Data feminism, in plain language, for your daily life

You know that feeling when an app just doesn't get you? The fitness tracker that assumes you're a man. The form with no option that fits. The symptom checker that shrugs at something you know is real. It's not in your head, and it's not your fault.

There's a name for the lens that explains it. Data feminism. It comes from a book by that title, written by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein, and the idea underneath it is simpler than it sounds: data is never neutral. Someone always decides what gets counted, who gets asked, and whose experience gets left out. As the LSE review of their work put it, the whole project turns on one question. If data is power, then who benefits from it, and who do we leave out, and why?

The questions hiding inside your apps

D'Ignazio and Klein boil it down to three questions worth carrying around in your pocket: data science by whom? For whom? With whose interests in mind? That's it. You don't need a stats degree to ask them.

Think about the maternal health crisis they write about. For years, Black women's experiences of being dismissed in delivery rooms went largely uncounted, because the people building the systems weren't the people living it. The data gap wasn't an accident. It was a reflection of who was in the room.

The same thing shows up in the smaller stuff. When the people designing a tool don't share your life, the defaults get built around someone else, and you become the "edge case." You're not an edge case. You were just never the question.

Why this is yours to hold

Here's why I want you to have this, specifically. Once you can name it, you stop absorbing it as a personal failing. The app that doesn't fit isn't telling you something true about you. It's telling you who it was built for. That shift, from "what's wrong with me" to "who designed this and for whom," is quietly powerful. It's the difference between shrinking and asking better questions.

And you get to ask them out loud. In reviews, in feedback forms, in the group chat where someone else is wondering the same thing.

One thing to try today

Pick one app you used today. Ask the three questions: built by whom, for whom, with whose interests in mind? You don't have to do anything with the answer yet. Just practice seeing it. That noticing is where everything starts. 💌

Quote to sit with:

If data is power, then who benefits from it, who do we leave out of our data and why, and how do we use data to maintain power structures? — Catherine D'Ignazio

💌 Sarah