More tightly mapped trends in girls’ stunting and access to contraception in Bangladesh. A better understanding of women’s mobility in a Latin American city. Stronger insights into women’s mental health via social media in cities around the world.
All of these findings can be traced to big data — and to a three-year project spearheaded by the United Nations Foundation’s initiative Data2X to apply large data sets to help close the gaping gender data gap.
Big data generators such as credit card use, mobile phone calls, social media posts and satellite imagery are already being used to some extent to inform mainstream development efforts, and certainly to inform corporations about their consumers.