A geographic information system (GIS) is a technology used to portray and analyze data connected with a specific location or geography (ESRI b). Although people typically consider maps to be the extent of GIS, McLafferty argues that GIS refers to all geospatial technologies and includes cell phone tracking information, surveillance cameras, navigation systems, or anything that attributes data to a geography (2005). Because technology such as GIS has become an important form of gathering knowledge, displaying data, and identifying problems, applying feminist epistemologies to GIS is essential to understanding the nuances of knowledge production and advocating for human rights. By

recognizing that knowledge is situated and subjective, a feminist framework of GIS shifts the center of knowledge production to the user. Although GIS can center masculine thinking and objective ways of gathering knowledge, it also can be a feminist tool for activism that subverts typical power hierarchies and questions dominant epistemologies.

 

Critiques of GIS emerged in the 1990s amongst a war on science, when criticisms of GIS’s objectivity developed against the backdrop of an argument over the unfair priviligization of positivism, where truth is derived only from the scientific method. In many ways, GIS falls into the category of positivism and science, which establishes knowledge as static, factual, and objective. Because GIS is often used to identify problems, such as displaying rates of poverty across a state or analyzing the relationship between temperature, green spaces, and income, this form of science is used in making social decisions. Critics of positivism argue that because it ignores the situated, lived, subjective experience

of knowledge, using positivism in social decision making ignores the context of problems (Schuurman & Pratt, 2002). GIS objectifies those researched by dehumanizing people’s lives into points on a map. The relationship between the researcher and the researched is lost, as all sense of reflexivity and positionality can disappear into the simplification of geographic representations.
 

Maps portray information from an overhead view, a “disembodied gaze” that decontextualizes knowledge and places it far from the viewer (Kwan 2002b, p. 648). Feminist theorists such as Haraway have argued that visual technologies establish truth and “represents a conquering male gaze from nowhere” (Haraway 1991). Theories of visualization and power demonstrate how some scholars view mapmaking as turning a masculine gaze upon society to establish power through surveillance. Additionally, remote sensing, satellite imagery, cell phone location trackers, and other geospatial technologies increase surveillance, which reifies power and authority (Kwan 2002b). Visualizing information from above implies an all-knowing viewpoint that has control and authority over subjects. GIS visualization can prioritize a single “right” way of knowing that ignores positionality. Surveillance and power dynamics in GIS relate to its military history and the commercialization of GIS technologies (Kwan 2002a). GIS was originally developed for land management and national defence and most major developments came from the masculine field of the military, thus critics argue that GIS’s roots in capitalism and militarism mean that its structure is unfit for the people (McLafferty 2005).
 

Other problems in GIS arise from the underrepresentation of women and other marginalized groups in the discipline. Hagger discusses how the white, middle to upper class, masculine environment of the GIS lab contributes to the exclusion of people who do not fit these identities from the space (2000). Although participatory GIS movements attempt to foster community involvement, social and technological barriers create difficulties in ensuring that everyone can use GIS (Elwood 2008). Many GIS services are not open source, and even ones that are free and internet-based still require technical knowledge as well as internet and computer access. The domination of men in faculty

positions and the GIS workforce means that even when GIS has the potential to point out sexism, racism, colonialism, and other forms of exploitation, certain issues are prioritized, funded, and valued in research (Hagger 2000; McLafferty 2005).

 

However, feminist geographers argue that many of the criticims I discussed lose sight of fundamental aspects of GIS. Elwood argues that GIS is a tool that has been used for both empowerment and involvement as well as exclusion and exploitation (2008). In their understanding, GIS is not inherently positivist; instead, Schuurman & Pratt state that feminist critiques of GIS “must care for the subject” and be constructive, rather than only critiquing (2002, p. 291). Rather than imposing feminist views on GIS, these reseachers call for geospatial technologies to be reimagined, acknowledging multiple forms of knowledge. Feminist theorists argue that critiquing GIS for its positivism further enforces the binaries between qualitative and quantitative research (Kwan 2002a, Schuurman & Pratt 2002). Feminism should be about deconstructing binaries, and to do so needs to acknowledge its own part in systems of oppression, rather than separating itself as a binary from Western thought. A feminist perspective on GIS views the technology as an ever changing system that can bridge the gap between quantitative and qualitative and acknowledges the fluidity of knowledge. One-sided criticisms of GIS ignore GIS scientists’ understanding of their discipline as one of representation, where they are choosing who and what is represented and why (Schuurman & Pratt 2002). The discipline of GIS is constantly evolving, and feminist epistemologies do not directly contradict GIS; in fact, they are shaping and reforming the discipline.
 

