Gender data is lacking worldwide
Gender data gaps exist across the world, in upper, middle and low income countries, and data for reporting on SDG 5 (gender equality) lags behind all other SDGs, with only 30% of indicators having enough data. A 2018 UN Women report found that globally sufficient and regular data were only available for 10 of the 54 gender-specific SDG indicators, making it difficult to assess and monitor the direction and pace of progress for women and girls.
Limited national capacity for statistics exacerbates the problem
One of the main reasons for the lack of reporting of these indicators is limited national capacity to produce and effectively communicate gender statistics. In fact, only 13% of countries have budgets dedicated to gender statistics.
PARIS21 and UN Women are working together to increase gender data production and use
PARIS21 and UN Women are collaborating through the Making Every Woman and Girl Count programme, which supports countries in strengthening their statistical systems to produce gender statistics that are consistent, high quality, timely and relevant to policy makers, academics, civil society organisations and citizens.
The collaboration focuses on four main activities:
- Improving co-ordination and planning for gender statistics through the development of an assessment framework and tools to identify reasons for gender statistics gaps relating to the capacity of national statistical systems. This assessment is meant to provide input for the mainstreaming of the gender perspective in national strategies for the development of statistics (NSDS). PARIS21 has developed a framework document for assessing the capacity of national statistical systems to produce quality gender statistics that meet users’ needs.
- Improving data dissemination and communication of gender statistics through media engagement and data visualisation trainings, and brokering user-producer partnerships through dialogues. Ongoing work includes development of an e-learning module on communicating gender statistics for journalists and producers of statistics within the PARIS21 Academy. This module aims to improve the ability of statisticians and journalists to communicate gender statistics and produce visualizations. It also seeks to build trust between NSS, media, government and civil society organisations and increase media coverage of gender statistics.
- Reporting the use of gender-specific data: currently, PARIS21 is building a methodological base for conducting text analysis methodology in the use of gender-specific data in newspapers, national development plans (NDPs) and select policy documents to measure citizen’s use and actual policy uses.
- Reporting of financial resources for gender statistics through the Partner Report on Support to Statistics (PRESS). The report presents data on technical and financial support to statistical development worldwide, and thus is a valuable tool for collaboration between donors and recipient countries. The PRESS report has included a section dedicated to support to gender statistics since its 2018 edition.
Links
Discover PARIS21's Communicating Gender Statistics online training
The impact of PARIS21 work on gender data
Communicating on statistics to fight against VAWG in Jamaica
Planning ahead with gender statistics to leave no one behind in Trinidad and Tobago
Joining forces to fight domestic violence through stories and gender statistics
No data, no debate: Integrating gender in the national statistics strategy in the Maldives
How is the ADAPT tool helping to modernise Paraguay's data systems?