Gender Statistics Database

The database is a comprehensive knowledge centre for gender statistics and information on various aspects of (in)equality between women and men. Its main purpose is to:

• build a broad overview of statistics on gender, highlighting differences and inequalities between both sexes;
• support the measurement of progress towards gender equality that is being achieved; and
• act as a reliable resource in formulation and monitoring of policies that are beneficial for both women and men and will facilitate making appropriate decisions towards the advancement of gender equality.

The database is an important part of EIGE’s efforts to provide high quality data on gender equality issues for policymakers and other key stakeholders working to achieve gender equality.

According to the United Nations manual, gender statistics are ‘statistics that adequately reflect differences and inequalities in the situation of women and men in all areas of life’. They are needed to describe the roles of women and men in the society, the economy, and within the family, to provide the basis for the development of evidence-based policies and to establish sound monitoring and evaluation of their effectiveness.

Thus, the database primarily aims to gather statistics that are:

• gender disaggregated and/or directly reflect gender issues (such as childcare spending and provision);
• based on concepts and definitions that adequately reflect the diversity of women and men and capture all aspects of their lives; and
• collected using methods that take into account stereotypes and social and cultural factors that may induce gender biases in the data. 

The database includes more than 5000 indicators on key gender equality topics, providing detailed information on key thematic & policy areas; on progress in achieving gender equality under several monitoring frameworks (EU strategies, Gender Equality Index and Beijing Platform for Action); and on gender equality among women and men in decision-making.

The database includes indicators from a broad range of data sources, which can be divided into three main groups:

1. Indicators collected directly by EIGE from relevant EU and national sources:
   • Data collection on women and men in decision-making; and
   • Data collection on gender-based violence.
2. Indicators to monitor gender equality achievement computed at EIGE from a range of sources:
   • Gender Equality Index indicators; and
   • Beijing Platform for Action indicators.
3. Indicators collected from key EU-level data sources. Key data sources and collections covered are listed in the table below.
   

   Data Source	Data collection
   Eurostat	Administrative data on a range of themes
   	EU Labour force survey (EU-LFS)
   	European Statistics of Income and Living Condition (EU-SILC)
   	Structure of earnings survey
   	Community statistics on information society survey
   	European health interview survey
   	Adult education survey
   Eurofound	European working conditions survey
   	European quality of life survey
   EU Commission	Range of Eurobarometer surveys
   EU Fundamental Rights Agency	Survey on gender-based violence against women

The database is updated on a rolling basis as soon as new data becomes available. The availability of new data is systematically tracked in a data release calendar, which summarises planned data updates/releases for all the data sources included in the database (as long as this information is publically available).

The update process is automated whenever possible, requiring minimal human intervention, which ensures timely and error-free updating of data and metadata. 

EIGE has adopted the quality assessment and assurance framework of the European Statistical System to evaluate data quality. Thus data quality is assessed against the quality evaluation principles outlined in the European Statistics Code of Practice. These can be divided into three broad blocks according to their focus:

• institutional environment;
• statistical processes; and
• statistical output.  

The database often presents data collected by well-established EU data providers that satisfy the first two blocks, which means that the ‘statistical output’ block is the most important one for ongoing database updates and maintenance. The principles to evaluate the quality of statistical outputs consist of data relevance, accuracy and reliability, timeliness and punctuality, coherence and comparability, and accessibility and clarity.

New data can be included in the database only when it complies with these principles.

Data on specific gender related issues can be sought in three main ways:

1. Search the data through the database tree 

The database tree is on the main page of the database and includes six main entry points:

• Two general entry points containing a large number of indicators on a broad range of issues: ‘Thematic Areas’ and ‘Policy Areas’;
• Two entry points that focus on monitoring the achievement of policy goals: ‘EU Strategies’ and ‘Beijing Platform for Action’;
• One entry point focusing specifically on EIGE’s Gender Equality Index; and
• One entry point containing the data on women and men in decision-making.

The entry points are divided into themes and sub-themes that can be browsed by clicking on the relevant entry point. For example, to search data on women and men at risk of poverty, click on the entry point ‘Thematic areas’ to view a list of its themes. Then click on the theme ‘Financial and economic situation’ and select its sub-theme ‘Poverty and social exclusion’. Within this sub-theme, there is a specific section with data on the ‘At-risk-of-poverty rates ‘.  

2. Use the basic search function

On the database homepage, the search box appears below the heading ‘Browse Gender Statistics’ (highlighted in green). In this search box you can type the topic you are interested in finding data on, or a phrase related to it. This will show all themes, sub-themes and indicators related to the search term.

3. Use the advanced search function

To search data, either click on the button in the right top corner of the database homepage. The search function allows you to specify a search phrase (i.e. people at risk) and returns a list of indicators that contain exact or similar phrase match. You can also enter the search phrase surrounded by quotes (i.e. "people at risk") if you want to search only for data that contains an exact phrase match.

Advanced search

Countries and years, and other relevant data dimensions (such as gender or age group), can be chosen by changing the data filter settings. This can be done in three quick steps:

1. Select the filter(s) that you want to change, either from a drop-down list of possible categories (i.e. countries, units or age groups) or by ticking or un-ticking relevant tick-boxes (i.e. gender).
2. Click on the apply button at the bottom of the filter setting box. 

