In 2008, IWDA was a leading partner in an international research collaboration to develop and establish the feasibility of a gender-just measure of poverty.

The result was a world-first, individual-level, gender-sensitive measure of multidimensional poverty, called the Individual Deprivation Measure (IDM), designed to reflect gendered differences in how people experience poverty.

Further methodological development and testing of the IDM via use was undertaken through a four-year, international, interdisciplinary research collaboration led funded by the Australian Research Council (LPO989385) and led by the Australian National University (ANU) in partnership with IWDA, as well as the Philippines Health Social Science Association, University of Colorado at Boulder, and Oxfam Great Britain (Southern Africa), with additional support from Oxfam America and Oslo University.

This was a new approach to measuring multidimensional poverty, informed by participatory and feminist research methodologies. It drew on various forms of qualitative and quantitative methods such as engagement with measurement specialists and deep thinking about poverty and inequality.

The fieldwork involved more than 3000 men and women of varied ages with lived experience of poverty across Africa, Asia and the Pacific, in Angola, Fiji, Indonesia, Malawi, Mozambique, and the Philippines.

These insights shaped the design of the IDM, which identified 15 key dimensions of life that people with lived experience felt needed to change in order to improve their circumstance.

A proof-of-concept trial of the IDM was conducted in the Philippines in 2013.

The trial confirmed that it is both possible and valuable to measure poverty at the individual level in a way that is multidimensional, gender-sensitive, and scalar.

It also demonstrated that such data can offer new and more accurate insights into gendered poverty and deprivation.

In 2015, the first IDM study beyond the proof of concept was undertaken in Fiji. This study was carried out by IWDA in collaboration with the Fiji Bureau of Statistics and funded by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in Fiji .

The research focused on areas identified by the World Bank as having high rates of poverty. It confirmed that the IDM provides rich insights into multidimensional poverty and also identified areas where the tool could be refined for future use.

The study uncovered gender disparities often missed, one such example in exposure to cooking fumes (pictured).

On average, a household in the Fiji study was exposed for 64 minutes a day. However, when measured at the individual level, men experienced an average of just 24 minutes per day, while women were exposed for 105 minutes, more than four times as long.

This gap likely reflects women’s greater responsibility for domestic and household labour, including cooking.

The health impacts were significant: women were twice as likely as men to experience health problems linked to unclean fuel, and three times as likely to suffer severe health issues.

In 2016, recognising the innovation of the IDM and its demonstrated potential, the Australian Government approached IWDA about investing in the vision of gender-sensitive poverty measurement. This was part of a broader effort to close gender data gaps, including by developing options to gender-insensitive measurement.

The focus of this program was on readying the IDM for global use through methodological review and refinement and testing through use in a wider range of contexts. Between 2016 and 2020, data collection was undertaken in Nepal (2016), Indonesia (2018), South Africa (2020), and Solomon Islands (2020).

During this period, the IDM Program teams at ANU and IWDA also delivered significant methodological advancements, including revised survey instruments, updated dimension scoring and index construction, a prototype for data visualisation and querying, and regular contributions to global discussions on individual, gender-sensitive, multidimensional poverty measurement.

Pictured: An enumerator in Solomon Islands holds up the dimension kaikai/Food.

In August 2020, IWDA launched Equality Insights as a new flagship program to carry forward the vision and methodology of the IDM.

While the program received a new identity, its purpose remained the same: to develop and implement a gender-just measure of poverty that enables more inclusive and effective decision-making.

Equality Insights is built on five core features:

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian Government funded the Equality Insights team at IWDA to develop a new, phone-based version of the survey, known as Equality Insights Rapid.

This version enabled remote data collection through Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI), ensuring inclusive and gender-sensitive data could still be collected during a time when face-to-face surveys were not possible.

A Global Technical Advisory Group (GTAG), comprising statistical experts, gender experts, and potential data users from government, non-government, and multilateral organisations, was established to support this adaptation and guide development.

In 2022, with the implementation of Equality Insights Rapid , Tonga became the first country in the Pacific to officially conduct household-level and individual-level assessment of multidimensional poverty.

Equality Insights Rapid was implemented in Tonga in collaboration with the Tonga Statistics Department (TSD), in partnership with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Women’s Affairs and Gender Equality Division (MIA/WAGED).

Enumerators from TSD received training from the Equality Insights team. A gender statistics workshop was held for representatives from government ministries, women’s rights organisations and civil society, in Tonga and in Solomon Islands. These were delivered in partnership with SPC (Pacific Community), the UN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (UN SIAP), and UN Women Asia and the Pacific.

Pictured: Enumerators from Tonga Statistics Department undertaking Equality Insights Rapid.

Also in 2022, Solomon Islands became only the second country in the world to implement Equality Insights Rapid.

IWDA partnered with Dignity Pasifik, a Honiara-based women-led research firm, with support from the Solomon Islands National Statistics Office (SINSO) and the Ministry of Women, Youth, Children and Family Affairs. The relevance of the data collected in the 2020 IDM survey in two provinces created strong interest in having a national survey undertaken.

As the first national phone survey implemented in Solomon Islands, data was collected in every province using CATI to gather inclusive, multi-dimensional data about experiences of poverty and inequality in Solomon Islands in the wake of COVID-19 disruptions.

Pictured: Enumerator Training in Solomon Islands.

In 2023, the findings from Equality Insights Rapid surveys in Solomon Islands and Tonga were published, providing individual-level data that deepened understanding of multidimensional poverty, highlighted intersecting forms of disadvantage for different cohorts, and informed COVID-19 recovery efforts as well as responses to the January 2022 volcanic eruption in Tonga.

As Equality Insights Rapid collects data predominantly at the individual-level, it is possible to see similarities and differences associated with factors such as gender, age, location and disability, as presented in these reports, and this data can be used to inform policy and programmatic priorities.

In the same year, the Equality Insights Data Portal was launched. This open-access platform hosts data from the Rapid studies and enables users who are not statistical experts to explore disaggregated findings by gender, disability, age, and other factors.

The portal represents a major step forward in making individual-level gender-sensitive data on poverty accessible, usable and impactful.

With the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals fast approaching, Equality Insights established and convened the iCount Coalition , an inclusive data coalition with members from government, civil society, academia, networks and associations who are driving data innovations and working to increase visibility and inclusion of marginalised groups in global development data.

Through collective efforts, the iCount Coalition aims to ensure an ambitious post-2030 global development data framework that measures what matters for inclusive realisation of the right to development for all. Equality Insights currently serves as the Coalition’s secretariat.