Ioanna Kyvernitou is a PhD candidate in Digital Arts and Humanities at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her research explores ways of combining women’s studies, history of philosophy and ontology engineering in order to model information contained in early modern women’s works related to philosophical issues.
Antonis Bikakis is a senior lecturer of Computing and Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Information Studies of University College London (UCL) and co-director of its Knowledge Organisation and Representation Group. His main research interests are in knowledge representation, nonmonotonic reasoning, argumentation, multi-agent systems and knowledge-based systems for the Semantic Web and Ambient Intelligence. He has participated in various EU-funded and national research projects. He is currently Principal Investigator in CrossCult, a research project funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 initiative, which uses Semantic Web and other cutting-edge technology to connect digital cultural resources lying in different cultural heritage venues across Europe.
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The need for organising and digitally processing the vast amount of Cultural Heritage (CH) information has recently led to the development of formal knowledge representation models (ontologies) for the CH domain. Existing models, however, do not capture gender-related concepts. This article presents an effort to fill this gap by developing a new ontology for the representation of gendered concepts in CH resources. The new ontology, named
Presenting a new ontology to represent gendered concepts in cultural heritage artefacts
The
With this ontology, we aim to open the way to bridge the gap of querying and
accessing semantic data on the Web related to gender concepts (i.e.
This study is focused on women but at the same time the designed ontology enables the representation of figures of all genders and statuses. The focus on women is justified as an attempt to underline the importance of combining Semantic Web applications and gender studies in order to reduce the gap between online historical representations of women on the Semantic Web. We approach gender as a mode of social construct which represents roles, norms, and meanings that different societies assign to men and women. Thus, we chose to use the term gender in the
on account of their real or imagined sexual characteristics
a property of individuals, social structures and symbolic systems. Gender relations are at the same time power relations which lead to unequal access to material resources
In order to represent the gendered contents of CH artefacts so that this information can be more accessible on the Web, we used technologies from the Semantic Web. To develop the
We first present the theoretical and technical background of our work. We then present the “GenderedCHContents” ontology and a demonstration of its use in five different representation tasks related to Pandora’s myth. Finally, we summarise and discuss our plans for further validation of the ontology.
Feminist theories of gender and technology, as Wajcman points out, have
changed perspectives over the years. In the 1960s, early second-wave
feminism generated a fatalism, which focused on the role of technology in
reproducing patriarchy. On the other hand, during the 1990s, cyberfeminism
approached digital technologies as inherently liberatory for
women
where neither gender nor
technology is taken to be pre-existing, nor is the relationship
between them immutable
We acknowledge that the task of combining feminist theories and computer
science is epistemologically challenging. On the one hand, feminists have
criticised universal categorical distinctions. On the other hand, ontologies
use abstract sets of elements, called classes, to group together specific
objects with shared properties to represent a domain. Despite this
contradiction, we chose to create a structured representation of gendered
information to describe CH contents and demonstrate the socially constructed
nature of categorical distinctions. By making this information available and
retrievable, we aim to enable users to analyse the historically and socially
constructed views on gender as found in CH artefacts. We took into
consideration Lorber’s call for a feminist de-gendering movement in order to
change the embedded gendered social
order
by targeting the processes and practices of
gendering and their outcome – gendered people, practices, and
power
The study takes into account the feminist epistemological approach of the
situatedness of knowledge, where all processes that produce
knowledge are situated socially, culturally and historically
In order to provide a description of an
Furthermore, we underline the importance of expressing semantic relationships
among the objects represented in CH artefacts by using RDF in line with
Olson’s view of the web
and connecting knowing
rather than
following a linear and hierarchical structure as practised in catalogues,
indexing and databases. In this spec, Olson presents three approaches: enhancing browsability as
compared to linear searching; focusing on nonhierarchical
relationships within standards; and increasing the functionality of
syntagmatic relationships within surrogates
Semantic Web
Doerr describes CH as the material
evidence of human activities of social relevance in the past
and
he explores the characterisations of the discourse in CH as reflected in
data structures and ontologies intellectual challenges in the
approximation of intuitive or traditional concepts by logical
definitions, such as the possible narrower and wider meanings of the
same term, objective declaration of discriminating features or fuzzy
transitions of instances from one class to another
this may be overcome by a
gradual transfer of know-how and better appreciation of the
specifics of cultural conceptualization by ontology
engineers
Oudshoorn et al. used two different approaches to theorising the gendering of
CH artefacts: the genderscript approach, which captures all the work involved in
the inscription and de-inscription of representations of
masculinities and femininities in technological artefacts
gender is further imprinted
onto objects through instructions, advertisements, associations with
gendered divisions of labor, and associations with gender symbols
and myths
These considerations made, the current study aims to identify and
semantically annotate gendered entities, symbols, myths and metaphors within
CH objects by suggesting a specific gendered vocabulary. We acknowledge that
there are some issues with regard to simplistic identification
of
such relations, i.e. assuming transparency of these relations within
objects. The study aims to avoid simplifications by consulting secondary
sources and their analysis of CH objects when describing the contents of
these artefacts in order to provide access to different interpretations of
gender relations etc. within artefacts.
