Gender equality and Open Data Day 2020

The theme for Open Data Day 2020 “Equal Development” is aligned with the Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Since global SDG 5 focuses on Gender Equality and to celebrate International women’s rights day which happened to fall on the same week as the event, it is timely to take a look at women’s role and participation in open data from Open Data Day 2020.

Women are an essential labor force. Women’s participation in Open Data will contribute significantly to the development of open data as well as enhance gender equality in society. With the support of Open Heroines, this year Open Data Day has grasped a considerable amount of women’s participation. Out of all 60 participants, 30 percent are women. Also, from the 5 Essay competition finalists, 3 contestants are women. One of them went on to win third place in the competition. To a further extent, during the Hackathon session (which will be described later), in the three groups consisting of five members, there are at least two women each of them. That is nearly an impressive 50-50 gender ratio. These are some shreds of evidence that showcase strong women’s interests, participation and motivation toward open data. To learn more about Open Data Day 2020, please click here.

A group photo with the runners up of the essay competition.

Additionally, an exceptional presentation about key research findings from the study of Women engagement in Open Data in Cambodia was illustrated by Ms. Ourn Vimoil, program and partnership officer of Open Development Cambodia. The main objective of the research is to understand how Cambodia women perceive, understand and access to open data in the country. The study wants to identify key challenges women have faced when they access open data and information. The study found out that large numbers of Cambodia women understand what open data is but only a few are aware of the meaningful definition of the term and its limitations. From the respondents, there are numerous difficulties women have to deal with when they try to access open data and using technology such as capacity issues, the desire to use data, security concerns and narrow choices of trusted data channels. However, from her presentation, Ms. Vimoil has highlighted various initiative from different stakeholders that aims to enhance women’s access to and use of data and technology such as Cambodian Women in Tech Award, Cambodian Women ICT Engineering Award, Girl Innovator Award, Technovation, Pink Telephones, Project Girl Code and Development Innovations project, etc. 

To tackle the ongoing issue, the research has proposed key recommendations include the improvements of data literacy through education at all levels, the improvement in data quality and increasing the accessibility of technology-related events by taking into account the barrier constraining the audience to participate.

Another fun and knowledgeable activity in Open Data day 2020 is the Hackathon session. It is a very rare and unique opportunity for the audience to get exposed to and take part in a data visualization process. 3 groups consisting of 5 members each were randomly formed and as stated above, each group has at least two female members which are an impressive statistic for a technology competition.

Under the guidance of mentors, they were assigned to produce data stories that promote gender equality in education sector in Cambodia and National Institute of Statistics report of the Ministry of Education in Cambodia were used as the database for the group. They were asked to find any statistical data related to gender in Cambodia’s education system in the last five years. After the participants have done with the data processing, they will be asked to make a data story by employing the data visualization tools guided by their group mentors. Then to wrap up the session, each group will present their stories to compete for the best data story. Key objectives of this Hackathon session are to raise awareness of the potential of the use of open data and tech to advocate for equal development, to inject participants with tech knowledge and to make use of open data to produce digital data-driven stories to promote gender equality in Cambodia.

Watch the video below to get an overview of Open Day 2020: