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Leaving No-One Behind? A Research Agenda for Queer Issues in ICT4D
Abstract
The ICT4D community, and the IFIP Working Group 9.4, is bound by a shared interest in social emancipation through digital technologies. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are often evoked to highlight the many social, economic, and environmental arenas where we are active. However, a perspective centring on queer issues is notably absent from our various mission statements. In this paper, I present a research agenda for queer issues in ICT4D to address this absence. I examine the literature that presents such a perspective in information systems and ICT4D, exploring the challenges that the invisibility of queer issues leads to. For LGBTQ+ people, this absence causes barriers and hesitancy in engaging with public services, and worse, the perpetuation and amplification of systematic discrimination. As researchers, developers, and practitioners, we can and should adopt a more inclusive approach, building on past experiences with ICT to address the plights of marginalized groups.
... At the IFIP 9.4 Virtual Conference, van Zyl and McLean (2021) noted how contact tracing technologies were generating disproportionate adverse effects on LGBTQIA + users. A similar perspective was adopted by Wyers (2022), who proposes a research agenda for queer issues in ICT4D. ...
This editorial introduces the core message and contributions of the Special Issue on Feminist and Queer Approaches to ICT4D. We contextualize our Call for Papers and the published works against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and the #MeToo and women's marches movements. We also place this Special Issue in the context of adverse digital incorporation, which characterizes present-day ICT4D research and further highlights the importance of a feminist and queer lens within its landscape. We develop a conceptual apparatus to articulate such a lens, integrating feminist and queer theory with views of data justice, algorithmic resistance, decolonial theorization, and the digital technologies in solidarity-making. Using this framework, we present the seven papers from this Special Issue, highlighting their synergies, but also their unique contributions to a feminist and queer view of ICT4D. We conclude with potential future research paths inspired by this Special Issue.
... Studying IS journal publications across 25 years, their work notes how the field has progressed from gender essentialism, which posits gender as binary and immutable, to an intersectional view that questions these tenets. By rejecting identities, gender essentialism highlighted a core limitation of the discipline's engagement with gender issues, a limitation that IS and related communities such as Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) need to address (Wyers, 2022). Intersectional theories, where biological sex interacts with characteristics such as gender identity, race, or ethnicity (cf. ...
With this research opinion article, we aim to contribute to the ongoing conversation concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within the IS community. Following Windeler et al.'s (2020) research on perceptions of DEI among members of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), we focus on how conferences should be convened in the post-COVID-19 era to maximize inclusivity. What are the benefits, challenges, and implications of holding online and hybrid conferences? Informed by feedback from a survey involving IS scholars in the Global South and from a wide array of AIS senior scholars and conference leaders, we identify several challenges and opportunities of online and hybrid conferences (or, more generally, conferences allowing remote access) for the IS community. We weigh these tradeoffs and implications for DEI and provide reflections to generate constructive discussion on the future of AIS conferences.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly optimized processes across various sectors, enhancing efficiency and transforming digital interactions. However, as AI becomes more integrated into daily life, concerns about its social impacts and inherent biases have emerged. This study explores how AI technologies, such as facial recognition and Automatic Gender Recognition (AGR), can perpetuate and amplify societal prejudices, especially against transgender and non-binary individuals. The 2018 case of Amazon's Rekognition technology, which exhibited high false positive rates for individuals with dark skin, highlights the risks of algorithmic bias and mass surveillance. Given these challenges, this research performed performed a systematic mapping study of the literature on AI to present an analysis of problems and respective causes brought by facial recognition and AGR applications to trans and non-binary people. In a second phase, we developed and empirically assessed a catalog of 19 best practices for an ethical AI development grounded in Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion principles. We aim to establish ethical standards that promote inclusivity to trans and non-binary people, mitigating algorithmic discrimination.
This editorial introduces the core message and contributions of the Special Issue on Feminist and Queer Approaches to ICT4D. We contextualize our Call for Papers and the published works against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and the #MeToo and women's marches movements. We also place this Special Issue in the context of adverse digital incorporation, which characterizes present-day ICT4D research and further highlights the importance of a feminist and queer lens within its landscape. We develop a conceptual apparatus to articulate such a lens, integrating feminist and queer theory with views of data justice, algorithmic resistance, decolonial theorization, and the digital technologies in solidarity-making. Using this framework, we present the seven papers from this Special Issue, highlighting their synergies, but also their unique contributions to a feminist and queer view of ICT4D. We conclude with potential future research paths inspired by this Special Issue.