Further, as Bath underlines, the view of gender as inscribed in artefacts
raises the danger of social determinism, leading us to assume, for example,
that the social determines the technological a gender-neutral
technology (or at creating a technological space where gender does not
matter)
but at preventing technology design from gendering
processes
Moreover, our study aligns with Mulvey’s view on representations of women in art, as presented in the
are not merely reflections but also sites of construction of gender identities, they make an apt site for feminist and queer interventions through the production of alternative representations
womanis not a solid and unchanged concept but is connected to ideas of specific periods, places and societies.
The international standard for the representation and exchange of CH
information is the Documentation of the International Council of Museums
(CIDOC) Conceptual Reference Model (CRM). This ontology facilitates the integration,
mediation and interchange of heterogeneous cultural heritage
information
Despite the development of these ontologies, as Doerr comments, museums
do not show an interest in using discrete schema elements to analyse
iconographic representations the way they are
described is far from meeting the requirements of content-based
access required by the general public: neither their description in
terms of editorial metadata nor the tags added by users seem
adequate to describe the content of media resources, and fall short
of providing an effective access to digital media.
By developing the
Different story ontologies have also been developed recently, aiming to model narrative concepts. For example, the BBC’s
to allow people to explore and analyse narratives [in heterogeneous media] through the annotation of those works with semantic descriptions
to create an ontology for narrative representation that could be applied across a diverse set of cases
to have easy access to the type of details that previously would have been impractical to search for due to the sheer effort it would have taken to collect and correlate
Another example, the Labyrinth system, which is targeted at CH
dissemination and digital publishing, focuses on the notion of cultural archetype
and
is based on the
on the relations among characters, actions and stories, while abstracting from different genres and media types
The
may include but is not limited to: an abstract, a table of contents, a graphical representation, or a free-text account of the resource
Moreover, the description of a resource is represented (by the underlying
ontology) via an annotation property, and therefore has the form of flat
text
. As a result, to retrieve a resource based on the description
of its content, the user has to use the exact keywords from the description
of the resource, which makes the task even more difficult. This is because
annotation properties do not carry any meaning under the direct semantics of
the ontology language
The general steps we followed for the creation of the ontology were the following: first, we represented the relevant concepts as ontology classes by choosing the gendered vocabulary and its definitions as found in the
Hesiod’s
The second step consisted of defining the ontology properties that relate the
ontology classes, specifying the property characteristics and constraints
over the elements of the ontology. We then instantiated the ontology with
individuals (or instances of the classes), which are the basic, ground
level
components of an ontology, and with property assertions
(statements) to describe Pandora in the five resources.
The benefit of providing a structure of abstract classes and their
relationships with the classes to which the individual objects belong, is
that it enables the formation of semantic annotations and, as a result, the
semantics-based retrieval and access to that specific information. For
example, Pandora is an instance of the class
The
The class immaterial
items
like stories, plots, procedural prescriptions, algorithms, laws of
physics or images that are, or represent in some sense, sets of
propositions about real or imaginary things and that are documented
as single units or serve as topic of discourse
. Moreover, it comprises items that are
about
something in the sense of a subjectis a resource whose
essential characteristics can be conveyed in a single
message
and it has a URI and a representation
We extended the EDM with a new class named what is said in a
literary work, as opposed to how it is said
Although each content consists of a narrative, we decided not to include
the term narrative
in the class
We added three new classes,
The class term
signified from Semiotics
The core concept of this ontology is the class starting point
for detecting, describing and accessing
figures of women within a content. the Person class represents
people. Something is a Person if it is a person. We don't nitpic
about whether they're alive, dead, real, or imaginary
Unlike FOAF, our ontology differentiates between real and imaginary
people by using two subclasses of
images of deities reflect and shape understandings of sexual
difference and the cultural meanings attached to biological
sex
, this class is used here as a resource that can
illustrate beliefs and cultural visions, providing insights into social
behaviour
Further, we added the class norms and ideals about
standard body shapes [that] are culturally expressed in
intentional and unintentional ways
cultural, economic and
political factors are literally visible on the bodies of society
members
gender-differentiated body
conceptions
, which reflect a conception of men and
women as essentially different
absolutist classifications
of dominant sex/gender understandings
engaging in a set of
behaviours that display an individual’s gender identity as
female or male and that cause the individual to be so perceived
during social interaction
Gender role
is
understood as a set of expected actions and dispositions ascribed to an
individual on the basis of her or his assumed biological sex might be symbolically
gendered even if men and women do not manifest it
differently
The second step in developing the ontology was to determine the relationships within the ontology. For this purpose, we created sixteen object properties (see Figure 6).