Multiple examples and theories exists of how feminist epistemology can and does incorporate GIS. Participatory GIS can be used as a form of community based activism, where instead of secondary, disembodied knowledge from satellites, community members are inputting data into GIS programs. Elwood discusses the recentering of knowledge production from the researcher to the subject in some forms of participatory GIS (2008). Geographical information input by individuals, or voluntary geographical information (VGI), includes both participatory GIS and geotagging. Elwood points out that using the word “voluntary” ignores privacy issues and the power dynamics behind collecting geographic information from people’s social media or other sites without them realizing.
Despite these problems, VGI can be used when information becomes political and is censored and restricted; participants can create knowledge (Elwood 2008). Participatory GIS thus subverts hierarchies by giving users the ability and power to produce knowledge.

 

VGI and participatory GIS may lead to increasing awareness of feminist issues and can facillitate pushing against exploitative systems (Elwood 2008). For example, McLafferty’s study of breast cancer on Long Island started with a grassroots movement led by women to input data about breast cancer in relation to environmental factors (McLafferty 2005). The observation and input of data by those affected by breast cancer centered women’s ways of knowing. Her group then received funding for breast cancer research; however, as the information became medicalized, the power was taken away from women (McLafferty 2005). As another example of user centered knowledge production, Open Street Maps lets users across the world input information to push against companies’ economic motivations for only having useful maps of certain areas. Underdeveloped countries and areas are often ignored, which can lead to serious issues with emergency transportation, hospital access, and more, so Open Street Maps becomes a tool of activism that increases knowledge (Geoapify). Participatory GIS methods have great potential as long as care is taken to keep knowledge centered within the community.

 

To push against the idea that GIS is inherently centered on a view from above, theorists emphasize the “geographies of the body” (Kwan 2002b, p. 646). Kwan’s research demonstrates Harraway’s point that maps can and should be made from the view of a body, as this humanizes information and takes the viewer into the world of the researched. In their research, Kwan created space time narratives of African American women’s life paths in Portland, Oregon. Women’s lives are “reimagined as body inscriptions’ ‘ as Kwan shows the racialized and gendered spaces of urban areas (Kwan 2002b, p. 653). Kwan also creates narratives through GIS using this technique. She argues that GIS can subvert power relations and combine quantitative and qualitative knowledge into an experience for the viewer to learn and understand. Multimodal GIS can be used to better depict these narratives. Bits of ethnographic data, including images, videos, audio clips, local knowledge, oral history, and more can be intertwined with maps to display people’s lives in relation to space (Kwan 2002a; McLafferty 2005). ESRI’s, a major GIS company, Story Maps seek to intertwine maps with stories and other forms of media. However, not all aspects of Story Maps are open source, creating technological and financial barriers (ESRI a). Even so, Story Maps and their increased use display the movement amongst GIS scientists to push against inherently positivist critiques of GIS.

 

Other examples of how “technology is interwoven with the production of knowledge” demonstrate how a feminist framework of GIS can bridge the separation between positivist GIS and social scientists (Shuurman & Pratt 2002, p. 296). GIS has been used to show how one’s position shapes knowledge, a principle explored in Elwood’s research investigating how Latino Chicago residents frame a neighborhood differently than white realtors do (Elwood 2008, p. 179). GIS scientists already know that their research and portrayal of maps envoloves choosing who to represent and why, so GIS has the potential to be a feminist tool for transforming knowledge. Other geospatial technologies are
also affecting everyday life. Domestic tasks that rely on geography can be increasingly done through the internet, including shopping, ordering food, or buying a home. Because women have the larger share of household tasks such as these, research needs to be done on how geospatial technologies affect women’s day to day domestic lives (McLafferty 2005). GIS produces knowledge and truth and can be done so in a way that advocates for marginalized groups by including them in the production of knowledge.
 

The many examples of feminist epistemologies applied to GIS demonstrate how GIS can be used by women as a tool to uncover social inequites. Feminist theories and GIS influence each other as the ever shifting structures of GIS map people’s lives through stories (McLafferty 2005; Kwan 2002b). Applying feminist epistemologies to GIS is essential because “understanding how GIS produces knowledge opens opportunities to produce truth otherwise” (Shuurman & Pratt 2002, p. 298). GIS also has the potential to leverage its valued position as a science to advocate for women’s and marginalized groups’ rights. Not only can GIS display how each person exists at the intersection of place, time, and culture, but it can also subvert typical power dynamics seen in research.