Women Deliver – Narrm (Melbourne), Australia, April 26th-30th 2026
by Jan Edwards PhD
Editor’s Note: SGP supported Jan’s participation at the Women Deliver conference through its Professional Development Fund, which is available to all SGP members. To learn more, visit the Professional Development Fund overview. Members seeking funding for their own opportunities can apply via the Professional Development Request Form. Applications are reviewed twice yearly, in April and October; SGP will announce when each cycle opens.
A number of key messages resonated over the four days of Women Deliver 2026, key amongst them is that ‘this’ is being viewed as a crisis moment in human rights. Panellists stated, ‘this isn’t a system that is failing women, it is a system performing exactly as intended, with women rendered expendable, marginalised from power and excluded,’ (1) where the economic architecture impoverishies people quite deliberately. Described as a moment similar to the separation of ‘tectonic plates,’ speakers noted that the social contract is frayed, characterised by greater polarisation and public discourse filled with hate. The age of disinformation is upon us, leading to spread of unrest, mistrust and conflict due to the deliberate spread of false information facilitated by social media.
The human rights system and rules-based order that has been in place since the end of the second world war is being dismantled, solidarity is being criminalised with advocates intimidated into silence. One speaker said, ‘we find ourselves in an era of cowardice, what is being rewarded is proximity to power.’ The old rules-based order and ‘accountability are being lost, with things that were considered unthinkable now commonplace.’ Yet, we don’t know what will replace the old rules based global order.
While the above is rightly a frightening picture of the moment, there were some bright moments from which to take some heart. Dr June Oscar, and Australian Indigenous women, used the phrase, ‘Ancestral Intelligence’ as being the AI that is needed presently. This Ancestral Intelligence is built on connection to country and history and celebrates indigenous knowledge and culture. (2)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data were themes I followed over the 4 days. My aim was to engage with AI and inform myself about how feminism and AI can exist alongside each other, and how we might develop feminist approaches and feminist informed models of AI. I learnt a number of things from a range of speakers from across the globe.
AI is a political project, grounded in colonialism. What AI models are not including are a range of oral histories and languages, knowledges of Indigenous people, and certainly existing models are mostly not inclusive of feminist and anti-racist perspectives. AI is a closed system that learns and overlearns and reinforces specific forms of knowledge, predominantly colonial forms of knowledge and presents them as truth.
A key fear is that it encourages users to be uncritical thinkers, and reinforces existing biases, reflecting and automating existing inequalities. Described by one speaker as a ‘race to the bottom,’ AI is unregulated, increasingly driven by profits, and prioritises speed over thinking. AI knowledge fails to adopt feminist approaches that ask, ‘who benefits and who loses.’ In response to these challenges, a number of initiatives were described by panellists.
There are several models of AI: 1) open source; 2) locally led AI; 3) sovereign AI. Key learnings for me included the development of Sovereign AI that is accountable to people, not driven by profits with the aim of developing a future that is aligned with feminist values. Sprinkling feminism over existing models is insufficient in the context of the current attacks on citizenship, freedom and democracy, and the sovereign project aims to create greater privacy and security within closed systems in the context of poor regulation and oversight, where digital tools are not neutral and big tech and right wing movements are reshaping power.
Models discussed included:
Open Source alternatives (free)
Locally Led AI (focuses on specific needs of local communities, on your own hardware, private data)
Sovereign AI (closed systems that offer greater privacy and security, community governed, values aligned tech)
- Civic Data Lab – co-create data collaboratives and tools for effective, data-driven decision making to address climate change
- Akin – amplifying the best of humanity and I
- Te Hiku Media – focussed on preservation of Māori languages
- Masakhare – preservation of African languages
- Feminist.AI – co-create more equitable futures through intersectional feminism
Strategies suggested by the speakers (4) are to align AI to your personal values by training AI to understand who you are and your values by having a conversation with AI, asking questions and verifying information while working with AI as a tool.
The second theme I followed over the conference was data, in particular the consortium that includes Equality Insights, Data2X, iCount Coalition, GEDA, <datagener# and a number of UN agencies and the University of Technology: Institute for Sustainable Futures. I attended the full day pre-conference activity, ‘From training to #trending: A hands on day of inclusive data.’ (5)
Equality Insights under the leadership of the International Women’s Development Agency has developed tools and approaches to collect and analyse, individual-level, gender-sensitive and inclusive data to accelerate action for gender equality. Working globally, and measures poverty differently than has been done in the past.
Inclusive data is essential to developing effective solutions that reduce poverty and inequality. But right now, this data is lacking. Current data about global poverty provides a limited snapshot of people’s experiences.
Equality Insights measures poverty differently providing a more nuanced picture of poverty. It is premised on the fact that not all members of the same household experience poverty in the same ways. The multi-dimensional approach assesses 15 key areas of life and collects data about assets to understand financial circumstances. Poverty measures that focus on the household using a male head of household model and fails to understand how different factors – including gender, age, and disability shape experiences of poverty and inequality. Individual-level data generates important intersectional insights that are key to creating a more just, equal and sustainable future for all and developing responses designed to alleviate poverty. Participants had an opportunity to work with the Individual Self-Evaluated Resilience Score tool (iSERS).
Further data sessions were presented by CivicDataLab in collaboration with Paris21. (6) The interactive simulation exercise placed participants in a real-world disaster scenario that asked them to negotiate access to data to develop responses to the crisis, in the absence of current and reliable national statistical information. Key questions participants were asked to address included:
- How to ensure data sharing (data quality and trust)?
- How to ensure data sharing inclusivity?
- Roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder?
- How will resources be mobilised?
Women Deliver closed with the adoption of the Melbourne Declaration for Gender Equality. The declaration reinforces the call for sustained attention to human rights within the context of local and national civil society that holds States to account for commitments to human rights.
This unquestionably includes the provision of essential services and respect for the rights to bodily autonomy, freedom from violence and discrimination, open democracies, and all other fundamental human rights enshrined in international law, agreements, and norms, as well as their expansion.
Footnotes
- I have captured the key points of the message, but I make no claims to verbatim quotations.
- A key session was ‘Redefining roles: States, Civil Society and Global Actors,’ A Callamard, B Nowrojee, H Hollis, J SM Kee, M Khan, M O’Byrne, M Aleman & S Pantuliana.
- Sessions included ‘Feminist Futures in the Age of AI’ G Godhwani, K Osbourne, L M Velez, M A Garcia.
- This session was ‘AI for Liberation: Turning technology into power for feminist movements’, C Sanjenko, M Rollings, M MacGillivray, R Grayson & S Mutuyimana.
- Presenters included: I Ting, C Jonah, M Manitisa, J Willetts, J Crawford, A Greaves, A Shenoi, L Haylock & M Garcia.
- Session titled, ‘Data that delivers – A role planning lab for data in transformative action’ delivered by G Godhwani and L Suchodolska.
