'Closing the gender data gap' through smartphone-based peer research with young women in Bangladesh: A feminist data justice perspective

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"To create meaningful change for girls we need to close the global gender data gap" (Girl Effect, 2019)"Closing the gender data gap" has recently become a mainstream development 'trend'. Since 2016, when the Gates Foundation pledged $80 million to this specific cause, this phrase has become common parlance across the development sphere. It is argued that 'gender gaps', i.e. inequalities between men and women, cannot be closed without also filling in gaps in gender data. Yet despite the sudden popularity of this discourse, and the significant funding it has generated, the gender data gap and efforts to surmount it have received scant scholarly attention. Many questions remain unanswered; how is the gender data gap defined? what does 'closing' it entail? And how does generating new data on gender issues actually lead to the transformation of gendered power relations in practice?This thesis sheds new light on these questions through a detailed case-study of a development project dedicated to 'closing' gender data gaps - Girl Effect's Technology Enabled Girl Ambassador (TEGA) programme in Bangladesh. Technological innovations, such as big data analytics, are being repurposed by bodies like the UN to help 'solve' the gender data gap 'problem'. However, Girl Effect leverages digital technologies in a different way, by training cohorts of girls (TEGAs) in low-income settings in how to use a smartphone-based research application so that they can collect gender data in their communities. Girl Effect argues that this "ground-breaking girl-led research solution" brings "meaningful change" through the "safer, faster, more scalable and authentic research" it enables. Through a combination of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and participatory workshops this thesis generates rich empirical observations of how the "gender data gap" discourse plays put on the ground, by gaining the perspective of the TEGAs and staff in Bangladesh alongside those of the Girl Effect leadership team in London. Taking a feminist data justice perspective the research critically assesses the potential, and limitations, of technologically enabled peer research to a) 'close' the gender data gap and b) generate "meaningful change", with the aim of ensuring that going forward gender data projects best serve the interests of the young women at the grassroots that they are collecting information 'on' or 'with'.