FCM we analyze the causes and effects of the relationships among the concepts to model the behavior of any system. But this new model gives the causes and effects of the relationships among the concepts to model behavior with ranking of any system. In this paper, we analyze the problem of the Transgender using Trapezoidal Fuzzy Cognitive Maps. This paper is divided into there are five sections. Section one gives the first section introduces the basics introduction of Transgender and the previous research of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) and Trapezoidal FCM (TpFCM). Section two gives the introduction of FCM and TpFCM and the basic operations. In Section three shows the definitions of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) and Trapezoidal Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (TpFCM).In the fourth section the Methods to propose is applied to analyze the problems of Transgender. In the final section gives the conclusions and some suggestions based on our study.
The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped how social, economic, and political power is created, exerted, and extended through technology.
Through case studies from around the world, this book analyses the ways in which technologies of monitoring infections, information, and behaviour have been applied and justified during the emergency, what their side-effects have been, and what kinds of resistance they have met.
This book can be read as a guide to the landscape of technologies deployed during the pandemic and also be used to compare individual country strategies. It will prove useful as a tool for teaching and learning in various disciplines and as a reference point for activists and analysts interested in issues of data justice.
Available for download: https://meatspacepress.com/go/data-justice-and-covid-19-internet-archive/
Agenda 2030 with the Sustainable Development Goals makes the transformative pledge to ‘leave no one behind.’ This paper asks how Agenda 2030 bring certain gendered vulnerabilities to light and make others invisible, and how this affects that transformative pledge. Through a close reading supported by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau’s discourse theory we explore the concept of gender in Agenda 2030 and how it captures gendered vulnerabilities. For contrast, we analyzed a statement by Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) activists.
The onset of COVID-19 has led to the introduction of far-reaching digital interventions in the interest of public health. Among these, digital contact tracing has been proposed as a viable means of targeted control in countries across the globe, including on the African continent. This, in turn, creates significant ethical challenges for vulnerable communities, including LGBTQIA+ persons. In this research paper, we explore some of the ethical implications of digital contact tracing for the LGBTQIA+ community. We refer specifically to the digital infringement of freedoms, and ground our discussion in the discourse of data colonisation and Big Tech. We propose a critical intersectional feminism towards developing inclusive technology that is decentralised and user controlled. This approach is informed by a feminist ethics of care that emphasises multiple lived experiences.
Identification technologies like biometrics have long been associated with securitisation, coercion and surveillance but have also, in recent years, become constitutive of a politics of empowerment, particularly in contexts of international aid. Aid organisations tend to see digital identification technologies as tools of recognition and inclusion rather than oppressive forms of monitoring, tracking and top-down control. In addition, practices that many critical scholars describe as aiding surveillance are often experienced differently by humanitarian subjects. This commentary examines the fraught questions this raises for scholars of international aid, surveillance studies and critical data studies. We put forward a research agenda that tackles head-on how critical theories of data and society can better account for the ambivalent dynamics of ‘power over’ and ‘power to’ that digital aid interventions instantiate.
The term ‘transgender’ describes individuals whose gender identity (GID) differs from their sex assigned at birth (SAB). Despite recent societal shifts in recognition and awareness of transgender issues in many countries, this population faces significant disparity in
health-care access, based on prejudice, health-care costs and lack of expertise.
The Laboratory Medicine community has a duty of care to provide safe and appropriate test analyses and interpretation for transgender patients, during transgender hormone therapy (THT) and at all other
times. Transgender patients present particular challenges to laboratories in how to adequately, safely and efficiently record information relating to GID and gender history, in a manner that is acceptable to the individual. Such information may inform the
choice, interpretation and reporting of laboratory investigations in this patient group.
Purpose of Review
There are over 1.4 million individuals who identify as transgender in the USA, and these individuals are frequently treated with cross-sex hormonal therapy (CSH) to acquire their desired phenotype. Simultaneously, breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in the USA, and there are mixed data on how CSH may influence breast cancer development in transgender individuals. Here, we review the barriers that exist to health access in this population, the current evidence of breast cancer risk in transgender individuals, and breast cancer screening guidelines for both transgender women and men.
Recent Findings
A large portion of the transgender population report barriers that exist to accessing appropriate healthcare, some of which are directly related to poor interactions with healthcare providers. From both systemic reviews and large retrospective studies, it appears that while transgender females have a lower rate of breast cancer development compared to cis-gender females, transgender males have a higher rate of breast cancer development compared to cis-gender males. While several organizations have released screening guidelines for transgender persons, there is a lack of consensus on optimal screening regimens. In addition, there are no formal recommendations by the American Cancer Society or the United States Preventative Task Force for breast cancer screening in transgender persons.
Summary
The risk of breast cancer development in transgender individuals is different compared to that of the cis-gender population. Further prospective data are needed to appropriately quantify these risks and to assess what is the appropriate breast cancer screening recommendations for this population.
