The Gendered Streets of Porto

Ruas de Genero is a wonderful data visualization of the sexist toponymy of the second largest city in Portugal. By comparing the number of streets named for men and women in Porto and the length of streets named for each gender Ruas de Genero (Streets of Gender) explores how men and women are commemorated differently in the city's toponymy. 

In this interactive mapped visualization streets named for men and streets named for women are colored in order to highlight the disparity in representation in Porto's street names. On the map the light blue streets (named for men) clearly outnumber the purple streets (named for women). In fact 44% of Porto's streets are named after men and only 4% of the streets are named for women.

This sexist disparity of representation isn't only apparent in the number of streets named for each gender. It is also apparent in the names given to the city's most important streets. Ruas de Genero also analyzed the length of streets in Porto named for both men and women. It discovered that the most important gendered streets (determined by length) were all named after men. Whereas streets named for women tended to be shorter. According to Ruas de Genero 'the total length of streets named after men is 14 times bigger than the ones named after women'.

If you are interested in exploring the disparity of representation in street names in other major cities then you might like the maps created by Geochicas and EqualStreetNames. You can also find more examples under the toponym tag on Maps Mania.