The Gender and Open Data Intersection

Gender and open data efforts are often siloed. Locally and nationally, there are women’s groups, digital rights groups, and gender experts, but rarely do they cross-collaborate. While global initiatives and partnerships have been established, they have yet to integrate vertically and horizontally. Furthermore, the open government data movement still has a long way to go. Women are less likely to be online than men; less likely to be consulted on the design of data policies and initiatives; under-represented among the ranks of data scientists; and often uncounted in official statistics.

The gender and open data intersection can be used to open up a conversation on the current state of government data, and how it can be improved. Ultimately, women should use open data to empower themselves. Open data must be used to support women and their needs as well as address the role governments play to support these efforts with data and create better citizen-state engagement. This is about data equity — data that everyone can access and use. But how do we get there?

In this Webinar, the World Wide Web Foundation's Ana Brandusescu discusses open data through a gender lens, and addresses the current state, challenges, and recommendations to pave the way forward. 

About the Panelist

Ana Brandusescu is a Research and Policy Officer at the World Wide Web Foundation. She is focused on driving a more inclusive use of data and enhancing digital rights, through various data, research and policy projects. These include Women’s Rights Online, IDEA – Initiative for Data Equity in Africa and the Open Data Barometer. She also works on open contracting and governance, and artificial intelligence.

She has eight years of research experience in data analysis, data standards, open source applications, and participatory projects. Her work has included global advocacy, research evidence and mapping, policy, and strategic partnerships in open data for agriculture and nutrition, participatory mapping in Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific, crowdmapping and community development in Canada, geovisualizing trauma injuries in South Africa, and representing informal communities with free and open source software tools in India.

She previously worked for the Web Foundation in the development of pioneering the Open Contracting Data Standard with the World Bank. Ana obtained a graduate degree from McGill University, Montreal, Canada.