FAQs

The Database is a comprehensive knowledge centre for gender statistics and information on various aspects of (in)equalities between women and men. Its main purposes are:

• To build a comprehensive collection of sex-disaggregated data, presented in accordance with EU’s political priorities

• To provide statistical evidence on the progress towards gender equality in EU Member States and beyond

• To act as a valuable resource for anyone working for the advancement of 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’. Accurate sex-disaggregated and gender-sensitive data helps track the impact of policies and reveals where more can be done to close gender gaps. This data can be used to compare women and men on key socio-economic indicators, e.g. educational attainment, labour market participation, health outcomes or access to decision- making positions.

The Database primarily aims to gather statistics that are:

• sex-disaggregated and/or directly reflect gender issues (such as childcare spending and provision)

• based on concepts and definitions that adequately reflect gender diversity

• collected using methods that account for social and cultural factors that may induce gender biases in the data. 

The Database includes over 2000 indicators on key gender equality topics. It provides detailed information on:

• Progress towards gender equality under several monitoring frameworks (EU policies and strategies, Gender Equality Index and Beijing platform for action)
• A broad range of gender-sensitive topics (Thematic areas)
• Gender equality in decision-making (Women and Men in Decision Making) and
• Violence against women (Gender-Based Violence).

The data sources of the Gender Statistics Database can be divided into three main groups:

1. Data collected directly by EIGE from relevant EU and national sources:
   • Women and men in decision-making
   • Gender-based violence.
2. Indicators to monitor progress towards the achievement of gender equality, computed by EIGE from a range of sources:
   • Gender Equality Index
   • Beijing Platform for Action.
3. Indicators collected from key EU-level data sources. The main EU data sources are listed in the table below. The Database also contains indicators computed from other EU-level data, e.g. the survey on health behaviour in school aged children (HBSC).
   

   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 (SES)
   	Community statistics on information society survey (CSIS)
   	European health interview survey (EHIS)
   	Adult education survey (AES)
   	Eurostat-UNODC data collection on crime and criminal justice
   Eurofound	European working conditions survey (EWCS)
   	European quality of life survey (EQLS)
   EU Commission	Labour market policies (LMP) database
   	Range of Eurobarometer surveys
   	Women in science database (She figures)
   	Women against violence in Europe (WAVE) reports on women's support services in Europe
   	Data collection on trafficking
   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. See the two tables below for an overview of release dates.

The timely update of the Database guarantees access to the latest available data and metadata and highlights data gaps.

Overview of release dates for the indicators on women and men in decision-making

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
• 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.

You can search the Database in three main ways:

1. The Database tree 

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

• Two entry points that focus on monitoring the achievement of policy goals: ‘EU Policies and Strategies’ and ‘Beijing Platform for Action’

• A general entry points containing a large number of indicators on a broad range of issues: ‘Thematic Areas’

• One entry point focusing on EIGE’s Gender Equality Index

• One entry point containing the data on women and men in decision-making

• One entry point containing the data on gender-based violence.

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 ‘At risk of poverty' and select its sub-theme ‘General indicators’. Within this sub-theme, there are several ‘at-risk-of-poverty rates ‘ indicators.  

2. The basic search function

On the Database homepage, the search box appears below the heading ‘Browse Gender Statistics’. In this search box you can type the topic you want to find data on, or a phrase related to it. This will show all themes, sub-themes and indicators related to the search term.

3. The advanced search function

To search data, 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 containing the exact or similar phrase matches. Use quotes to search for exact phrase match (e.g. “people at risk”).

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 way the indicator is displayed, to show only 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. To display data over multiple years for one or more countries, you can use a line chart:

1. Click on the field called ‘LINE CHART’ on the top of data display.
2. Select the countries and years you want to display 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 single line chart, to prevent overcrowding the chart with too many 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.
• Sports includes statistics on women and men in highest decision-making bodies of national sports federations, National Olympic Committees (NOCs), and European Confederations of sports.

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 is 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 on trafficking in human beings, data from the joined Eurostat - UNODC project, and data from the Women Against Violence (WAVE) reports on women’s support services in Europe.

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 been collected by national administrative sources and surveys and been compiled EIGE through its studies on violence against women

• Statistics on trafficking in human beings, such as information on the victims, the traffickers, prosecutions and convictions, collected by the European Commission

• Perceptions of gender-based violence which are predominantly informed by survey data sources, asking respondents their opinion and perceptions of violence as a social issue 

• Availability, awareness, use and quality of services for victims of gender-based violence

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

The data included under gender-based violence in the Gender Statistics Database comes from different sources. Survey data comes from different surveys, and national administrative data comes 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.

For example, in the case of femicide, the data comes from the joint Eurostat-UNODC data on intentional homicide which follows different methodologies and definitions than the national sources. Similarly, different surveys may formulate the questions differently or have different target populations, which could lead to different estimates.