Design Ethics for Gender-Based Violence and Safety Technologies
Zevenbergen 2017
A wide range of advocates in areas of intimate partner violence and sex work; engineers, designers, developers, and academics working on IT ethics. The objectives of the day were threefold: (1) to better understand the lack of gender considerations in technology design, (2) to formulate critical questions for functional requirement discussions between advocates and developers of gender-based violence applications; and (3) establish a set of criteria by which new applications can be assessed from a gender perspective.
WHO Ethical and safety recommendations for researching, documenting and monitoring sexual violence in emergencies
WHO 2007
“Ethics” can be defined as a system or code of moral values that provides rules and standards of conduct. The three primary ethical principles that should guide all inquiries involving human beings (including methods used to collect information) are as follows (6): 1) Respect for persons, which relates to respecting the autonomy and self-determination of participants, and protecting those who lack autonomy, including by providing security from harm or abuse. 2) Beneficence, a duty to safeguard the welfare of people/communities involved, which includes minimizing risks and assuring that benefits outweigh risks. 3) Justice, a duty to distribute benefits and burdens fairly.
Ethical and Safety Recommendations for VAWG Interventions
VAWG
Before undertaking or supporting an intervention that aims to assist VAWG survivors and prevent re-victimization, it is paramount to ensure that ethical guidelines are followed to protect the safety of both survivors and the professionals providing services or programming. These include: respect for persons, non-maleficence (minimizing harm), beneficence (maximizing benefits), and justice.
Nine Ethical Principles: Reporting Ethically on Gender-Based Violence in the Syria Crisis
UNFPA 2015
Gender-based violence is a complicated and sensitive subject. Reporting on gender-based violence means discussing issues that are often considered ‘taboo,’ and talking publicly about intimate and distressing matters. This can be particularly challenging in countries where tradition and religion play an important role in everyday life.
Ethical considerations in evaluating interventions against gender-based violence
WAWE and UNFPA
Collecting data on sensitive topics such as GBV often raises a number of ethical questions and safety concerns. This is especially the case when the survivor of violence is interviewed. The following concerns should always be taken into account when interviewing survivors: ensuring safety of respondents since they often live with their abuser; protecting confidentiality since breaching it could provoke an attack; making sure the interview process is non-discriminatory and does not cause distress.
Ethical Considerations for Researching Violence Against Women
In many ways, researching violence against women is similar to researching other sensitive topics. There are issues of confidentiality, problems of disclosure, and the need to ensure adequate and informed consent. As the previous quote from an interviewer illustrates, however, there are aspects of gender-based violence research that transcend those in other areas because of the potentially threatening and traumatic nature of the subject matter. In the case of violence, the safety and even the lives of women respondents and interviewers may be at risk.
Violence against Women: Methodological and Ethical Issues
The objective of this paper is to review the methodological issues that arise when studying violence against women. The paper focuses first on the history of research on violence against women, by elaborating on each perspective. Second, the paper identifies and describes methodological difficulties when researching violence against women such as methodology, operational definitions of violence, sampling frame and risk factors related to violence. The paper also elaborates on major ethical principles that should be considered and respected when researching violence against women. Finally, the paper recommends certain changes that should be made in order to improve future research on the subject.
Ethical and safety recommendations for intervention research on violence against women
WHO 2016
These recommendations have been developed to help answer questions specific to conducting research on health-based interventions to prevent and respond to VAW. Research on strategies that use health or health care as an entry point (regardless of the implementation setting, such as a clinic or community) is the focus.