Why we love it
A topic that continues to spark media attention is that of women engaging in politics. Equal representation of men and women in national parliaments is yet to evolve from being the exception to being the norm around the world. Esri UK has produced the ‘Women in Government’ map which shows the percentage of women holding seats in parliament in every country and highlights the countries that have women serving as elected heads of state and government. This map strikes up the balance of progress made as per October 2020.
Why it works
The map utilises the well-known choropleth visualisation technique. Countries are classified based on the percentage of seats held by women in their parliaments and this is conveyed through their colour on the map. Each shade of purple proportionate to a percentage bracket. The less-is-more aesthetic of the map, in part accreditable to the minimalist custom basemap, makes is easy for any audience to interpret. Whilst at glance the map is simple, it’s configured pop-ups and interactive legend add depth to the informative power of this map!
Requirements
Data and software
Esri UK created the Women in Government map in the ArcGIS Online Map viewer, using the World Countries (generalized) layer published by Esri in the Living Atlas. Data on women in parliament and leading positions was sourced from IPU Parline and from CIA data base on world leaders respectively.
Analysis
A purple colour gradient was used to distinguish between countries with higher and lower percentages of women holding seats in parliament. Pop up boxes were customised to include only information on women leaders for the countries that have them. The custom basemap was stripped of excessive features and matched to the colour scheme of the data layer.
Time
Due to the simplicity of the analysis, conceiving a first draft of the map was done within an hour of having sourced the relevant data. More time went into customising the pop-ups and experimenting with the cartographic settings. Depending on your ArcGIS Online savviness this map might take you between a day and a couple of days to make!
Tips and tricks
The ‘interactive legend’ template offers a clean, classy and straightforward legend panel in the corner of your web map, different classification features can be selected by users to highligh features on the map. This can help visualise the information your map displays in a digestible and engaging way!
Transforming the map from the Mercator to the Equal Earth projection can be a useful customisation to improve the aesthetics of a large-scale map. Rather than displaying an embedded web map, the product communicates the feel of an interactive globe on this type of grid.
Customise your pop-up boxes! To display a sentence with embedded attribute table information in a pop-up, choose ‘A custom attribute display’ for your pop-up contents. Add Arcade expressions in the ‘attribute expressions’ section of the pop up pane, to set attribute conditions that need to be met in order for a pop up to appear.
Map Author
Celine Goslinga
Celine Goslinga – Passionate about data visualisation, spatial analysis and Earth observation, Celine joined the Esri UK team as Graduate GIS Consultant.