Future events
Future events will be announced here.
Past events
15 December 2022, FemQuant anniversary event: Looking back, looking forward
In autumn 2022, we marked five years of FemQuant. It started with a workshop in London, UK in September 2017 and grew into a network of researchers and a series of conferences and seminars. To mark the occasion, we held a panel discussion around the themes of ‘looking back’ and ‘looking forward’ in relation to what it means to take a feminist approach to quantitative research in the social sciences.
Online event – watch the recording.
The discussion ‘looks back’ at exciting innovations and promising developments made in quantitative feminist research, as well as the challenges faced along the way, and ‘looks forward’ on exploring new directions and opportunities for feminist quantitative research. The discussion is chaired by FemQuant organising collective member Sara Rose Taylor. Joining Sara for the discussion is a fantastic panel of social scientists who use feminist approaches in their quantitative research: Aliya Saperstein, Alyasah Ali Sewell, Heini Väisänen, Jaclyn S. Wong, Marion Lieutaud, Rachel Cohen and Wendy Sigle.
Professor Aliya Saperstein is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University. Aliya’s research focuses on the social processes through which people come to perceive, name, and deploy seemingly immutable categorical differences —such as race and sex—and how such processes create and maintain social inequality.
Dr Alyasah Ali Sewell (they/them/their) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Emory University and Affiliated Faculty with the African American Studies, and Executive Director and Founder of The Race and Policing Project. A widely-published medical sociologist, social psychologist, and research methodologist, they assess the local political economies of racism, medicine, and health disparities and data equity issues in methodological approaches quantifying police brutality, intersectionality, and systemic racism. Sewell is a proud second-generation of Black Latinx through the Caribbean diaspora, they leverage data to bridge the evidence-based stories of the freedom fighters past to those who will transform our futures. It is their duty to generate equitable research that is accessible to everyday people.
Dr Heini Väisänen is a Tenured Researcher at the French National Institute for Demographic Research (INED) and a part-time Lecturer in Social Statistics and Demography at the University of Southampton. Her research spans over various geographical contexts, and focuses on population-level sexual and reproductive health topics, in particular on pregnancies not ending in live births; and the drivers and implications of pregnancy intentions.
Dr Jaclyn S. Wong (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Faculty Affiliate of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina. She received her PhD in Sociology with a graduate certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies from the University of Chicago in 2018. Her research uses qualitative and quantitative methods to examine gender inequalities in paid and unpaid work within and between couples and families over the life course. Her book, Equal Partners? How Dual-Professional Couples Make Career, Relationship, and Family Decisions is forthcoming in April 2023 from University of California Press.
Dr Marion Lieutaud is a Research Fellow in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics. A sociologist, specialised in computational and quantitative methods, Marion studies gender, migration and inequalities in paid and unpaid labour. She investigates how international migration shapes women’s labour as well as the gender division of labour and care in migrants’ couple relationships. Marion’s teaching and research comprises a critical approach to quantitative data, especially the socio-history, politics and challenges of developing and using survey data that works for research on intersectional inequalities.
Professor Rachel Cohen is a Professor in Sociology, Work and Employment at City, University of London. Her research uses mixed methods to explore working lives across different occupations. Rachel led the establishment of a Q-Step Centre, focused on improving the quantitative skills of undergraduate students, at City, University of London, is a past-editor of Radical Statistics and has published on feminism and quantitative methods.
Dr Sara Rose Taylor is part of the FemQuant organizing collective and is also a Canadian public servant. Her academic research focuses on governance by indicators in global social policy and feminist engagement with evaluation and measurement.
Professor Wendy Sigle is Head of the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and teaches courses on social policy and population studies. Wendy has worked on a variety of issues related to families and family policy in historical and contemporary societies. Applying theoretical contributions and insights from gender theory and feminist epistemology, Wendy’s research critiques how quantitative methods are applied and how quantitative evidence is used and interpreted in social research. A key concern is how taken for granted approaches shape policy logics and policy design.
