Change is calling, and the growing movement for inclusive data is answering
Equality Insights from Women Deliver 2026
Change is calling, and the growing movement for inclusive data is answering
Change is calling, and the growing movement for inclusive data is answering
“We need to take back the ground from the people who are trying to take it back from us” - UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed
“We need to take back the ground from the people who are trying to take it back from us” - UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed
The journey to the first Women Deliver hosted in the Oceanic Pacific region, in Narrm / Melbourne April 27-30, 2026, was a long one. Pacific regional convenings in Suva and Narrm to develop Pacific feminist priorities, and the largest-ever delegation from our region at Women Deliver in Kigali in 2023 secured the hosting role for 22 Pacific Island countries and territories, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Australia. After a huge amount of organising across the next three years, we arrived in Narrm to a very different gender equality landscape – shaped by expansive anti-rights agendas, slashed aid budgets, shrinking civic space, and democratic backsliding.
These forces were ever present throughout the conference as feminists shared the impacts on their communities. But could not overshadow the passion and perseverance of the collective power of feminists in action.
As co-chair of the Women Deliver Inclusive Data Working Group, Equality Insights, alongside other iCount partners and UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures, co-hosted a data storytelling and advocacy workshop as part of the pre-conference; supported panels on feminist AI and inclusive data as a tool for resistance and disruption; and contributed to a side event on data for climate resilience. The team also joined plenaries, staffed the iCount booth, moderated sessions, and cheered on world leaders and grassroots champions.
Here's what we’re taking forward with us after spending five days with more than 6000 feminists from 189 countries.
You don't have to be a data person to understand
why inclusive data is foundational to change
Amelia (Millie) Greaves,
Senior Program Manager
Equality Insights
Across sectors, countries and areas of expertise, we found enthusiasm and excitement about data throughout the conference. We heard demands for better evidence and data in packed plenary discussions and side conversations in the exhibition hall, and most powerfully on the eve of the conference at an oversubscribed full day Inclusive Data preconference workshop.
As I watched breakout groups using individual-level data to understand the gendered impacts of the climate crisis and support resilience, discussing the gaps in the global development agenda, and getting hands on with citizen-generated data on digital gender-based violence, it was clear to me that good data that reflects the real experiences of everyone, not just a few, must underpin every effort to tackle the biggest challenges of our time. Participants explored feminist data collection, how to sharpen and shape advocacy efforts, and ultimately how data helps us tell stories about people and lived realities.
"Data can be scary to non-experts. But playing a game like this makes it easy to reflect on what's at stake."
I reflected on this later that week as we congregated in the climate pavilion to play Count Me In!, a card game we developed to bring the campaign for individual-level data to life. Players take on a persona and experience what it means to be counted, or have your perspectives left out entirely.
As one player shared, "data can be scary to non-experts. But playing a game like this makes it easy to reflect on the issues at stake."
Looking ahead, we’re going to continue to find new ways to tell stories with data that makes the case for change, until everyone is counted, visible and included in data systems.
Millie Greaves
Millie Greaves
Millie Greaves and Mele Manitisa from the Tonga Statistics Department play Count Me In! the cardgame to measure what matters.
Millie Greaves and Mele Manitisa from the Tonga Statistics Department play Count Me In! the cardgame to measure what matters.
Feminism must shape the future of AI. Not the other way around.
Yolanda Riveros-Morales
Yolanda Riveros-Morales
Laura Haylock, Lucía F. Mesa Velez, Christine Wangui, Kira Osborne, Mailen Garcia and Gaurav Godhwani after an energising discussion on feminist futures in the age of AI.
Laura Haylock, Lucía F. Mesa Velez, Christine Wangui, Kira Osborne, Mailen Garcia and Gaurav Godhwani after an energising discussion on feminist futures in the age of AI.
Yolanda Riveros-Morales, Data Methods and Design Manager
Every session at Women Deliver with AI in the title was packed. Both a sign of the AI anxiety that permeates the feminist and development spaces, and that this technology is here to stay. The provocation that has stayed with me the most came is this one:
“We are always asking how AI can shape the future of feminism, but the real question is how feminism can shape the future of AI!”
