Beyond Nightingale: Being a Woman in Data Visualization
If you conduct a quick internet search on “history of data visualization,” you’ll nearly always see Florence Nightingale included in the annals of history. Why? It’s not like a Nightingale Rose chart is easy to read, or a cinch to make, or even all that common.
One clue to the answer lies in the fact that she is most often the only woman on such lists.
Many women know that when you are the only woman present on a panel full of men, two things are highly probable: (1) you are working in a male-dominated field, and (2) you are likely a token because somebody thought there had better be some diversity. Florence Nightingale is our data visualization historical token female.
History is written by cis white men. And history is upheld by them too, even among the data visualization crowd of today, who cull these lists of historically important figures and decide whose stories will be remembered, whose work will become “foundational.” At least initially, they, like me, perhaps took to Nightingale because they readily recognized her name from high school history books (written by — guess who) where her role in the war was recorded— though her Rose chart usually wasn’t printed.
But if her inclusion in the annals of viz history is really about how impactful or accomplished Nightingale…
