Workshop on Improving Gender Statistics in Rwanda
Session 1
Overview of Users, Uses and Production
of Gender Statistics
Serena Lake Kivu Hotel, Rubavu District
March 25-27, 2014
1
Module Objectives
By the completion of the module, participants should understand:
–
What gender statistics are, who uses them, why they are needed and
how they are used
–
The value of ‘mainstreaming’ a gender perspective in the production of
statistics
–
What is the status of work on gender statistics around the world and
what still needs to be done
–
Sources of international guidance to assist in the production and use of
gender statistics
Primary references:
United Nations Statistics Division Integrating a Gender Perspective in Statistics, Chapter 1,
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/genderstatmanual/
Statistics Canada, www.statcan.gc.ca, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/edu/powerpouvoir/ch1/definition214853-eng.htm
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What are gender statistics?
Gender statistics are statistics that adequately reflect differences and
inequalities in the situation of women and men in all areas of life.
(United Nations 2006)
Characteristics:
• Data collected and presented disaggregated by sex;
• Reflect gender differences and/or issues;
• Based on concepts and definitions that adequately reflect the diversity
of women and men and capture all aspects of their lives;
• Data collection methods take into account stereotypes and social and
cultural factors that may induce gender biases in the data.
• They are the basis for constructing gender indicators to monitor
progress towards gender equality
• Data  statistics  indicators
3
Some Key Concepts on Gender
Distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’
‘Gender’
‘Sex’
•
biological differences
between women and men.
•
For example: only women
give birth to and nurse
babies
•
socially constructed differences in attributes
and opportunities associated with being
female or male and the social interactions and
relationships between women and men.
•
For example: In most cultures, women
perform all the childcare functions
• Gender statistics are disaggregated by sex, not by gender.
Sex disaggregated data, when analysed, can reveal differences in
women’s and men’s lives that are the result of gender roles and
expectations.
• Gender equality means equal opportunities, rights and
responsibilities for women and men, girls and boys.
• Gender perspective
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Is it Sex or Is it Gender?
SEX
GENDER
Biological
Socially constructed set of roles
and responsibilities
Born with
Not born with
Natural
Learned
Universal
Cultural
Cannot be changed
Can be changed
No variation from culture to culture
or time to time
Variation from culture to culture
and time to time
Example: Only women can give birth
Example: Women prove able to do
traditionally male jobs as well as men
Source: World Vision International. 2008. Gender and Development (GAD) Training Toolkit, Second Edition.
Module 3, Handout 3.1b.
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Gender statistics are needed by a wide range of users:
Users
Examples of Uses
Policy makers and planners
in different fields of
government
•
Use enrolment rates and ratios to identify problems with
either girls or boys entering or staying in schools, so as to
inform policies or programs to address them.
Researchers and analysts in
government, research
institutions, businesses and
private sector organisations.
•
Interested in learning how differences between men’s and
women’s employment rates can reflect constraints to
women’s employment or can reveal differences in poverty
between women and men or male-headed and femaleheaded households
Service providers in
government agencies, private
institutions and community
bodies.
•
Use statistics to identify critical gender related problems so
as to allocate services, e.g., high adolescent fertility rates,
and to help plan for those services , e.g., education, access
to contraception, pre-natal and post-natal care
Advocacy groups concerned
with gender issues and
progress towards gender
equality
•
Use statistics to illustrate problems in society and to
advocate against them, e.g., gender-based violence, low
proportion of women in leadership positions , or low level
of credits granted to women
The general public and the
media
Can you think of an example?
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Why are gender statistics important?
Gender statistics are crucial for:
1.
Promoting understanding of the actual situation of and differences
between women and men in society;
2.
Advancing gender analysis and research;
3.
Monitoring progress toward gender equality and full and equal
enjoyment of women’s and girls’ human rights and fundamental rights;
4.
Developing and monitoring policies and programs oriented towards
increased investment in human capital and labour force;
5.
Supporting gender mainstreaming in development and poverty
reduction policies; and
6.
Developing and monitoring policies on reduction of violence against
women.
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Examples of how gender statistics are used
1. Promoting understanding of the actual situation of women and men in society:
2.

Statistics on gender-based or domestic violence

On trafficking for prostitution

On female-headed households and the proportion of these that have titles to their
housing or land
Advancing gender analysis and research; an example from Rwanda
Using data from the 1992 and 2000 DHS, a study on Armed Conflict and Schooling: Longterm Evidence from Cambodia and Rwanda, conducted in 2008 investigated the longterm effect of genocide on schooling outcomes and found long-term negative impacts
for child of school-going age at the time of the conflict.