This changes the indicator display so that it shows data for the new filter settings.

By default, the database presents data in a bar chart, which shows data values for a range of countries in the same year. However, it is simple to change this data display to a line chart, which shows data over a selected period of time for a single or several countries. This can be done in the following way:

1. Click on the field called ‘LINE CHART’ on the top of data display.
2. Select relevant countries and years to be displayed in the line chart (see question above for more detail on how to do this). Note that you can select a maximum of four countries to be displayed in a line chart, in order to prevent overcrowding of the chart with a large number of lines.

The data on women and men decision-making can be accessed under the database entry point ‘Women and men in decision making’. The data covers key decision-making positions in the following areas:

• Politics consists of data on parliaments/assemblies at European, national and regional levels; parliamentary bureaus and committees; local/municipal councils; governments and other political executives; political parties and advisory committees.
• Public administration covers senior administrators at national and European level; and heads of monitoring/audit bodies. 
• Judiciary data focuses on national courts (supreme, administrative, constitutional), national public prosecutors and European courts.
• Business and finance presents data on largest listed companies, European financial institutions and central banks.
• Social partners and NGOs are covered under a corresponding theme. Both social partners and NGOs are covered at EU level, and social partners are covered at national level as well.  
• Environmental and climate change includes bodies associated with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; and environment decision-making bodies in EU institutions and at national level.
• Media consists of data on national public broadcasters and media regulatory authorities.
• Education, science and research focuses on national academies of science and research funding organisations. 

Each indicator under the women and men in decision making entry point is accompanied by comprehensive reference metadata, which follows the Eurostat SMDX Metadata Structure (ESMS). The metadata contains:

• Detailed information related to data collection methodology, including geographic coverage, positions covered and their definitions, data release calendar, data quality issues, and data sources and collection methods.
• Detailed mapping tables that summarize positions covered by each of the women and men in decision making indicators.

Each indicator is also accompanied by a summary dataset description, which highlights key information from the detailed metadata.

This information can be accessed by selecting the metadata box on the top of the data display (see metadata excerpts below for the indicator ‘Largest listed companies: presidents, board members and employee representatives’) and scrolling down through the page. 

Download the full data collection methodology for the women and men in decision making data

This is possible by selecting a corresponding unit of measurement (number of persons – headcount) in the data filter settings. This can be done in three quick steps, shown below on the example indicator ‘Largest listed companies: presidents, board members and employee representatives’:

1. Click on the field summarising filter settings on the top of data display. 
2. Select the filter for unit of measurement, and select the ‘Number of persons (headcount)’ unit from the drop-down list.
3. Click on the apply button at the bottom of the filter setting box. 

This changes the data display so that it shows data in absolute numbers (headcount) rather than percentages.

This is possible by selecting desired position in the filter settings, following a similar approach to the question above. Focusing on the example indicator ‘Largest listed companies: presidents, board members and employee representatives’, this can be done by:

1. Click on the field summarising filter settings on the top of data display.
2. Select the filter for position, and select the desired position from the drop-down list.
3. Click on the apply button at the bottom of the filter setting box. 

EIGE collects and disseminates data on gender based violence from various sources in the Gender Statistics Database. Broadly, data collected in those sources can be grouped in two types, survey data and national administrative data.

Important sources of survey data in EIGE’s Gender Statistics Database are the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) survey on violence against women; Eurobarometer special surveys that include questions on gender based violence and; Eurofound’s European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS).

National administrative data in EIGE’s Gender Statistics Database are obtained from various national sources, such as the police and judiciary data. These data register offences, prosecutions, numbers of perpetrators and number of victims, amongst others. As definitions of crimes and data collection methodologies differ between Member States, these data are not comparable. EIGE’s Gender Statistics Database also displays national administrative data compiled by Eurostat and UNODC; these are available in Eurostat’s Crime and criminal justice statistics database and disseminated by in EIGE in the Gender Statistics Database too.

Information about gender based violence includes a wide range of topics:

• Incidence of different forms of violence (physical, sexual, psychological and economic). This can include national administrative data (such as the number of offences of a particular form reported to the police) and survey data (for example, asking respondents whether they have been a victim of a particular type of violence in their lifetime);
• Data on specific offences, such as Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). This data have been collected by national administrative sources and surveys and have been compiled from EIGE through its studies on violence against women;
• Perceptions of gender-based violence which are predominantly informed by survey data sources, asking respondents their opinion and perceptions of gender based violence as a social issue and measures to support victims as well as measures to combat it.

Some topics include many indicators, (e.g. incidents of physical and sexual data) as these data are more systematically collected by national institutions such as the police and are readily available. Other topics, such as economic and psychological violence are less extensively covered in the database as national data are more limited in these areas. 

Data included under gender based violence in EIGE’s Gender Statistics database come from different sources. Survey data comes from different surveys, and national administrative data come from different national institutions (e.g. national statistical offices, police and judiciary). While these sources may all collect data on the same topic, they use different methodologies and this affects the comparability of results. Across surveys, the way a question has been formulated or the sample might be different and this could lead to different estimates.

Across and within Member States national institutions, the way a particular concept is defined and data is collected might differ as well, causing estimates to differ. In the case of femicide, data in EIGE’s database comes from joint Eurostat-UNODC data on intentional homicide which follows different methodologies and definitions than the national sources.