How to prepare for the futures that conventional thinking fails to forecast

Methods for forecasting global futures are commonly found within the field of economics, but have been applied to national and international security as well. There are several proven methodologies aimed at predicting different potential outcomes based on current trends and possible changes.

• A traditional approach is the Delphi Method, which relies on the expertise of a panel of experts. Typically an iterative process, this method is particularly useful for complex issues where expert judgment is critical, such as predicting technological advancements or nuanced geopolitical shifts.
• Another widely used methodology is Scenario Planning. This approach involves identifying critical uncertainties and driving forces that could impact the future, and then developing a set of diverse scenarios that illustrate different ways these factors might interact.
• A third method involves examining historical data to identify patterns and project future trends. By analyzing past and present data, forecasters can extrapolate potential future developments through pattern analysis. The advancement of generative AI plays an increased assistive role in such future forecasting.

These methods, unfortunately, inherit flaws from both embedded assumptions in their approaches and the substantial gaps in the data upon which they rely. At Girl Security, our unique research method begins with the experiences of participants in our programming to understand the issues and trends that they consider important. Our communities of participants, mentors, staff, and sponsors represent marginalized populations - most often at the intersection of gender and race, ethnicity, economic wellbeing, educational opportunity, and culture, among others. Their priorities and insights are typically overlooked or undervalued by conventional study. This is why our method begins with their input.

Additionally, the method we have chosen for forecasting alternative futures is inspired by disruptive thinkers and innovative researchers, such as:

• Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Built for Men, whose work illuminates the dangers of using data presented as agnostic of gender when it is in fact based on men and males.
• Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain which exposes the significant lack in scientific understanding of the differences in male and female brain structures and functioning. Dr. Brizendine established the first clinic in the US to study and treat women’s brain function after discovering, while a medical student at Yale and then as a resident and faculty member at Harvard, that almost all clinical data in existence on neurology, psychology, and neurobiology focused exclusively on males.
• Zillah Eisenstein, Professor Emerita at Ithaca College, whose book, The Female Body and the Law, points out the inability of current law to provide equality across genders when it has been founded for millennia in men’s experiences and priorities. By re-creating written law inserting the term “pregnant body” rather than the use of “man” as substitute for “human,” Eisenstein uncovers the damage produced by the use of the fallacious concept of “gender-neutral.”
• Dr. Bettany Hughes, Oxford scholar and award-winning historian, author, and broadcaster, underscores the dramatic gap in the presence of women depicted in written history against the backdrop of their substantial presence in ancient history. For example, 90% of the 35,000 years-worth of figurines crafted prior to the invention of writing are of women, demonstrating their clear importance in society for much longer than the 3600 years they were written out of history.
• Dr. Valerie Hudson, Distinguished Professor of International Affairs and George H.W. Bush Chair, Texas A&M, whose work addresses the fact that national security realism paradigms have been constructed almost exclusively through the lens of male worldviews and male psychology, mediated by male bodily experiences.  If realism, as it claims to be a principle of seeing the world as it really is, were to be true, it would require it to have been equally informed by by female worldviews and female psychology, and mediated by female bodily experiences.
• Gina M. Bennett, adjunct Security Studies professor at Georgetown University whose article, “Of Lice and Men,” blames the divide into public and private spheres created by the Neolithic revolution for leading to the flawed assumption that the activities within a domicile have no relevance to those taking place in public spaces. Without a record of the evolution that took place within private spaces, where invention, caretaking, education, and innovation was critical, civilization has relied upon only half of human knowledge and suffers because of it.

These authors underscore the simple fact that “the conventional” - whether referring to beliefs, research, thinking, information, or theories, and so on, - by definition excludes experiences, observations, knowledge, and approaches of those other than the subset of people who created it. Given the male-domination for millennia of all domains other than domestic life, today’s “conventions” were inequitably informed. Moreover, more modern sensibilities to the omission of women led to the adoption of a notion of gender neutrality without modern introduction and rather perpetuate the deceptive notion of gender neutrality.

Forecasting alternatives that matter to the future’s majority

To challenge these flaws, Girl Security has chosen a method of forecasting alternative futures based on drivers whose intersections fail to receive mainstream attention. The drivers themselves are derived from trends that Girl Security’s communities identify as being of special concern to them, rather than from trends based on traditional economic and societal indicators. The steps are explained below:

1. Identify trends of concern to marginalized communities and those historically excluded from informing conventional thinking. The number of trends chosen will determine the number of alternative future scenarios created. The ideal approach is to intersect every possible set of two trends.
2. Turn a trend into a driver by describing it mathematically in its positive and negative extremes. For example, imagine there is a report that shows Americans are increasingly choosing dogs over other animals as pets. To turn this into a driver, it would be stated in both positive and negative directions: Americans are increasingly choosing dogs as pets over other animals AND Americans are decreasingly choosing dogs as pets over other animals.
3. Plot your two drivers intersected on an X and Y axis, as in Figure A, which will then create four distinct scenarios.
4. Figure A demonstrates how two trends turn into two drivers, and when intersected, create four distinct scenarios - or alternative futures.
5. To complete the alternative future forecast, Girl Security will title each of the four scenarios and provide a brief description of each of the four futures created by the intersection of the drivers.