Geochicas is a collective of

feminists Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

linked to

OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (abbreviated OSM) is a free, Open Database License, open geographic database, map database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveying, surveys, trace from Ae ...

, originally Spanish-speaking, who work for female

empowerment Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities. This enables them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority. It is the process of becoming strong ...

and reducing the

gender gap A gender gap, a relative disparity between people of different genders, is reflected in a variety of sectors in many societies. There exist differences between men and women as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, scientific and ...

in the OpenStreetMap communities and communities associated with the world of free software and open data. Geochicas today has users on at least 3 continents. The thematic areas of Geochicas are: * The fight against gender violence against women and girls * Women's health care * The visibility of feminist mobilizations * The understanding of leadership mechanisms and their brakes in the collective dimension.

History

Geochicas was born in 2016, days before the annual

State of the Map LatAm 2016 conference, in

São Paulo São Paulo (; ; Portuguese for 'Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul') is the capital of the São Paulo (state), state of São Paulo, as well as the List of cities in Brazil by population, most populous city in Brazil, the List of largest cities in the ...

, Brazil, with the aim of discussing in a panel that would be proposed as a permanent activity, the causes and implications of the low participation of women in the construction of the map. The conclusions of this panel and forum with the total number of attendees allowed us to build the initial agenda of Geochicas, and link the first members. The idea arose from three participants, Miriam González, Selene Yang and Céline Jacquin, who with this purpose participated in the organization of activities at SOTM in São Paulo. They organized a previous meeting between women attendees to talk about the problems they face as women in their geodate community and find out their interest in forming a network or collective. A panel was held at the close of the conference where the problematic issues of the gender gap in OpenStreetMap were raised, and the mixed group of the community present was discussed about the implications for a map so important for all types of decision-making in the world. The first lines of a work agenda were designed as conclusions of the panel and a communication channel was created integrating the interested women present. The popularity of this event led to the creation in the form of a collective focused on looking at the map of Latin America and the world, through a feminist lens.

Projects

In 2016 and 2017, the Geochicas created maps of both the oncology clinics in

Nicaragua Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest Sovereign state, country in Central America, comprising . With a population of 7,142,529 as of 2024, it is the third-most populous country in Central America aft ...

and the femicides in that country. During those same years they created visibility campaigns on

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

with the

hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the hash symbol, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services–especially Twitter and Tumblr–as a form of user-generated tagging that enable ...

"#MujeresMapeandoElMundo", the "International Gender Representation Survey" on

. In 2018 they created a virtual map to make visible the lack of representation of women's names on the streets of cities in Latin America and Spain. A HOTOSM subgrant was obtained to collect field information in the

Oaxaca Oaxaca, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca, is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of the Mexico, United Mexican States. It is divided into municipalities of Oaxaca, 570 munici ...

region (Mexico) affected by the 2017 earthquakes through a journey through 20 towns, carrying out photo-mapping with

Mapillary Mapillary is a service for open-source sharing of crowdsourced geotagged photos, developed by remote company Mapillary AB, based in Malmö, Sweden. Mapillary was launched in 2013 and acquired by Meta Platforms, Inc. in 2020. It offers street lev ...

and interviewing women. The horizontal training strategy "Training Spaces" was promoted with a series of community webinars on technology and data science training. In 2019, an internal working group was started, based in Mexico, on femicidal violence. resulting in a rapprochement with the Geobrujas collective. For International Women's Day, a regional Editathon + Mapathon was promoted to collect data on health infrastructure for women. A global collaborative map of the performances of "Un Violador En Tu Camino" was made inspired by the initiative of the Las Tesis collective. This proposal was extended in the mapping of mobilizations for International Women's Day in 2020.

References

{{OpenStreetMap Organizations for women in science and technology Digital divide Women in technology OpenStreetMap