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Focus on gender statistics

Aarti Dhar

INDIA FIGURES among the 10 largest countries where civil registration of births is incomplete — there is a shortfall of about 10 per cent. It is also among the 10 largest countries that did not report economic activity by sex and age between 1995 and 2003, according to "The World's Women 2005: Progress in Statistics," a report brought out by the United Nations.

Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Vietnam are the other countries where registration of births is incomplete though they represent 54 per cent of the world's population. Economic activity by sex and age has not been reported by China, Congo, Kenya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam that account for 44 per cent of the global population.

The focus of the report is on the state of national statistics useful for addressing gender concerns. This focus is necessary to know the extent to which official national statistics, as distinct from internationally prepared estimates, are available to address these concerns. The report reviews the current availability of data and assesses the progress made in the provision of gender statistics. It also identifies areas such as violence against women, power, and decision-making, and human rights, where figures are particularly difficult to obtain owing to their nature or to a lack of data collection. In addition, it offers suggestions for a way forward in building national statistical capacity, and mainstreaming gender statistics.

The report points to severe handicaps in collecting and reporting gender statistics in countries suffering from conflict or economic privation as well as successes in areas such as national census, birth registration by sex, and economic activity by sex and age. Five indicators were selected as illustrative of national statistical capacity which included population census, birth registration completed, population reported by sex and age, births reported by sex of child, and economic activity reported by sex and age.

There are 81 countries representing 28 per cent of the world's population that completed all five activities and the 10 most populous of these higher capacity countries are Egypt, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Japan, Philippines, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The report sets out a blueprint for improvement in the availability of data in the areas of demographics, health, education, work, violence against women, poverty, human rights, and decision-making. Continued improvement in data collection and reporting are key factors not only in charting the situation of the world's women, but also in advancing their situation. Analysing statistics gathered by 204 countries, the report provides a realistic assessment of national capacities to address these. According to it, perhaps the most critical indicator of statistical capacity at the country level is the conducting of a national census. As many as 26 of the 204 countries surveyed for the report had not been able to carry out a census within the most recent 10-year period — of these 16 were in sub-Saharan Africa.

The report recommends that the governments conduct at least one census every 10 years and establish, strengthen, and maintain civil registration and vital statistics systems and other administrative recording systems.

A little more than half of all countries provide gender specific data on economic activity, employment and unemployment and roughly a third of all countries do so frequently, the report points out. For many countries, producing even the most basic statistics relating to the labour force remains challenge. Only 127 of the 204 countries — comprising 50 per cent of the world population — reported the numbers of the economically active population at least once to the international statistical system during 1995-2003. On the brighter side, the number of countries reporting unemployment data by sex has more than doubled in the last 30 years, to 114 from 45 countries.

The report analyses a range of different methods that could be used by governments to collect data on this issue such as specialised population surveys, police and court and other administrative data such as health records. It encourages countries to develop their capacity to collect, process and disseminate quality data on violence against women and improve the quality of administrative data such as police and court records, to provide better information.

In the long term, to improve the lives of women and men, statistical systems and budgets at the national as well as international level must bring about the sustained and institutionalised change needed to ensure the availability of quality gender statistics, it says.

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