Estimates of high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and susceptibility to HPV-related cancer in transgender men (TM) are comparable to prevalence rates found in cisgender women. Regular and thorough screening for cervical cancer is equally as crucial for TM as for cisgender women; however, despite continued risk for cervical cancer in TM and associated recommendations for screening, studies indicate disparities in rates of cervical cancer screening (CCS) in TM compared to cisgender women. The current scoping review explores TM’s knowledge and experiences of CCS and barriers to screening uptake in this population. A range of barriers were identified including the need for health-care services to provide care for TM within the context of a nonbinary approach to gender identity and health. Findings synthesized from relevant research studies ( n = 15; published 2008–2019) are presented, and recommendations are drawn from these findings to inform primary health-care providers’ clinical practice and care of TM.
A new way of thinking about data science and data ethics that is informed by the ideas of intersectional feminism.
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.
The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from the MIT Libraries.
An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival.
What is the relationship between design, power, and social justice? “Design justice” is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims expilcitly to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. It has emerged from a growing community of designers in various fields who work closely with social movements and community-based organizations around the world.
This book explores the theory and practice of design justice, demonstrates how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people—specifically, those who are intersectionally disadvantaged or multiply burdened under the matrix of domination (white supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism)—and invites readers to “build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.” Along the way, the book documents a multitude of real-world community-led design practices, each grounded in a particular social movement. Design Justice goes beyond recent calls for design for good, user-centered design, and employment diversity in the technology and design professions; it connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival.
The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Knowledge Unlatched and the MIT Press Frank Urbanowski Memorial Fund.
The present paper seeks to view language through the prism of gender as social practice as delineated by Judith Butler. Following up on the notion of gender as an entity distinguished from biological sex, she tends to base the notion of a set of normalizing practices that determine gender identity. In so doing, she believes that gender is discursively made or constructed performatively. In her view, the social discourse aligns economic power with a manly power structure where women are dismissed altogether. On the other hand, social and linguistic structures are closely interrelated and serve to perpetuate the dominance and imposed gender identity the latter one of which is actualized through imitated performativity. The article also explores dimensions of gendered practice regarding subjectivity and repression. Butler's views, though quite intriguing for post-structuralists and postmodern scholars, have been criticized on the grounds that it fails to empower women, follow a political agenda, promise any moral basis.
Purpose
The transgender community faces prejudice and stigma and is one of the most ostracised groups in society. One of the ways to reduce prejudice is through intergroup contact. This may be achieved through direct or indirect contact. The purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of direct and indirect contact on reducing transphobia.
Design/methodology/approach
Direct contact was achieved through a transgender speaker panel and indirect contact involved a video presentation. In total, 159 students enroled in undergraduate courses at a prominent university in India were enlisted for this study. Perceptions regarding transgenders were measured using the genderism and transphobia scale. Perceptions were measured at three different time points – before the contact, immediately after the contact and one month post contact.
Findings
Results indicate that both direct and indirect contact cause a significant immediate decrease in transphobia at the post intervention stage. However, only direct contact caused significant reduction at the follow-up stage (one month after the intervention). Direct contact also effected a greater reduction in transphobia than indirect contact.
Research limitations/implications
This study extends previous research that shows that speaker panels involving sexual minority speakers can result in reducing stigma (e.g. Croteau and Kusek, 1992). The present study shows that such speaker panels can also be useful for reducing stigma against transgender individuals. Another important outcome of this study is the relative effectiveness of direct contact in reducing transphobia compared to indirect contact. Direct contact resulted in greater reduction in transphobia both at the post-test and follow-up stages compared to indirect contact.
Practical implications
The results of this study may benefit HR practitioners and policy makers in designing workplace initiatives and policies in creating an inclusive workplace. This study shows that meaningful interaction with transgenders would be a key step in reducing stigmatisation. Since direct contact is rarely expensive or time consuming, it can be a valuable tool to improve the integration of transgender individuals within society. Therefore, students and employees may be encouraged to interact with transgender individuals through panel discussions and workshops. Indirect contact may be used as a preliminary intervention in certain cases where direct contact may be difficult to organise.
Social implications
The stigma faced by transgender individuals has a significant negative impact on their quality of life (Grant et al. , 2014; Reisner and Juntunen, 2015). It is, therefore, necessary to recognise and reduce prejudice against transgenders at both the college and school levels as well as in work organisations. Educators and managers have a significant role to play in this societal change. This study shows that stigma reduction can be achieved in a fairly simple way through contact theory.
Originality/value
This study is one of the first to investigate Indian students’ perceptions of transgenders. It improves on earlier studies using similar interventions in two main ways. First, this study includes a follow-up assessment, which was not performed in most studies. Second, random assignment of participants to one of two conditions improves the reliability of the findings.
