In our readings and conversations over the past week, I was most familiar with the notion that ideological biases inform the way that information is presented. As I mentioned at the close of my blog post for last week, I have been thinking about the presentation of information, informed by individual, social, and cultural biases, as knowledge in scholarly narratives of the history of art. As a brief (counter) example, in his essay “Race, Nationality and Art” (1936), the art historian Meyer Schapiro argues against the art historical notion that national and racial groups have fixed psychological qualities that are evident stylistically in works of art produced by members of these groups.

I was most unfamiliar with the concept of statistical indicators as discussed in our readings and in our class meeting with Melanie Hughes, and I was glad that we were able to talk with Hughes about her ongoing SDG indicator work.

I was most intrigued by the discussion of economic growth in Fulvia Mecatti, Franca Crippa, and Patrizia Farina’s article “A Special Gen(d)re of Statistics: Roots, Development and Methodological Prospects of Gender Statistics.” In their discussion, the authors include a quote by Saadia Zahidi from the World Economic Forum in 2010 that frames the education, empowerment, and integration of women and girls in terms of a necessity in order for economic recovery and growth (457–458). In reading this section of their article, I became concerned with the motivations that may be behind gender equity that prioritize economic growth. In their conclusion, Mecatti, Crippa, and Farina argue that eliminating gender-based inequality is in the interest of society as a whole because society would benefit from the resulting social development and economic growth. While the authors’ statements here may be read as, and may have been intended as, a persuasive argument meant to raise interest in eliminating gender-based inequality, I still question instances in which social justice is seemingly made palatable to those not directly affected by the issue in question—that is, I feel that the fact that education, empowerment, and integration are and would be beneficial for women and girls should be reason enough for others to support initiatives that would bring those goals within reach.