Wikigender, the UN FoundationHealth Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC), the EU-LAC FoundationEuropean Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), ECLAC and PARIS21 would like to hear your views on where are the data gaps and engage in a discussion on pioneering initiatives that generate new data and new methodological approaches to address complex areas (e.g. unpaid care, time use, social norms).

The outcomes of the discussion and main findings will be synthesised in a final report and presented/distributed at a side event organised by the OECD Development CentreOverseas Development Institute (ODI) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in March 2014, during the 58th session on UN the Commission on the Status of Women in New York.

 

Background

The objective of this online discussion is to focus on data gaps on gender equality, which can contribute to the 58th Commission for the Status of Women’s (CSW) review of the MDGs. Given the growing advocacy momentum for a stand-alone gender equality goal and targets in the post-2015 agenda, it is important to stocktake progress made since 2000 on improving the quality, coverage and approaches to data, which can assist in the elaboration of priorities for the statistical infrastructure for gender equality moving forward. Initiatives spearheaded at the international level (e.g. the UN Women/UNSD 52 minimum set of indicators, EDGE initiative, Data 2X), regional organisations (e.g. ECLACEU-LACEIGE), and national statistical offices point to the importance of coordinated action and knowledge-sharing for advancing the gender agenda at all levels: sub-national, national and international.

The Wikigender online discussion will look at where are the data gaps, map pioneering initiatives that generate new data (including use of big data), share knowledge on new methodological approaches to address complex areas (e.g. unpaid care, time use, social norms), progress on gender statistics since 2000, as well as national capacities to collect data. It aims to bring together leading institutes working on gender statistics to share and discuss their initiatives, results and proposals for improving gender statistics amongst a technical community of practice.

Guiding Questions

Over three weeks (27 Jan - 14 Feb), the discussion will be organised around three themes (one theme per week):

Week 1 starting 27 January: The socio-economic empowerment of women

Data on the socio-economic empowerment of women has increasingly improved over the years, with a plethora of indices such as UNDP’s Gender Inequality Index, Social Watch’s Gender Equity Index, the Women’s Economic Opportunity Index, the Global Gender Gap index, EIGE’s Gender Equality Index, among others. However, there are still many data gaps and quality, coverage and availability need to be improved. The recent Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) is among the new initiatives that aim to accelerate existing efforts to generate comparable gender indicators on health, education, employment and develop standards to measure entrepreneurship and assets from a gender perspective. This week, we would like to hear from you on:

Where has progress been made since 2000 in terms of data on women’s socio-economic empowerment and where are the gaps? How can we address them?

  • Data collection: Do you have examples of local, regional or international initiatives that aim to improve data collection and analysis on women’s socio-economic empowerment? How are they effective? What are priority areas for which data on women should be improved or newly produced, and which institutions are poised to take this on?
  • Comparability and methodology: What needs to be done to make existing data comparable between different regions? How feasible would this be? How do we best engage national statistical offices in improving data on women and girls in line with international efforts? How is it possible to drive initiatives to ensure that there is better harmonization of data?
  • New areas of research: How can data collection on new areas of research (such as time use, unpaid care or social norms) be improved in order to better inform how women fare in terms of socio-economic empowerment and to inform policy-making?
  • New priority areas: What new priority targets/areas should be included in the post-2015 development agenda and more specifically when it comes to gender equality?

Coming up!

 

  • Week 2 starting 3 February: Violence against women
  • Week 3 starting 10 February: The civic and political participation of women

Cross-cutting themes during the online discussion will include: new areas of research (e.g. social norms, time use, unpaid care), the “data revolution” and gender statistics; lessons learnt since 2000; and proposals for targets for the post-2015 development agenda. The online discussion will be in English, Spanish and French (the outcome document will be produced in English only).