Scattered Searches, Broken Apps, Quiet Repairs: A Feminist Autoethnographic Critique of Technology and Research on Gender-Based Violence

Paper Title

Scattered Searches, Broken Apps, Quiet Repairs: A Feminist Autoethnographic Critique of Technology and Research on Gender-Based Violence

Publication Info

• Topic area: Feminist critique of technology and HCI research on gender-based violence, with a focus on forced marriage.
• Keywords: feminist HCI, gender-based violence, forced marriage, autoethnography, participatory design, justice-oriented research, digital interventions, sustainability, language and power, community-led design.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Digital interventions for gender-based violence (GBV) often fail to align with the lived realities of those affected, focusing narrowly on crisis moments, prematurely pushing legal solutions, or disappearing after research funding ends. These systems frequently reinforce disempowering labels and neglect long-term support.
• Significance: Addressing these gaps is critical to creating meaningful, sustainable support systems for individuals affected by GBV, particularly forced marriage (FM), which is a globally prevalent and structurally rooted form of violence.
• Motivation and related work: Prior HCI research has explored technologies for domestic abuse (DA) and intimate partner violence (IPV), focusing on safety, privacy, and crisis response. Feminist and justice-oriented approaches have critiqued these efforts for neglecting structural and cultural systems of violence. However, few studies address FM directly or consider the full temporal and systemic dimensions of help-seeking.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A feminist autoethnographic critique of GBV technologies and research, grounded in the author’s lived experience and work with a community-led NGO addressing FM.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduces a temporal and multi-scalar framework for GBV interventions, spanning awareness, crisis, and life repair across individual, community, and institutional levels.
  2. Highlights the harm caused by abandoned research-driven tools and advocates for sustainability and translation as justice-oriented commitments.
  3. Critiques disempowering language in GBV research and calls for participatory naming practices that reflect affected individuals’ preferences.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Autoethnography as a method to connect personal experiences with broader sociotechnical systems.
  • Retrospective analysis of personal records, guided reflections with a therapist and NGO advisor, and iterative thematic grouping of help-seeking phases.
  • Integration of feminist and justice-oriented HCI scholarship to critique existing practices and propose actionable frameworks.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Digital tools for GBV often fail to address the full help-seeking journey, focusing narrowly on crisis and neglecting prevention and recovery.
  • Abandoned or poorly maintained research-driven tools harm both affected individuals and NGOs, eroding trust and leaving gaps in care.
  • Language such as "victim" reinforces disempowering hierarchies, while participatory naming practices can affirm agency and redistribute power.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Extends existing HCI frameworks by integrating temporal and multi-scalar dimensions of support.
  • Proposes actionable commitments for sustaining research outcomes and addressing power imbalances in language and representation.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Analysis based on personal lived experience and six years of collaboration with a community-led NGO.
  • Reflective dialogues and thematic mapping of help-seeking phases (awareness, crisis, life repair).
  • Critique informed by feminist HCI and justice-oriented design principles.
• Limitations and future work:
  • The autoethnographic approach is deeply situated and may not generalize across all GBV contexts.
  • Future work could develop practical resources such as toolkits for sustaining research outcomes, governance templates, and language guidelines.

Summary

This paper critiques the limitations of current GBV technologies and research through a feminist autoethnographic lens, highlighting the misalignment of digital tools with the lived realities of those affected by forced marriage. It introduces a framework for interventions that span the full help-seeking journey and operate across individual, community, and systemic levels. The work underscores the harm caused by abandoned tools and disempowering language, advocating for sustainability, translation, and participatory naming practices as justice-oriented commitments. These reflections call for HCI research that centers community voices and prioritizes care, continuity, and accountability in design.