Effective equality between men and women is a common goal to be achieved as a society. This is stated by the United Nations (UN), which includes "Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls" as one of the Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030.

For this, it is essential to have quality data that show us the reality and the situations of risk and vulnerability that women face. This is the only way to design effective policies that are more equitable and informed, in areas such as violence against women or the fight to break glass ceilings. This has led to an increasing number of organisations opening up data related to gender inequality. However, according to the UN itself, less than half of the data needed to monitor gender inequality is currently available.

What data are needed?

In order to understand the real situation of women and girls in the world, it is necessary to systematically include a gender analysis in all stages of the production of statistics. This implies from using gender-sensitive concepts to broadening the sources of information in order to highlight phenomena that are currently not being measured.

Gender data does not only refer to sex-disaggregated data. Data also need to be based on concepts and definitions that adequately reflect the diversity of women and men, capturing all aspects of their lives and especially those areas that are most susceptible to inequalities. In addition, data collection methods need to take into account stereotypes and social and cultural factors that may induce gender bias in the data.

Resources for gender mainstreaming in data

From datos.gob.es we have already addressed this issue in other contents, providing some initial clues on the creation of datasets with a gender perspective, but more and more organisations are becoming involved in this area, producing materials that can help to alleviate this issue.

The UN Statistics Division produced the report “Integrating a Gender Perspective into Statistics” to provide the methodological and analytical information needed to improve the availability, quality and use of gender statistics.  The report focuses on 10 themes: education; work; poverty; environment; food security; power and decision-making; population, households and families; health; migration, displaced persons and refugees; and violence against women. For each theme, the report details the gender issues to be addressed, the data needed to address them, data sources to be considered, and specific conceptual and measurement issues. The report also discusses in a cross-cutting manner how to generate surveys, conduct data analysis or generate appropriate visualisations.

UN agencies are also working on this issue in their various areas of action. For example, Unicef has also developed guides of interest such as “Gender statistics and administrative data systems”, which compiles resources such as conceptual and strategic frameworks, practical tools and use cases, among others.

Another example is the World Bank. This organisation has a gender-sensitive data portal, where it offers indicators and statistics on various aspects such as health, education, violence or employment. The data can be downloaded in CSV or Excel, but it is also displayed through narratives and visualisations, which make it easier to understand. In addition, they can be accessed through an API.  This portal also includes a section where tools and guidelines are compiled to improve data collection, use and dissemination of gender statistics. These materials are focused on specific sectors, such as agri-food, information technologies or domestic work. It also has a section on courses, where we can find, among others, training on how to communicate and use gender statistics.

Initiatives in Spain

If we focus on our country, we also find very interesting initiatives. We have already talked about GenderDataLab.org, a repository of open data with a gender perspective. Its website also includes guides on how to generate and share these datasets. If you want to know more about this project, we invite you to watch this interview with Thais Ruiz de Alda, founder and CEO of Digital Fems, one of the entities behind this initiative.

In addition, an increasing number of agencies are implementing mechanisms to publish gender-sensitive datasets. The Government of the Canary Islands has created the web tool “Canary Islands in perspective” to bring together different statistical sources and provide a scorecard with data disaggregated by sex, which is continuously updated. Another project worth mentioning is the “Women and Men in the Canary Islands” website, the result of a statistical operation designed by the Canary Islands Statistics Institute (ISTAC) in collaboration with the Canary Islands Institute for Equality. It compiles information from different statistical operations and analyses it from a gender perspective.

The Government of Catalonia has also included this issue in its Government Plan. In the report "Prioritisation of open data relating to gender inequality for the Government of Catalonia" they compile bibliography and local and international experiences that can serve as inspiration for both the publication and use of this type of datasets. The report also proposes a series of indicators to be taken into account and details some datasets that need to be opened up.

These are just a few examples that show the commitment of civil associations and public bodies in this area. A field we must continue to work in order to get the necessary data to be able to assess the real situation of women in the world and thus design political solutions that will enable a fairer world for all.