Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein have pioneered research on feminist data visualisation. In a paper prepared for a workshop on visualisation for the digital humanities (IEEE 2016), they outline six core principles of feminist data visualisation:

1. Rethink Binaries
2. Embrace Pluralism
3. Examine Power and Aspire to Empowerment
4. Consider Context
5. Legitimise Embodiment and Affect
6. Make Labour Visible

The paper concludes that,

as data visualization becomes a mainstream technique for making meaning and creating stories about the world, questions of inclusion, authorship, framing, reception, and social impact will become increasingly important. In this regard, the humanities and specifically feminist theory have much to offer.

While this piece engages specifically with feminist data visualisation, the key principles as well as the concluding comments are appliccable to other feminist work and thinking with/about data.

The full paper is available for download here, and an blog post by Catherine D’Ignazio titled ‘What would feminist data visualization look like?’ was published here.

D’Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein. “Feminist data visualization.” Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities (VIS4DH), Baltimore. IEEE. 2016.