All properties except
In order to represent the symbolisms that concepts entail, we created the
In addition to the object properties, we also added seven datatype
properties (see Figure 7) that associate instances of the class
Specifically, complied
or not complied
as its value. In this way,
the ontology can be seen as a research resource for identifying the
changes between following or changing the ascribed gender norms in
different CH artefacts.
Another important aspect that we attempt to implement with this ontology
is the association of a figure with its social circumstances in order to
show the link between social, economical and political factors that may
influence and partially determine a figure. For this reason, we added
the properties has status
, no
status
. This simplified model aims to be as inclusive as
possible. Therefore, by denoting whether an entity has a status or not,
we can group entities based on this characteristic. We acknowledge that
in some situations this is not applicable or may be seen as an absolute
classification. However, as a first step it would be interesting to
gather figures that apply to this model and, as a second step,
reconsider the use and naming of the specified values. The same applies
to the property lower
, middle
, upper
, and not
applicable
. The limitation of this design is that these values
classify an individual with values that represent social systems from
the eighteenth century onwards, reflecting capitalist societies, whereas
structures of earlier societies are not represented.not
applicable
as an acceptable value, to demonstrate that this is
not the only hierarchical classification, and that it cannot be
universally applied.
Another aspect captured by the ontology is the way that an entity is
associated with health. We made this design choice because there is a
broad literature referring to women and health, and how women are
connected to mental disorders like hysteria, etc. in different
historical periods (see, e.g. healthy
,
mentioned illness
, not mentioned
and unhealthy
,
aims to classify each individual according to a specific state of health
as represented within the resource. Therefore, it enables the retrieval
of cases where mentioned/recognisable illness or representations of
women in unhealthy states are displayed. This will make it possible for
researchers to identify the kind of illness that a figure is illustrated
with and reflect on ideas about health and body.
The study takes into account the concept of the space–time fixity
constraint that binds activities or series of acts to a specific
place and moment in chronological time
dominant understanding(s) of
time through, for example, drawing our attention to “women’s
time” as embodied in daily life
relational time
was introduced in feminist
discourse to describe an experience of
time that
. Also, since it is exists
in relation to an embeddedness in embodied
social relationsmediated through significant others
, as Odih
notes, relational time is shared
rather than personal and thus sensitive to the contextuality and
particularity of interpersonal relations
abstract
, to represent a
non-representational space/place; indoors
or outdoors
;
private
or public
; and specified
or
non-specified
to denote whether there is a recognisable named
place. The use of terms public
and private
aims to
incorporate gendering theories of spacesabstract
, when time is not specified; ancient period
(3600 BC – 500 AD), medieval period
(500 – 1500), early modern
period
(1500 – 1750) and modern period
(1500 – present)
to specify the historical time period in which an entity is presented;
day
and night
; narrative past
, narrative
present
and narrative future
to represent cases where an
entity is clearly presented within a narrative and her/his actions,
descriptions etc. refer to an explicit past, present or future of
narrative time. The ontology provides the flexibility to add new values
for representing more fine-grained dates.
The third step of ontology development was to define restrictions on the
classes and properties of the ontology. Aiming to develop a generic
ontology, which enables the representation of as many different resources as
possible, we only added a small number of restrictions. For example,
although declaring
We defined one pair of inverse properties:
We also defined a property chain, as shown below (see Figure 8).
We defined
We added a class equivalence axiom to denote that
We defined
The verification and validation of the ontology has two goals
For our second goal, we instantiated the ontology with RDF descriptions of the five resources, related to the myth of Pandora (see Section Procedure).