At Equality Insights we’re exploring emerging technological solutions to supplement or improve individual-level multidimensional surveys. We’re interested in how AI can level the playing field when it comes to data analysis so more people can understand what their data is telling them. We’re also deeply aware of the significant risk of automating inequality.
Women and gender diverse people are invisible in much of the data currently used to make decisions about policies and programs around the world. In many cases, by design. And if they’re invisible in the data, they’re not going to show up in AI systems built on that data.
But feminists in the data space are currently working on solutions that make AI work for them. iCount Coalition member DataGénero - Observatorio shared their tool Aymurai – an open-source desktop application that uses natural language processing techniques to anonymise and structure judicial rulings on gender-based violence, to enable analysis and comparison. As DataGénero founder and director Mailén García shared, AI can offer technical solutions, but Feminist AI means keeping feminist, human, perspectives at the centre of decision-making.
What I’m holding onto is the shift in orientation I felt during these sessions. So often we talk about how external forces – from AI to aid cuts – are impacting our work and our movement. I love the invitation to flip that – how do we make sure our work, our collaborations, and our movements are shaping the future of change?
Pacific feminists are building their futures, we need better data to support them.
Gayatri Ramnath
Gayatri Ramnath
Women's Rights Action Movement from the Solomon Islands and IWDA team members
Women's Rights Action Movement from the Solomon Islands and IWDA team members
Gayatri Ramnath, Data Use and Engagement Manager
I was lucky enough to join discussions led by women from Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Tonga during the conference and was struck by the ways the importance of data showed up in almost all of those sessions.
The structural barriers of gender inequality, economic pressures and the accelerating climate crisis are significant in the blue Pacific, as they are across the world. But there’s nothing like hearing from trailblazers Minister Fane Fotu Fituafe (the only woman in Kingdom of Tonga parliament and cabinet) and Nalini Singh from the Fiji Women's Rights Movement about the real world impact of disaggregated and intersectional data, to reinvigorate my commitment to this work.
Across these conversations, the idea of inclusive data as intentional, responsible and underpinned by decolonised approaches to knowledge and governance structures, kept surfacing. A vision where communities not only own and share their stories, but own their data and share their experiences with dignity.
As the Hon Michelle O'Byrne, Australia’s Ambassador for Gender Equality, reminded us, 'as soon as you silo, you lose.'
"As soon as you silo, you lose"
Inclusive and individual-level data is a language that can speak across silos. And gives us a shared foundation to turn commitments into action and advocate for change together.
Tackling the gendered impacts of the climate crisis requires us to redesign data systems to be inclusive
Joanne Crawford AM, Strategic Adviser, Equality Insights
As we heard in the Feminist Data for Climate Justice session, climate resilience, how it is understood and the data systems, policies and climate financing mechanisms built to measure it, mostly focus on infrastructure damage, or on implications for populations, communities or ecosystems as a whole. There is more limited attention to impacts on individuals including unpaid care. But loss, like everything else, is layered and current data systems are not equipped to hold the depth of complexity of people’s lives.
Co-organised by the Australian Government and research partners, this side event showcased groundbreaking insights from across the Asia Pacific that underline the importance of intersectional, community-led and individual-level data for understanding gendered impacts of climate change. The DASTAK Foundation (Pakistan), Social Development Direct (UK), and Plan International Australia shared emerging evidence and insights to strengthen inclusive climate resilience. The Revealing Resilience collaboration between Equality Insights and the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures, represented by Georgia Robinson, used personas inspired by Count Me In! and the Individual Self-Evaluated Resilience Score to show how people’s circumstances vary, including inside the same household. We also debuted a new animated video underscoring why understanding the situation of individuals, their contributions and constraints, is vital to strengthening their resilience in a changing climate.
Sharon Inone, founder and CEO of Greenenergy Pacific (with the support of Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), shared how she brought funders and partners to her remote island community in Solomon Islands to show them what data that did not yet exist would reveal in real life terms. Because numbers can tell us about scope and scale. But to understand how different people within households and across geographies, genders, ages and abilities are experiencing the climate crisis and acting to mitigate and manage, we need to ask different questions.