6 September 2021, Beyond the binary variable: Feminist quantitative analyses of gendered inequalities
Online conference – see here for recordings from all the sessions
Welcome & Opening keynote: Anna Lindqvist (Lund University); What is gender, anyway: a review of the options for operationalising gender (recording here)
Session 1-A: Queering the census data collection (recording here)
1. Kevin Guyan (University of Glasgow): Pushing on closed doors: Queer data, evidence and inaction | 2. Kirstie English (University of Glasgow): Reframing census debates: Essential criteria for representing trans people | 3. Christina Pao (University of Oxford): Queering the census: Demographic considerations of adding (and changing) questions on gender and sexuality
Session 1-B: Beyond uni-dimensional measurement of gender (recording here)
1. Irene Marta Brusini (London School of Economics / Bocconi University): Rethinking gender political representation in Europe | 2. Anne Laure Humbert (Oxford Brookes University): Construction of a revised and improved set of gender indices on gender equality and women’s empowerment | 3. Zuzana Dancikova & Wendy Sigle (London School of Economics): Gendered context as a constraint on uptake of new Slovak leave policy for fathers
Panel discussion: Catherine D’Ignazio (MIT) & Lauren Klein (Emory University), authors of Data Feminism (2020) – facilitated by Sara Rose Taylor (recording here)
Session 2-A: Femininity/masculinity and gender identity (recording here)
1. Lisa Wandschneider (Bielefeld University): Exploring gendered practices by social position: the gender score applied to a German population sample | 2. Lena Wangnerud (University of Gothenburg): The subjective meaning of gender. How survey designs affect perceptions of femininity and masculinity | 3. Elizabeth Yarrow (University of Cambridge): Measuring gender diversity: the development and use of a new composite scale
Session 2-B: Queer identities in surveys (recording here)
1. Emma McKenna (University of Ottawa): Real and imaginary gender in quantitative research on sex work | 2. Joseph Van Matre (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam): Gender expression and students’ lived experiences on college campuses | 3. Nerilee Ceatha (University College Dublin): Growing up in Ireland highlights that youth in Ireland are questioning the idea of fixed, binary gender identities
Session 3-A: Intersectional quantitative research (recording here)
1. Heather Shattuck-Heidorn (University of Southern Maine): Beyond the binary: Understanding gender/sex in COVID-19 | 2. Sabrina Saase (Technical University Braunschweig in cooperation with Sigmund Freud University Berlin): Intersectionality traveling into quantitative research or do we underestimate quantitative research? |
3. Alexia Pretari, Sarah Barakat & Jaynie Vonk (Oxfam GB): Intersectional feminist intent in research and evaluation? Sharing learning from quantitative impact evaluations
Session 3-B: Reflections on the research processes (recording here)
1. Joe Strong (London School of Economics): Capturing relationality: a novel approach to understanding masculinities and sexual and reproductive health | 2. Laura Sheppard (UCL): Gendering the research pipeline | 3. Alexis Henshaw (Troy University): Gendered security and the technologies of data: Where we are and where we could be going
*This conference was supported by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge
22 January 2021, 12:00-13:00 GMT, Webinar: “Reconsidered Disadvantage in the United States: An Intersectional Analysis”
Speaker: Dominique Green, University of St Andrews
In collaboration with CPC Athena Swan at the University of Southampton (recording here)
Abstract:
Poverty and disadvantage in the United States is commonly defined in terms of low income. This definition and its subsequent measurement neglects the multidimensional nature of the phenomena. Most research acknowledges that this reductionist measure is insufficient but there have been few attempts at quantifying US poverty and disadvantage multidimensionally. In this seminar, I will draw on the European social exclusion literature and apply the Bristol Social Exclusion Matrix to indicators from the US Census Bureau produced American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample – with a sample size of 3 million addresses – in order to uncover factors of disadvantage in the United States. Additionally, I will discuss the relationship between these dimensions and sociodemographic characteristics primarily via the use of intersectionality as an analytic tool. This research explores how the intersection between race and gender better informs understandings of the experience of disadvantage at the individual level than an exploration of gender alone, particularly for Black women. Overall, using a conceptualisation of disadvantage not previously applied to the US, the research quantitatively shows that income is just one piece of a complex social issue and that women, minorities, and those at the intersection of those characteristics face disadvantage across dimensions.
