In the Fight for Gender Equality, We Must First Fill the Gaps in Data

“Without data, there’s no way of measuring progress on gender equality goals. We know Prime Minister Narendra Modi has constituted a group of ministers to examine the draft National Policy for Women, which aims to create a framework to develop policies and programmes to ensure equal rights, resources and opportunities for them. We also know that a successful shaping and tracking of that policy will depend on good data.”

The Wire

International Women’s Day: Why We Need to Connect Data and Advocacy to Achieve Gender Equality

“By connecting data and evidence with advocacy and action, the aim is to fuel progress towards gender equality. How? By making sure that girls’ and women’s movements, rights advocates and decision makers have easy-to-use data and evidence to guide efforts to reach the Global Goals by 2030 and leave no one behind.”

UNESCO Institute for Statistics Blog

South Africa Lacks Statistics On Gender

“At the most recent presentation on crime statistics to Parliament, it is problematic that SAPS only included "total sexual offences" as a subcategory of "all contact crimes". (…) Without accurate and disaggregated gender data, it is difficult to formulate policy and effectively allocate the financial, educational, and legal resources required to reduce sex and gender-based crimes.”

GroundUp

Working on Gender in the Hindu Kush Himalaya

“Talk of gender in Geographic Information System (GIS) is new. Until now, practical work on geospatial has been seen only as an analysis of high resolution images to discern land use and land cover. Spatial study from a gendered lens is necessary, however, especially in Himalayan or rural contexts where climate induced change and corporate globalization have led to migration, particularly of men. (…) Gender in GIS plays a significant role in helping disaster risk management, and reducing environmental and climate change impacts in vulnerable areas.”

Nepal Today

If cities are to ‘leave no one behind’, disaggregated data is invaluable

“data collected at the national level doesn’t tell city authorities where the issues are in their specific territories or help them identify where to act at the street or ward level.”

Citiscope

Just 1 in 4 people trust Government to present official statistics honestly

“90 per cent of people trusted the Office for National Statistics to produce accurate statistics, but just 26 per cent said the Government would present these accurately. In addition just 18 per cent believed the statistics would not be further distorted by newspapers.”

The Independent

Kenya Opens Up Agricultural Data

“For the future development of sectors such as agriculture, livestock and fisheries, open data will be vital. Open access to accurate data will generate information based on evidence, which will help promote, accelerate, and contribute to economic development and food security. Open data will contribute to Kenya’s efforts to find answers to complex questions on climate change, and sustainable and productive agricultural development.”

ICT Update

Opinion: The case for metadata

“Metadata associated with datasets tells us critical information about the provenance of the data we’re looking at. In doing so, metadata helps us to establish whether or not we can trust that data. And this question of trust is particularly important as more and more data is published openly. We can access data about so many topics, sectors and people, but do we know where it originated, how current it is or when it will next be updated?”

Devex

Why literature is the ultimate big-data challenge

“How can computers tell the difference between Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Marlowe and Shakespeare drawing on one another? According to the editors of the “New Oxford”, the answer lies in “function words”.”

The Economist

By the numbers: The gender gap in the Australian music industry

TripleJ

Big Data Paris 2017

6-7 March – Paris, France

UN Statistical Commission 48^th Session

7-11 March – New York, USA