“Data for Good” is about gathering insight, revealing injustice, and driving change. But what happens when the data we need most is missing - not because it’s hard to collect, but because it’s hard to face?

This talk explores the uncomfortable truth behind the Women’s Safety: that data on women’s safety - relating to male violence - is often absent not for technical reasons, but because it’s emotionally and socially fraught. Even among women working in data - people who understand the value of data and live with the reality of gendered harm - many chose not to complete the project’s survey. Their silence wasn’t apathy. It was a response to exhaustion, self-protection, and the emotional cost of revisiting experiences that are personal, painful, and too often ignored.

This session doesn’t ask how to collect more data. It asks how to make space for what’s already known but rarely spoken. How to recognise silence as meaningful. And how to place the responsibility for change on the institutions that are there to protect rather than the women who live the hidden reality.

What does it mean to do “data for good” when some truths stay silent?

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