Zilin Shen
Research Mentor: Esmeralda Lopez
Mentor Department: Political Science, LSA
Author(s): Not Available
Session: Session 6 (3:00 PM – 3:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 21
Abstract
The Gender-Related Human Rights (GRHR) dataset project systematically identifies and classifies global discussions of gender-based violence (GBV) in the realm of human rights reports from 1999 to 2016. There is a gap in current data on discussion of GBV as a human rights issue, and this project will address the challenge by refining how GBV is categorized across contexts, including allegations, legal frameworks, other forms, and discriminatory practices. Following a structured codebook, our team hand-codes sentences extracted from U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch reports. Coders assign each sentence to at least one contextual variable, allegations, legal, or other, and determine whether the sentence belongs to GBV, gender-based discrimination, or a false positive identified by the algorithm. This mixed human and machine coding boosts the accuracy of the database across global contexts. Preliminary patterns reveal recurring ambiguities around trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual harassment, as well as regional variation in how GBV is constructed legally or socially. A comprehensive and accurate dataset will allow for quantitative and qualitative analysis of global GBV trends.
