International Women’s Day Data Challenge 2026
R-Ladies Ottawa is hosting another data challenge to celebrate International Women’s Day 2026!
The International Women’s Day 2026 theme is ‘Give To Gain’.
See the 2025 submissions and prompt here.
You can find out MeetUp event for our data challenge launch here.
The Challenge
For example, if you participated in last year’s challenge and created a traditional plot of some sort, this year try creating a visualization using a table, dashboard or another-outside-the-box presentation tool.
For more inspo, be sure to check out our March 2025 event Coding for a Cause with Claudie Larouche!
Guidelines
Although this challenge is hosted by R-Ladies Ottawa, you don’t have to use R to participate. You could use R, Python, a combination of the two, or anything you’re comfortable with!
No previous programming experience is required! If you’re interested in participating, but aren’t sure where to start, check out the recordings from our Introduction to R workshops that we hosted in early 2024. The workshops will give you a solid foundation in data analysis and data visualization using R.
While anyone is welcome to participate in the challenge and submit an entry.
You can participate individually, or in teams of up to 5 people!
How to submit an entry
We’re launching a month-long data challenge starting March 3, 2026 and you’ll have until April 3th, 2026 to submit your entry. Your submission can be in any form you like – it can be a Quarto document, an image, a link to a webpage, or a link to a video, for example.
There are two options for submitting an entry:
- Option 1 (preferred option): If you have experience with GitHub and Quarto, you can create a pull request on this repository and add your submission to the “Submissions” part of this page.
- Option 2: If you don’t have experience with GitHub, you can email ottawa@rladies.org a link to your submission materials and we will add the link to the “Submissions” part of this page.
Co-working & networking opportunity
We’re kicking this data challenge off with a co-working party on March 9, 2026 where you can network, ask questions or get some ideas for your submission! You can find out more about this event here.
Showcasing your analysis
On April 28th, 2025 from 12pm-1pm, R-Ladies Ottawa will host a hybrid event where participants can showcase their work. This is a great way to learn from one another and to connect with other like-minded individuals!
Submissions
Submissions from this year’s data challenge will be collected here. Submissions from the previous year can be found here.