Waiting is a common experience in medicalized gender transition. In this article, I address subjective experiences of medicalized gender transition through a temporal lens, focusing on personal narratives of wait lists, setbacks, and other delays experienced by trans patients. I consider administered waiting as a biopolitical practice of governance, one that has subjectifying and somatic effects on individuals and that speaks to the role of time in the administration of bodies, sex/gender, and biomedical citizenship. I ground my discussion in narratives created by trans people that chronicle their gender transitions; I analyze a set of gender transition vlogs appearing on YouTube, focusing on temporal aspects of medicalized transition and experiences of waiting. My discussion recognizes that the temporal modes of gender transition are multivalent, but these social media narratives also suggest being made to wait is an experience of power relations, one that is capable of producing submission, weariness, and precarity.
The increasing availability of digital data reflecting economic and human development, and in particular the availability of data emitted as a by-product of people’s use of technological devices and services, has both political and practical implications for the way people are seen and treated by the state and by the private sector. Yet the data revolution is so far primarily a technical one: the power of data to sort, categorise and intervene has not yet been explicitly connected to a social justice agenda by the agencies and authorities involved. Meanwhile, although data-driven discrimination is advancing at a similar pace to data processing technologies, awareness and mechanisms for combating it are not. This paper posits that just as an idea of justice is needed in order to establish the rule of law, an idea of data justice – fairness in the way people are made visible, represented and treated as a result of their production of digital data – is necessary to determine ethical paths through a datafying world. Bringing together the emerging scholarly perspectives on this topic, I propose three pillars as the basis of a notion of international data justice: (in)visibility, (dis)engagement with technology and antidiscrimination. These pillars integrate positive with negative rights and freedoms, and by doing so challenge both the basis of current data protection regulations and the growing assumption that being visible through the data we emit is part of the contemporary social contract.
Purpose: Meaningful use (MU) and Uniform Data Systems (UDSs) are calling for the collection of gender identity (GI) in electronic health record (EHR) systems; however, many transgender and nonconforming (TGNC) patients may not feel safe disclosing their GI and the data collection is not designed to guide care provision. This study explores the complexities surrounding the inclusion of GI in EHR data collection and how it can best serve patients and providers.
Methods: Using a semistructured interview format, TGNC patients (n=7) and providers (n=5) who care for TGNC patients were asked about data collection procedures and the use of these data within community health centers in Oregon. Using a constant comparative data analysis methodology, interview transcripts were coded for emergent concepts until overlapping themes were identified.
Results: Both patients and providers expressed a need for the EHR to expand upon MU and UDS-recommended fields to include current pronouns and name and gender identifiers in a forward-facing display to prevent misgendering by clinic staff and providers. Furthermore, they both cited the need for a broader range of birth-assigned sex and gender options. TGNC patients and providers disagreed on the scope of health information to be collected as well as who should be tasked with the data collection.
Conclusion: These interviews offer us a glimpse into the structural difficulties of creating an EHR system that serves the needs of clinicians while providing safe and culturally competent care to TGNC patients.
This paper looks at the intersection of two growing trends in international development – use of justice in development theory, and use of data in development practice – and asks what data-justice-for-development would mean. The rationale for this can be the presence of current data injustices in developing countries, and different framings for data injustice point to three different mainstream perspectives on data justice: instrumental, procedural, and distributive/rights-based. These three perspectives are explained but they are also subject to small data, sustainability, Senian, and structural critiques. A full understanding of the mainstream perspectives and conceptualisation of the critiques is largely the task of a future research agenda. However, the paper does particularly argue that a structural approach should be the foundation for understanding data justice in a development context. It offers three potential ways to conceptualise structural data justice – through the ideas of Iris Marion Young, of political economy, and of the capability approach – and ends with some thoughts on the practical agenda when seeking to deliver structural data justice for development.
Background: Transgender and gender diverse people (TGD) have specific healthcare needs and struggles with access barriers that should be addressed by public health systems. Our study aimed to address this topic in the Brazilian context.Methods: A hospital and web-based cross-sectional survey built with input from the medical and transgender communities was developed to assess TGD healthcare needs of and access barriers in two Brazilian states. Results: Although services that assist this population have existed in Brazil since the 1990s, TGD have difficulty accessing these services due to discrimination, lack of information and a policy design that does not meet the needs of TGD. A history of discrimination was associated with a 6.72-fold increase in the frequency of health service avoidance (95% CI [4.5, 10.1]). Discussion: This article discusses the urgent necessity for adequate health policies and for the training of professionals regarding the needs of Brazilian TGD.
