unmet need into "demand-side unmet need" (stemming from lack of demand) and "supply-side unmet need" (stemming from lack of access) could allow current data to be leveraged into a more person-centered understanding of contraceptive need. We use Demographic and Health Survey data from seven sub-Saharan African countries to generate a proof-of-concept, dividing women into unmet need categories based on reason for contraceptive nonuse. We perform sensitivity analyses with varying conceptions of access and disaggregate by education and marital status. We find that demand-side unmet need far exceeds supply-side unmet need in all scenarios. Focusing on supply-side rather than overall unmet need is an imperfect but productive step toward person-centered measurement, while more sweeping changes to family planning measurement are still required.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supply‐Side Versus Demand‐Side Unmet Need: Implications for Family Planning Programs

Senderowicz¹,

Maloney²

2022

Population & Development Rev

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“…Its implications have been considered variously progress, because of the enhanced capacity of science to speak truth to power, or detrimental, because it restructures control over knowledge towards power elites (Porter, 1995). There is a gender dimension to this debate, which addresses whether datafication is detrimental to women (Buss, 2015;Merry, 2011Merry, , 2016 or makes visible forms of gender inequality that facilitate challenges to inequalities (Cohen et al, 2011).…”

Section: Digitalisation and Complex Epistemic Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is femicide? The United Nations and the measurement of progress in complex epistemic systems

Walby

2022

Current Sociology

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Femicide is a key global indicator of progress towards gender equality. The occurrence of some but not all five gender dimensions in the indicators of violence used to measure progress towards United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 5, 11 and 16 are analysed as resulting from the tension between divergent feminist strategies that focus either on women-only or on mainstreaming intersecting inequalities. The tension between universalist and particularist projects underlies the contestations over the construction of these gendered indicators. The analysis develops a conceptualisation of indicators as assets in order to capture the social relations of power involved (rather than as boundary objects), supported by platforms (which can be public as well as corporate) and generated by dynamic epistemic systems (rather than stable epistemological infrastructures).

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“…Randomized control trials are the measurement tool par excellence, with proponents insisting that this method is synonymous with rigor (Karlan and Appel 2011). Yet this preoccupation with quantification stands at odds with many of the concerns of feminist scholarship, including the much messier and harder to quantify stuff of social relations, intersecting inequalities, and power (Buss 2015). This book brings ethnographic evidence and an analytic focus on care, power, and geography to bear on dominant data trends.…”

Section: Ontributions Of This B O Okmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a result, statistical renderings of problems of a socioeconomic nature rarely provide the nuanced and contextual information that helps us understand what drives them. One of the great risks in the persistent demand for rapid and continuous quantitative data on program outputs is that our attention is diverted away from qualitative data that captures vital dimensions of social well-being-that is, the root causes and structural aspects (Buss 2015).…”

Section: They Point To An Important and Oft-overlooked Question: What...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Unjust Conditions

Cookson¹

2019

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Preface romantic partner's university login information to access articles that I myself had authored! A great deal of English-language academic research is also inaccessible to academics who reside in underfunded institutions, often in the very countries in which most development studies are carried out. One consequence of all this is that the important insights generated by slow research too seldom influence policy debates in the ways that they could. This circumstance, in which development interventions are increasingly datadriven but the data is not diverse, has shaped my approach to the book at hand. This book is based on well-funded, "slow" research, and it is published in an openaccess format. My hope is that the research will enrich classroom discussions and scholarly argument, and that its influence also will extend beyond the silos of the academy to find pragmatic utility in the boardrooms of international development institutions, meeting spaces of nonprofit organizations, and dinner conversations of hopeful social entrepreneurs and tireless human rights activists.xv Acknowled gmentsThis book, and the research that informs it, was made possible by the generous and caring support of people and institutions across three continents, for which I am profoundly thankful.First and foremost, I would like acknowledge my research participants, who remain anonymous here, but to whom I am enduringly grateful for allowing me into their homes and their places of employment, and for sharing the details and their interpretations of their everyday lives.In Peru, I found support in many corners. Thank you to Lewis Taylor, for inviting me to a fiesta in his home, where, in his words, I conducted "the first two months of my research" in a little under three hours. I am indebted to Cecilia, my closest ally during field research, whose energy, sharp critique of development, and love of her country, colors every page of this book. I am thankful for my many friends in Cajamarca, including Rosi, Pepe, and Xochi, for their hospitality and conversation; Mirtha, whose critique of the "perverse" forms that development can take provoked deeper analytical work; Patrick, Heidi, and Tessa, whose Van Gogh Café was a home away from home; and Kyra, for countless conversations on dilapidated spinning bikes and, four years later, over humitas and pickled onions in Salas. I am grateful for Mark Yeung's company during the trying course of fieldwork; his professional encounters with Peru's elites also offered nuance and context that I would otherwise not have had.The intellectual contributions to this book were extensive. Words hardly capture my gratitude for the enduring guidance and generous readings provided by Sarah Radcliffe, whose commitment to the women with whom she works and to producing scholarship of integrity, is a source of inspiration. Thank you to xvi Acknowledgments Christine Oppong for mentorship during fieldwork's foggy moments, for readings of chapters, and for many, many discussions about care. During my dissertation viva,...

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Measurement Imperatives and Gender Politics: An Introduction

Cited by 15 publications

References 22 publications

Supply‐Side Versus Demand‐Side Unmet Need: Implications for Family Planning Programs

Supply‐Side Versus Demand‐Side Unmet Need: Implications for Family Planning Programs

What is femicide? The United Nations and the measurement of progress in complex epistemic systems

Unjust Conditions

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