12 June 2019: ‘One day workshop: Gender Data Gaps’, University of Kent, funded by Kent Q-Step, supported by Women’s Budget Group Early Career Network
The ability to study gender inequality in all its manifestations, as well as the lives of women and girls more generally, is undermined by missing and selective data in survey and administrative datasets. In many ways, as recently stated by Melinda Gates, ‘data [are] sexist’. Gender data gaps exist across health, education, economic opportunities, political participation, and human security.
The event framed the gender data gap as a feminist issue, one which has come about from survey and administrative data design being viewed primarily through the lens of men’s lives and concerns. The invited talks and paper presentations outlined gender data gaps that exist in survey, administrative and other quantitative data, and speakers offered possible solutions, including the innovations offered by big data and changes to the content and structure of surveys to capture crucial information about gendered lives.
FULL PROGRAMME NOW AVAILABLE HERE
21 September 2017: ‘Feminist Approaches to Quantitative Social Science’, UCL, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council via the Bloomsbury Doctoral Training Centre.
Links to presentations below:
Keynote speakers
Jacqueline Scott, University of Cambridge: Revisiting Feminism Counts: Quantitative Methods and Gender Inequalities
Maria Iacovou, University of Cambridge: Quantitative social science: feminist questions, feminist answers, feminist methods?
Conference participants
Aneta Piekut, Sheffield Methods Institute, University of Sheffield: Where do my methods come from? Becoming a reflexive quantitative researcher and the shifting landscape of British social sciences
Sara Rose Taylor, Wilfrid Laurier University: Working out the kinks: Challenges in evaluating gender equality indicators in the Millennium Development Goals
Canan Cevik, University of Massachusetts, Amherst: Undoing gender of quantitative methods
Anelise Gregis Estivalet, Université Paris Descartes: The use of Qualitative Comparative Analyses in feminist approaches
Heini Väisänen, University of Southampton & Ewa Batyra, London School of Economics: Contemporary patterns of unintended pregnancy resolution in low- and middle-income countries
Ruth Weir, University of Essex: Can we predict domestic abuse? A spatial analysis of predictors at the neighbourhood level
Sabrina Moro, Nottingham Trent University: Scripting Sexuality and Consent: A Feminist Demographic Analysis of Downton Abbey Characters
Daria Ukhova, Bremen International Graduate School of Social Science: Gender division of domestic labour in post-socialist and ‘post-post-socialist’ Europe
Dominique Green, University of Edinburgh: Multidimensional Disadvantage in the U.S.: A social exclusion approach
Anna Di Bartolomeo, University of Venice Ca’ Foscari: Paid Reproductive Work and the Economic Recession: Evidence from EU15 States
Alyson Laird, WiSE Research Centre, Glasgow Caledonian University: Women and Modern Apprenticeships: A mixed methods enquiry
Ellie Suh, London School of Economics: Gender difference in voluntary retirement saving behaviour among young British adults
Margret Fine-Davis, Trinity College Dublin: Changing Gender Role Attitudes: Impact on Family Formation and Well-Being
Elias Nosrati, University of Cambridge: Gender gap in life expectancy
Neema Begum, University of Bristol: Black Asian Minority Ethnic Voting Behaviour in the 2016 EU Referendum
Neli Demireva, University of Essex: How strong is the influence of Cultural Barriers to the Successful Integration of minority women in Britain?
Emmaleena Käkelä, University of Stratchclyde: The Use of Quantitative Methods in the Decolonisation of the Global Struggle against Female Genital Cutting (FGC)
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