What would happen if we asked - Are you safe? Healthy? How are you equipped to adapt? Is your ecosystem able to not only survive, but thrive?
Inclusive data holds the key to understanding how the climate crisis intersects with systems of oppression, and the ways people are navigating, resisting, and shaping these realities in pursuit of gender and climate justice.
Learn more about how data can drive gender and climate justice in our latest report Measure of Change.
Learn more about how data can drive gender and climate justice in our latest report Measure of Change.
For decades, women have been building what Pacific Feminists Defending the Living Planet call ‘ecosystems of wellbeing and care.’ While climate impacts are often measured at community or household level, it is at the individual level that their full effects come into view.
That is exactly what Equality Insights is built to reveal. Because when we count everyone we can respond to everyone.
Joanne Crawford AM
Joanne Crawford AM
Q&A with speakers Rebekah Martin, Social Development Direct, UK; Tanushree Soni, Plan International Australia; Sharon Inone, Greenergy, Solomon Islands, Georgie Robinson, UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures.
Q&A with speakers Rebekah Martin, Social Development Direct, UK; Tanushree Soni, Plan International Australia; Sharon Inone, Greenergy, Solomon Islands, Georgie Robinson, UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures.
Young people are not asking for a seat at the table. They’re building their own table
Jo Pradela
Jo Pradela
Young people were a force on every panel, on every stage.
Young people were a force on every panel, on every stage.
"Young, energetic and passionate about data-driven changes!" Mele Manitisa from the Tonga Statistics Department speaks at Women Deliver.
"Young, energetic and passionate about data-driven changes!" Mele Manitisa from the Tonga Statistics Department speaks at Women Deliver.
If there was one force that cut through at WD2026, it was young feminists.
They were unapologetic; they called out outdated framing in packed rooms. They named the systems that were built without them (and are currently failing them) and came with vision and strategy for what comes next. Across the conference, we met young advocates, researchers, and organisers who were stepping outside dominant systems to build something new. Which, obviously, appeals to us!
But here’s what I keep thinking about. So much of what young people are living through is completely invisible in global development data.
When data is only collected at the household level, the individual disappears. Young women whose economic circumstances are determined by a parent or partner. Young gender diverse people whose safety, autonomy, and wellbeing doesn’t register in most official measures. Young people navigating a world they had no hand in breaking — the climate crisis, the debt crisis, the democracy crisis — whose experiences are averaged out or simply not asked about.
Rebuilding something better requires more than just tinkering at the edges of existing systems, but a re-think about what global development data measures, who shapes that and whose experiences are captured.
That’s part of why growing the iCount Coalition matters so much right now. To make the connections between what is already being built with a global agenda that reflects the experiences of everyone. When iCount launched 18 months ago, we brought together 20 a diverse group of stakeholders committed to seeing inclusive data as a core principle of the data ecosystem.
Women Deliver was an unflinching reminder that no one can solve these challenges alone. The feminist future of equality and inclusion envisioned decades ago requires collaboration, coordination and codesign. That’s why the iCount Coalition exists, and why it’s time for us to keep growing.
The iCount Coalition is expanding. If you want to be part of the next chapter, sign up to be the first to know.
The Next Chapter
We leave WD2026 even more committed than we arrived (which is saying something.)
As we now turn to the Global Data Festival in Nairobi next month, it feels like we’re at an inflection point in the inclusive data revolution.
The tools already exist to build more inclusive, intersectional, and accountable data systems. The challenge now is taking this momentum and turning it into sustained investment.
The forces against us are playing the long game. We are too.
We need governments and philanthropists to understand that inclusive data is not a nice-to-have once-off program. It’s the foundation for achieving every change they’re working towards.
And there’s a growing movement of organisations and activists ready to keep building out that foundation together.
Overheard at Women Deliver
Equality Insights is a systems change program for inclusive data and gender equality. To learn more about why inclusive, individual-level data is the foundation for change, sign up below and join the movement.
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