Vietnam’s laws, policies and decrees do not explicitly discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals but their rights are not legally protected and they are socially marginalised.
The state promotes a model of a married heterosexual couple with two children in the media and through its public policy campaigns. Families that comply are able to obtain membership of the Communist Party and run for office; women are eligible for micro-credit programmes. Same-sex couples cannot marry and are thus ineligible for the benefits that married couples enjoy. Family laws, with regard to child custody, inheritance and property, do not protect same-sex couples.
In order to understand how LGBT civil society organisations can affect legal and social change with regard to the laws that regulate sexual norms and unions, this empirical study explores the following two examples of collective action in Vietnam: 1. The mobilisation strategies of civil society organisations to hold gay pride events. 2. Collective action to legalise same-sex ceremonies and marriages.
Exposure to heterosexist discrimination may vary by a person's place of residency. Utilizing a minority stress perspective, an online survey of self-identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals (n = 285) examined whether rural and small town inhabitants experienced greater exposure to six types of enacted stigma. After comparing the frequency of enacted stigma by community type, findings demonstrated that rural LGBs reported experiencing more homophobic statements, property damage, and employment discrimination than urban LGBs. Small town LGBs also encountered additional amounts of housing discrimination and were more often chased by strangers compared with urban sexual minorities. Finally, disclosure practices and hierarchies based on race and social class also influenced exposure to discrimination. The importance of spatial factors often intensified when respondents disclosed their sexual identity more publicly. When exploring racial and class differences, affluent sexual minorities experienced less employment discrimination and white sexual minorities were less likely to experience several forms of heterosexist events (especially being punched and kicked).
Objective
This qualitative research examines how transgender and gender nonbinary (T/GNB) persons from South Carolina navigate informational barriers within healthcare systems. This navigation can be described through the lens of information practices, or how T/GNB participants create, seek, use, and share information to achieve desired healthcare outcomes. Special focus is given to the roles of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in shaping these practices.
Materials and Methods
The research utilizes participant data from semistructured interviews and focus groups conducted with 26 T/GNB individuals focusing on their health information practices. Data analysis utilized emic/etic coding and the constant comparative method to identify themes describing transexclusionary information barriers and respondent ICT-led information practices.
Results
Findings note healthcare systems producing cisnormativity by design resulting in T/GNB individuals viewing healthcare spaces as exclusionary. Exclusionary barriers included over reliance on medical, expert authority ignoring T/GNB embodiment, and a lack of contextual perspective to identities. In response, T/GNB seek, create, use, and share information via ICTs to challenge exclusionary practices.
Discussion
T/GNB ICT use addresses systemic barriers within healthcare systems suggesting a need to reframe healthcare systems through the lens of design justice, one that values T/GNB agency in understanding and producing health knowledge.
Conclusion
While many healthcare providers are not intentionally being transexclusionary, the design of healthcare information systems rely on cisnormative values, thus excluding many T/GNB from accessing healthcare in comfortable and safe ways. Shifting toward the values and practices of T/GNB as informed by ICT use will afford healthcare providers ways to undo barriers to care.
Embodiment and affect are understudied in information science work to date. Literature that engages with embodied information interactions typically focuses on physical bodies, while work on affect largely centers people's emotional experiences in formal knowledge institutions like libraries. Room therefore exists to grow in our understanding of embodiment and affect, particularly in terms of theorizing how bodies and feelings factor into a wide range of information experiences from non‐dominant standpoints. This panel centers queer experiences and queer theory in order to expand conceptions of and connections between embodied and affective dimensions of information interactions. Panelists will present a range of research that examines queer people's practices and experiences with information in historical, archival, creative, and health‐related domains. Bodies and emotions are essential components of critical queer theoretical perspectives, meaning that scholarship which centers queerness and its intersections with constructs like race has great potential to expand many branches of information science further beyond their normative bents. In concert, topics discussed should spark conversation among attendees about the theoretical and practical benefits of deeply studying embodiment and affect and further utilizing critical theory in multiple domains within the information science discipline.
This study analyzes how U.S. healthcare organizations implemented legal requirements to treat patients in a manner consistent with their gender identity under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. The ways that healthcare organizations determine gender and track complaints constitute socio-technical systems for compliance, and they shape what discrimination protections look like on the ground. We interviewed grievance handlers about how they use information technologies to process possible civil rights claims from patients and argue that their work demobilizes and erases civil rights, especially claims such as transgender harassment. Mobilized physician-led implementation groups, by contract, enacted a version of gender identity recognition by tracking identities and bodies in electronic medical records and material objects such as specimen labels. Default structures—the dropdown menus of healthcare software—both shape and are shaped by professional norms, financial incentives, and conceptions of justice and deservingness. These socio-technical structures allow conflicting stories of transgender rights to continue on in different parts of the healthcare organization, making it difficult for law to transform healthcare delivery.
