Constructing an Open, Participatory Database on Gender (In)Equality in the Italian Film Industry: Methodological Challenges

Through CENTRIC (CrEative NeTwoRks Information Cruncher), an online search tool developed by the Digital Humanities Lab at the Catholic University of Milan, data was gathered by the authors on ten professional roles in Italian feature film productions from the institution of Legge Corona in 1965 and until 2020, with plans to update its findings year by year. The aim was to understand the development of gender equality dynamics in the film industry across this nearly 60-year timespan. Developed in the context of the Horizon2020 project CineAF, the CentricWEBI/CineAF database wishes to serve as a valuable resource for those who are intent on promoting gender equality in policy, film programming and educational curricula. As part of this goal, the ambition is for the database to be open and participatory. A Pilot project was conducted in Spring 2022 in order to test the usability of the platform, and its capacity to generate knowledge about women professionals and reflections on gender inequality. The article focuses on some of the challenges and ethical issues that were made evident thanks to this preliminary exercise, and suggests some possible solutions. These challenges include the ethical implications related to the collection of gender data; the meaningful application of FAIR principles in the humanities and social sciences; and the epistemological pitfalls of film industry data.