•
The study examined the effects of the genocide on children’s enrollment and the
probability of completing a particular grade, focusing on primary schooling, and
found that
•
The negative impact on education was actually larger for boys and for children
from non-poor families, suggesting that the genocide had a leveling-off effect that
brought boys and the non-poor to the same lower level of schooling as girls and
poor children.
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Examples of how gender statistics are used
3.
Monitoring progress towards gender equality and full and equal
enjoyment of all human rights; for example
Three indicators are used to monitor the United Nations Millennium
Development Goal 3 on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment:
1. Gender parity index for gross enrolment ratio in primary, secondary and tertiary
education; for Rwanda,
– GPI for primary education:
1.03 (2012, EMIS)
– GPI for secondary education:
1.04 (2012, EMIS)
– GPI for tertiary education:
1.02 (2012, EMIS)
2. Proportion of employees in non-agricultural employment who are women;
– Rwanda: 33% (2000, Gender Statistics, World Bank)
3. Proportion of seats held by women in single or lower houses of national parliaments;
– Rwanda: 63.7% (as of August 2013), the highest in the world
4.
Developing and monitoring policies and programs oriented towards
increased investment in human capital and labour force; for example
– Gender Monitoring Office, GMO
– MIGEPROF
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Examples of how are gender statistics are used
5.
Supporting gender mainstreaming in development and poverty
reduction policies
– Gender statistics provide a more comprehensive understanding of the gender
dimensions of poverty, which in turn, can significantly change priorities in
policy and program interventions
– The 2012 World Development Report on Gender Equality used gender
statistics to show the positive impacts on productivity, children, policies and
institutions of eliminating barriers against women and empowering them
– Gender statistics can inform the implementation of the EDPRS for Rwanda by
revealing the differences in poverty between male-headed and femaleheaded households, and how women become single-heads of households
(single mothers, divorced or abandoned, or widows)
6.
Developing and monitoring policies to reduce violence against women
– Rwanda: more than one in five women—22%--have experienced sexual
violence (DHS 2010).
– GMO is responsible for attending to and monitoring gender-based violence.
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‘Mainstreaming’ a gender perspective in the production of
statistics: Why is it important?
Using a gender perspective in all stages of data production is needed to
obtain reliable gender statistics:
•
To adequately reflect differences and inequalities in women’s and men’s
situation in all areas of life,
•
For more efficient coverage of gender issues,
•
For better coordination of data collection in producing gender statistics, and
•
To avoid the pitfalls of producing gender statistics as an ‘add-on’
– ‘add-on’ statistics are often marginalised;
– fail to reach a wide range of users including policy makers in domains other than
gender equality; and
– their production may be more dependent on irregular economic and human
resources.
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A successful strategy of mainstreaming a gender
perspective in statistics: key features
1. The strategy should be based on:
 strong collaboration between data users and producers;
 strong internal coordination, both within the national statistical
office and within the national statistical system; and
 data-sharing agreements between the national statistical office
and other agencies of the national statistical system or other
producers of data,
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A successful strategy of mainstreaming a gender
perspective in statistics: key features (continued)
2. The national statistical system regularly collects, analyses and
disseminates data on relevant gender issues.
• Gender statistics should document women’s and men’s participation in
and contributions to all social and economic areas, and reflect
underlying causes and. consequences of gender inequality
•
Coverage of gender issues in the statistics and the adequacy of the
statistics should be regularly reviewed.
•
Such reviews may show that: new types of data need to be collected;
existing collections need to be expanded to fill data gaps; or data already
collected need to be better disseminated.
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A successful strategy of mainstreaming a gender
perspective in statistics: key features (continued)
3. Uses gender-sensitive concepts and methods in data collection
in all statistical fields.
• For reliable comparisons between women and men, gender statistics
need to correctly measure women’s and men’s participation and
contribution to society.
• Concepts and methods should be reviewed and improved where
necessary to ensure they support the production of data showing
meaningful differences. This review should include statistical units,
collection content, terminology, coding and classification systems,
training, and other measurement practices.
• New concepts and methods may be needed for the production of
gender statistics in some areas where conventional approaches are
often inadequate (e.g. measuring time use or domestic violence).
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Gender Mainstreaming can contribute to improving the
quality of data produced by the national statistical system.