Objective: To critically appraise the literature characterizing unique health needs, barriers to access healthcare services and propose research as well as programmatic priorities for interventions to overcome them. Method: Using a scoping review, we appraised peer-reviewed published studies and gray literature from three databases, PubMed, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar. The literature included a total of 67 articles met the inclusion criteria for a review. Results: The review highlights that transgender individuals live on the margins of society, facing stigma, discrimination, socioeconomic and educational exclusion, violence, and poor health including mental health. Transgender individuals experience difficulties accessing quality healthcare services, whether general health needs or specific to their gender needs. Key barriers to access health services reported were discrimination at healthcare facilities, lack of treatment protocols, low health literacy, and poor healthcare-seeking behaviors among the transgender individuals. Other barriers include: their education, gender-based violence, socioeconomic barriers, lack of health insurance, exclusion from social protection schemes, and health systems barriers. Conclusion: Transgender individuals in India are deprived of the right to healthcare. A rights-based approach for programming and research should be prioritized to address barriers to healthcare services.
Despite an increase in visibility of trans and gender-diverse persons in western media, globally, dominant narratives remain those of discrimination, marginalisation, invisibilisation, violence and erasure. Rarely are trans and gender-diverse persons represented as people that belong, able to exercise self-determination as autonomous beings, and/or positioned as positive builders and shapers of societies. This briefing argues that this is no coincidence, as the phenomenon has been actively and intentionally produced by patriarchy to maintain a system of gendered oppressions and inequality. Based on a critical desktop research methodology, this briefing queries this phenomenon with a brief discussion of South Africa and its construction of gendered (in)equalities. It also engages Sustainable Development Goal 5 on ‘Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls’ and whether it has any value-add for trans and gender-diverse persons in context of ensuring that no-one is left behind in the rush to build an inclusive and sustainable future.
Investigations of facial analysis (FA) technologies-such as facial detection and facial recognition-have been central to discussions about Artificial Intelligence's (AI) impact on human beings. Research on automatic gender recognition, the classification of gender by FA technologies, has raised potential concerns around issues of racial and gender bias. In this study, we augment past work with empirical data by conducting a systematic analysis of how gender classification and gender labeling in computer vision services operate when faced with gender diversity. We sought to understand how gender is concretely conceptualized and encoded into commercial facial analysis and image labeling technologies available today. We then conducted a two-phase study: (1) a system analysis of ten commercial FA and image labeling services and (2) an evaluation of five services using a custom dataset of diverse genders using self-labeled Instagram images. Our analysis highlights how gender is codified into both classifiers and data standards. We found that FA services performed consistently worse on transgender individuals and were universally unable to classify non-binary genders. In contrast, image labeling often presented multiple gendered concepts. We also found that user perceptions about gender performance and identity contradict the way gender performance is encoded into the computer vision infrastructure. We discuss our findings from three perspectives of gender identity (self-identity, gender performativity, and demographic identity) and how these perspectives interact across three layers: the classification infrastructure, the third-party applications that make use of that infrastructure, and the individuals who interact with that software. We employ Bowker and Star's concepts of "torque" and "residuality" to further discuss the social implications of gender classification. We conclude by outlining opportunities for creating more inclusive classification infrastructures and datasets, as well as with implications for policy.
Public administration scholarship pertaining to transgender individuals focuses on the implementation of nondiscrimination policies, particularly with respect to employment (Colvin 2007, 2008; Elias 2017). This literature contributes greatly to our understanding of how to maintain open and accessible workplaces for transgender people; however, the effects of the recent politicization of public restroom access for transgender people, such as North Carolina’s HB 2, has yet to receive the same attention. This article argues that the recent surge of “bathroom bills” introduced across various states and localities makes opportunities for transgender and gender nonconforming people to successfully and safely inhabit public space impossible, and uses quantitative and qualitative analysis to illustrate the consequences of these policies. Focusing on seventy-one bills introduced between 2014 and 2018, this article shows that efforts to restrict bathroom access took two forms: first, legalizing discrimination against transgender and gender nonconforming people in public and second, making trans or gender nonconforming embodiment a criminal act. The article concludes with recommendations from architecture, city planning, and Trans Studies scholarship for public administration scholars and practitioners to consider as they continue to design and implement policies to address the unique needs of transgender individuals.
