Migrants and displaced people of all genders have different needs and priorities and face diverse risks shaped by intersecting forms of discrimination. To mark International Women’s Day 2022, IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) hosted an online panel discussion to explore if and how intersectionality can be operationalized in humanitarian data collection and analysis, on the impacts of disaster displacement and environmental migration.

Intersectionality is a term coined by the legal scholar and activist Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe the interlocking systems of oppression experienced by black women in the USA as a result of both their racial and gender identities. This analysis has since been extended to encompass the multifaceted oppression faced by other marginalized groups based on identities such as nationality, migration status, indigeneity, ability, age and more. 

Representative data is pivotal to developing durable responses to environmental mobility that reflect the different needs and impacts faced by populations. The panel explored how data collection and analysis practices can be transformed to better account for interlocking vulnerabilities and systems of marginalization, to improve our understanding of the varied gendered impacts and experiences of displacement and environmental migration, with the aim of informing better responses.