Gender mainstreaming has impacts on four components of
statistical data quality:
• Relevance: addresses gender issues defined as relevant by
policy makers, advocates, researchers and the public
• Accuracy: reduces gender-related bias in data collection.
• Accessibility of data: makes gender-related statistical
information accessible to a wide range of audiences.
• Clarity: dissemination in formats that are easily understood
by a wide audience, and making clear data quality and
limitations.
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To what extent has the objective of gender mainstreaming
been achieved in national statistical systems?
• A Global Review of Gender Statistics Programmes was conducted in
2012 at the request of the UN Statistics Commission.
- 126 countries, including 33 UNECA countries, participated in the review,
and Rwanda was one of those countries.
• The review found, among other things, that there was global
recognition of the importance of gender statistics, and some tasks
and some areas are well-covered.
• But it also concluded that progress still needs to be made to:
 fully achieve the general objective of mainstreaming gender;
 cover the whole scope of gender statistics in terms of areas and
methodologies (emerging issues); and
 adequately and fully use existing statistical sources.
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Extent to which regions have achieved the objective of
mainstreaming gender into national statistical systems
Extent to which objective of gender mainstreaming has been achieved
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
ESCWA
ECE
Fully achieved
Partially achieved
ESCAP
Not met
ECA
No overall objective stated
Source: UNSD presentation on Global Gender Statistics Programme at the UNSD Workshop on
Improving the Integration of a Gender Perspective into Official Statistics, held in Japan in April 2013.
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International guidance for producing gender statistics
International agencies have produced a range of material to assist countries to
produce comprehensive, comparable and reliable gender statistics, including:
– UNSD Integrating a Gender Perspective into Statistics (online version issued 2013)
– UNECE and WBI (World Bank) Developing Gender Statistics: A Practical Tool
(issued 2010)
– UNFPA Guide on Gender Analysis of Census Data (full draft 2013)
– UNSD Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women (expected to
be issued 2013)
– UNSD Guide to Producing Statistics on Time Use: Measuring Paid and Unpaid
Work (issued 2005)
– UNECE Guidelines for Harmonising Time Use Surveys (expected to be finalised
2013)
– UN Minimum Set of Gender Indicators
Handout 1.2 has a summary review of materials and where to find them.
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UN Minimum Set of Gender Indicators
• A set of 52 indicators that provides a guide for the national production and
international compilation of gender statistics
• The indicators are designed to cover, at a basic level, key issues in gender
equality and women’s empowerment that are common across countries and
regions.
• Three criteria were used in selecting each indicator:
1.
2.
3.
Addresses relevant issues related to gender equality and/or women’s
empowerment
Is conceptually clear, easy to interpret and has an agreed international
definition
Is regularly produced by countries with sufficient coverage to allow tracking
over time.
• Underlying assumption-- selected indicators should be broadly consistent
with other global lists and avoid imposing an unnecessary burden on
countries.
• Handout 1.1 has the UN Minimum Set of Gender Indicators
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Structure of the Minimum Set
52 gender indicators, grouped into five domains and three tiers.
Domains
I. Economic structures, participation in productive activities and
access to resources (19 indicators)
II. Education (12 indicators)
III. Health and related services (11 indicators)
IV. Public life and decision-making (5 indicators)
V. Human rights of women and the girl child (5 indicators)
Tiers
Tier 1 - indicators that meet all three criteria (37 indicators)
Tier 2 - indicators that meet criteria 1 and 2 only (9 indicators)
Tier 3 - indicators that meet criterion 1 only (6 indicators)
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Value of the Minimum Set
• The minimum set will provide a wide range of measures that can be
compared across countries.
• Accurate data are critical:
– to inform policies such as for improving women’s and girls’ access to health care
and education compared to men’s and boys’, or
– to push for international attention to often-ignored issues such as unpaid work
and its impact on women’s rights and choices.
• Also important as a guide to collect national data which is crucial for
planning and budgeting.
• At a global level, being able to measure and compare the progress made
with reliable data provides an important basis for setting global norms
and standards, as well as for effective policy and development assistance.”
“The minimum set of gender indicators is a testimony to the increased recognition
of the importance of gender statistics in evidence-based policy making.”
UN Women, 26 June 2013
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Exercise 1.2
1. Who are the main users of gender statistics
produced by the national statistical system in
Rwanda? How do they use these statistics?
2. In your experience, where has a gender
perspective been mainstreamed in statistics
currently produced by the national statistical
system in Rwanda?
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