Data-Pop Alliance is proud to announce that Anna Spinardi, DPA’s Data Feminism Program Director, has been appointed to UN Women’s newly established Technical Advisory Group on the Applications of Big Data and Data Science to Fill Gender Data Gaps. Convened under the Women Count Program, this select group of global experts provides oversight and support on the use of non-traditional data sources and analytical tools to advance gender equality.
UN Women extended the invitation to Anna in recognition of her expertise in feminist data governance, ethics, and participatory approaches. The Group brings together practitioners from national statistics offices, academia, civil society, the private sector, and the UN system. Members will provide critical input on methodologies and studies, peer-reviewing outputs, and knowledge exchange to promote the effective and ethical use of big data for gender-responsive policymaking.
Anna’s role will include offering technical guidance on UN Women’s big data initiatives, participating in TAG meetings, and contributing to efforts to utilize data innovations to close gender data gaps. Her appointment reflects both her individual leadership and DPA’s commitment to ethical and inclusive data solutions.
As digital data becomes increasingly central to development, it is essential that we uphold feminist principles in how we produce and apply knowledge. This advisory group represents a crucial step toward institutionalizing those principles in global efforts to measure and address gender inequality.
Her participation aligns with DPA’s own framework for ethical data, Council for the Orientation of Development and Ethics (CODE), which has been embedded in numerous projects since 2020. Much like the TAG, CODEs are composed of independent, interdisciplinary experts who offer ethical oversight and provide local context. These CODEs help to ensure that projects are relevant to the targeted communities, and that they “do no harm”.
In projects addressing gender-based violence in Latin America, for example, CODEs reshaped research design to avoid stigmatization and to center community needs by shifting from mapping violence “hotspots” to exploring structural drivers of underreporting. The TAG’s mandate to offer peer review, identify synergies, and guide ethical practices mirrors this model on a broader, global scale.
Both the TAG and the CODE reflect the commitment that gender data should be as inclusive, representative and responsibly-used as possible. Anna looks forward to applying her skills, knowledge and commitment to gender data in this new role.
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