Figure 9 depicts the RDF statements that describe Niobid’s Pandora. She
(LongHairWithADottedFillet
, Apoptygma
and
DoricChiton
– which we added as values of the
An important feature of the proposed ontology is the representation of metaphors related to gendered contents. Examples of metaphors can be detected in Hesiod’s
Laziness; Figure 11 that Pandora
PlagueToMen; and Figure 15 that she
Evils. This is achieved by the application of the property chain discussed in the previous section.
Drone
is connected to Hesiod’s
Giftwith Hesiod’s
Boxwith Rossetti’s Pandora through the property
Laziness,
PlagueToMenand
Evils, which are all instances of
We also attempted to represent the mythological figures of Vice and Virtues,
which are referred to in Serwouter’s accompanying poem and in the engraving
(see Figures 3b,13). According to the poem, Jupiter filled Pandora’s box
with good and evil to ensure a balanced state of affairs
When Pandora opens the box, the Virtues, that symbolise good
, escape
into the air and Vice spreads all over the earth. Thus, as depicted in
Figure 14, Vice
and Virtues
are connected to the box through
the Evils
are associated with Vice and the signified
concept of evil. Also, Rossetti’s Pandora (see Figure 15) associates with
the evils that come out of the box, but in this case Evils
have the
form of smoke and not an anthropomorphic form, which is stated as follows:
Pandora EnvelopedBySmokeOfEvils
.
In the above examples, we also demonstrate the symmetry of
We classified Virtues
using a specific gender identification (see
Figure 14). We decided to represent them as women
to enable the
description of their anthropomorphic characteristics, but also to capture
gendered notions related to women, for example the notions of good and evil,
as traits inherited in woman’s nature
. However, although
Virtues
may appear to have a female bodily figure (see Figure
3b), they still have non-human characteristics such as the ability to fly.
Therefore, we additionally classified them as Virtues
as
Lastly, similarities in appearance like long dress, wreath/crown and beauty,
as expressed in different periods, are aspects that our ontology can also
capture. Accordingly, by using, for example, the
We conclude that interpretations about the box and the goods and evils that
Pandora and the box as gifts to men entail, are represented differently in
the five examples. The emotions, activities, skills and postures are also
depicted differently: from an emotionless Niobid’s Pandora represented as a
wooden statue to Rossetti’s Pandora where the first woman is transformed to
a femme fatale figure
We acknowledge that the specific instantiation of the ontology was only a
first step towards its validation. As Vrandecic notes, most validation approaches
require the close cooperation of domain and ontology engineering
experts. Validation often cannot be performed automatically
Simultaneously, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the ontology in the
context of its application, we propose as a next step, a task-based approach
to ontology evaluation. That is to tag ontological relations from a broader
range of artefacts, including Psyche’s, Persephone’s, Atalanta’s and Helen’s
representations in CH artefacts. More specifically, we suggest using a
larger subset of study, including these myths, in order to test further how
the ontology can be applied to semantically represent women and their
relation to symbolic objects, such as the box in Psyche’s myth
This task-based evaluation can follow the same procedure we used to represent Pandora in the five CH artefacts (see Section Procedure) and will describe Psyche’s description in Apuleius’
Moreover, the works of Colluthus’
This task-based evaluation aims to measure the ontology’s performance in representing a range of different descriptions of women and the symbols related to them as found in the CH artefacts.
In this article we propose the
Taking into account the expressive power of OWL, the proposed ontology captures different types of relationships between gendered concepts and their contexts. For example, object and datatype properties provide a means to describe certain attributes of CH artefacts and their contents, as well as ways in which they may relate to each other. The subsumption relation of OWL enables a taxonomic representation of the relevant concepts and their relationships; property characteristics (e.g. symmetry) and axioms (e.g. inverse properties and property chains) enable inferring further relationships among the individuals; and restrictions on the classes and properties (e.g. value restrictions) were used to impose constraints on the range of semantic descriptions that one can create with the ontology. Our aim was to create a model which is generic enough to capture most relevant concepts and their relationships, concise so that it is easy for users to understand and create their own semantic descriptions, but also extensible to further types of information, which are not currently captured.
Finally, we suggest a further validation of the ontology by applying a task-based evaluation, in which the ontology will be tested with other sources.
We would like to acknowledge the valuable feedback from Marie-Louise Coolahan, the