Transgender people frequently contend with serious challenges to living lives of dignity. They face elevated risks of violent assault, discrimination in employment and healthcare, and social, legal, and political hostility. This paper considers Martha C. Nussbaum’s capabilities approach as a means of addressing the needs of transgender people. Following Nussbaum’s lead, the analysis considers how the capabilities approach speaks to the disparities and obstacles faced by transgender people and which of Nussbaum’s list of Central Capabilities must be secured to ensure that they are able to live flourishing lives of dignity. Further, the paper advances proposals to modify three of the Central Capabilities in order to comprehensively address the dignity needs of transgender people and, more broadly, all persons whose gender presentation does not conform to traditional expectations.
With the emergence of global LGBT issues as focal points for domestic and international politics, a theoretical examination of their impact on scholarship becomes necessary in order to broaden international relations (IR) and political science and re-evaluate some of the central tenets and concepts in those disciplines. LGBT politics are often theorized in LGBT studies, which more conventionally trace the impact of such politics, but also increasingly in queer studies, which advance critical, deconstructive perspectives stemming from sexuality and gender. The author asks why LGBT and queer studies have not made earlier inroads into IR and political science, accounts for the theoretical as well as methodological challenges that LGBT politics pose for those disciplines, and highlights some of the open questions that remain to be answered in the future.
Non-binary people are rarely considered by technologies or technologists, and often subsumed under binary trans experiences on the rare occasions when we are discussed. In this paper we share our own experiences and explore potential alternatives - utopias, impossible places, as our lived experience of technologies' obsessive gender binarism seems near-insurmountable. Our suggestions on how to patch these gender bugs appear trivial while at the same time revealing seemingly insurmountable barriers. We illustrate the casual violence technologies present to non-binary people, as well as the on-going marginalisations we experience as HCI researchers. We write this paper primarily as an expression of self-empowerment that can function as a first step towards raising awareness towards the complexities at stake.
This article looks at the case of transgender Britons who tried to correct the gender listed on their government-issued ID cards, but ran up against the British government's increasing-ly computerized methods for tracking, identify-ing, and defining citizens. These newly-computerizing systems show some of the earli-est examples of transphobic algorithmic bias: explicit attempts to program trans people out of the system can be seen in the programming of the early Ministry of Pensions computer system designed to apportion benefits to all taxpaying British citizens. Transgender citizens pushed back against these developments, attempting to hack the bureaucratic avenues and categories available to them, laying the groundwork for a coalescing political movement. This article ar-gues that uncovering the deep prehistory of al-gorithmic bias, and investigating instances of resistance within this history, is essential to understanding current debates about algorith-mic bias--and how computerized systems have long functioned to create and enforce norms and hierarchies.
Introduction:
The purpose of this concept analysis aims to bring awareness of the gender continuum to nurse educators and students and break down gender stereotypes.
Method:
Using the Walker and Avant concept analysis approach, this analysis is based on a transcultural nursing theory framework.
Results:
Gender continuum is an umbrella concept, accounting for components beyond how a person identifies. These components include how one conforms to gender roles, expresses gender outwardly, and anatomical or biological characteristics one possesses.
Discussion:
Nursing students must recognize gender alternatives beyond male and female to provide culturally competent care for transgender and gender nonconforming patients. The impact of this analysis can result in a better understanding of the gender continuum among nurse educators and the dissemination of knowledge to nursing students. Broader knowledge of this concept can lead to dissolution of gender binaries in health care and more culturally competent care provision for all patients.
As seen in Wired and Time
A revealing look at how negative biases against women of color are embedded in search engine results and algorithms
Run a Google search for “black girls”—what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls,” the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society.
In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities. Data discrimination is a real social problem; Noble argues that the combination of private interests in promoting certain sites, along with the monopoly status of a relatively small number of Internet search engines, leads to a biased set of search algorithms that privilege whiteness and discriminate against people of color, specifically women of color.
Through an analysis of textual and media searches as well as extensive research on paid online advertising, Noble exposes a culture of racism and sexism in the way discoverability is created online. As search engines and their related companies grow in importance—operating as a source for email, a major vehicle for primary and secondary school learning, and beyond—understanding and reversing these disquieting trends and discriminatory practices is of utmost importance.
An original, surprising and, at times, disturbing account of bias on the internet, Algorithms of Oppression contributes to our understanding of how racism is created, maintained, and disseminated in the 21st century.
This is a forum for perspectives on designing for communities marginalized by economics, social status, infrastructure, or policies. It will discuss design methods, theoretical and conceptual contributions, and methodological engagements for underserved communities. --- Nithya Sambasivan, Editor
Research on information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) requires the combination of multiple theoretical strands. Central among them are the foundational theories on technology, on context, and on socio-economic development. In addition, ICT4D research draws from middle range theories, which shed light on specific topics of ICT related phenomena in the context of a developing world. In this paper, I explain what each of the three foundational theories is about and indicate the need for middle range theories. I suggest that the challenge for ICT4D research is to draw creatively from existing theoretical debates and to construct analytical routes and theoretical propositions suitable for the complex phenomena of ICT and development.
Research on the use of ICTs for international development, or information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) research, has a history going back some 30 years. The purpose of this paper is to take stock of the ICT4D research field at this important juncture in time, when ICTs are increasingly pervasive and when many different disciplines are involved in researching the area. The paper first provides some reflections on the history of the field broken down into three phases from the mid-1980s to the present day. This is followed by a detailed discussion of future research agenda, including topic selection, the role of theory, methodological issues and multidisciplinarity, and research impact. ICT4D research started largely in the academic field of information systems but it is concluded that the future lies in a multidisciplinary interaction between researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers.
This work sough to document how Indonesian trans* FTM persons experienced discrimination across the interlinked domains of social networks, religious and educational institutions, employment and the workplace and health/healthcare institutions. Objectives were 1) to map the discrimination experienced by trans* FTM individuals in Indonesia, and 2) to establish the specific priorities of the Indonesian trans* FTM community. In-depth interviews, focus-groups and participant observation was used involving 14 respondents. Findings revealed that respondents experienced othering through rejection, misidentification, harassment, “correction” and bureaucratic discrimination across the five pre-established domains. Healthcare and a lack of information emerged as areas of particular concern for respondents. This work calls for healthcare that is sensitive to the needs of trans* FTM people coupled with high-quality information in order to alleviate the cycles through which discrimination is sustained.
Transgender people are a diverse population affected by a range of negative health indicators across high-income, middle-income, and low-income settings. Studies consistently document a high prevalence of adverse health outcomes in this population, including HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, mental health distress, and substance use and abuse. However, many other health areas remain understudied, population-based representative samples and longitudinal studies are few, and routine surveillance efforts for transgender population health are scarce. The absence of survey items with which to identify transgender respondents in general surveys often restricts the availability of data with which to estimate the magnitude of health inequities and characterise the population-level health of transgender people globally. Despite the limitations, there are sufficient data highlighting the unique biological, behavioural, social, and structural contextual factors surrounding health risks and resiliencies for transgender people. To mitigate these risks and foster resilience, a comprehensive approach is needed that includes gender affirmation as a public health framework, improved health systems and access to health care informed by high quality data, and effective partnerships with local transgender communities to ensure responsiveness of and cultural specificity in programming. Consideration of transgender health underscores the need to explicitly consider sex and gender pathways in epidemiological research and public health surveillance more broadly.
ICTs in Developing Countries is a collection of conceptual and empirical works on the adoption and impacts of ICT use in developing societies. Bringing together a wide range of disciplines and contributors, it offers a rich examination of digital divide and ICT for development both in terms of contextual information and disciplinary perspectives.
Using the data systems of Utah Valley University as a representative case study, this research note discusses the sociotechnical process, which I term the translation regime, through which data systems interpret and construct the world, focusing on gender nonconformity as a paradigmatic instance of that process. Through both the technical structures of data systems and the social knowledge within which they operate, such regimes impose multiple substantive translations on the conditions that they purport to represent, translations that come with important political consequences for those who are gender nonconforming. So understood, information technology becomes an important locus for action in the pursuit of social justice for gender-nonconforming people.
Queer Methods and Methodologies provides the first systematic consideration of the implications of a queer perspective in the pursuit of social scientific research. This volume grapples with key contemporary questions regarding the methodological implications for social science research undertaken from diverse queer perspectives, and explores the limitations and potentials of queer engagements with social science research techniques and methodologies. With contributors based in the UK, USA, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia, this truly international volume will appeal to anyone pursuing research at the intersections between social scientific research and queer perspectives, as well as those engaging with methodological considerations in social science research more broadly.
Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
The role and extent of sexual orientation discrimination is the focus of a growing body of literature in economics and in other social sciences, across a wide range of social domains. This work aims at providing a holistic approach to the assessment of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people's life experience by developing a synthetic index of social inclusion. This is obtained by aggregating several variables pertaining to the following domains: monetary poverty, labour market attachment, housing conditions, subjective well-being, and education. We focus on the case of Italy due to the availability of a peculiar dataset that allows us to distinguish LGB people who are open about their sexuality and those who choose not to declare it. The empirical analysis highlights a lower level of inclusion of individuals in same-sex couples that cannot be explained by other observable characteristics. Thus, it may denote a lack of equal opportunities and a need for adequate inclusion policies. Being publicly open about one's sexuality is found as a crucial correlate of the welfare of LGB people, to an extent so far neglected by the literature.