Much more needs to be done to collect data crucial in planning and formulating policies and programmes for improving women’s lives, a recently released United Nations report revealed.

“The World’s Women 2005: Progress in Statistics,” emphasises the need to monitor the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action towards the Millennium Development Goals. It examined data from 204 countries and found little progress in the reporting of official national statistics worldwide. “To a great extent,” the report says, “countries that reported data thirty years ago continue to do so today. Similarly, many countries that did not report thirty years ago still do not report.”

FYI
Out of 204 countries covered by the UN Report…
- 26 did not conduct a census in the last ten years
- over 90 did not report their births and roughly the same did not report their deaths
- 53 did not report their nation’s population by sex and age in the last ten years
- 66 did not report the enrolment of children in primary school by sex and age
- 81 did not report economic activity by sex and age
- 152 did not report wages by major industry group and sex
- 38 had national surveys which included questions on violence against women

Source: “Press conference launching report of ‘The world’s women 2005: Progress in statistics.’” Downloaded 18 January 2006, UN Department of Public Information News and Media Division <www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2006/060118_Women.doc.htm>.

Mixed results

Noting that quality statistics are "crucial" to guiding policy, it reports mixed results in the capacity of countries to produce and report sex-disaggregated data.

Jose Antonio Ocampo, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic Social Affairs, said sex-disaggregated data were mostly available for population (albeit with infrequent information), education enrolment and participation in the labour market. Information on births and deaths was severely lacking.

Ocampo also noted that very little information exists worldwide on the issue of violence against women. He said only about 38 countries—most of them developed ones—had information on the issue. Moreover, methods for measuring the extent of the problem remain controversial. Data collection on violence remains “largely ad hoc” and “has not been incorporated into the regular statistical work” of national statistics offices.

Mary Chamie, the main author of the report, said that concepts and methods were also lacking in the fields of poverty, power and decision-making, and human rights.

By geographic region, Europe has the highest reporting of data on women and men, while Africa has the lowest. Other regions—Asia, North America, South America, and Oceania—fall between the two extremes. Similarly, the more developed regions report the most data and the least developed countries the least.

Asked why this is so, Ocampo explained that the development of good statistical systems was linked to countries’ incomes. Poor countries had weaker statistical systems and faced major challenges in building capacity. Conducting a census for example, is a huge undertaking, and requires political will in allocating financial and human resource support.

Areas for action

To improve gender statistics reporting, the UN report recommended strengthening national statistical systems, mainstreaming gender in all aspects of data production, and improving concepts and methods. As one strategy, governments may foster dialogue between statistical offices and stakeholders, such as women’s groups, to identify and better understand gender issues.

The report, issued every five years, is the outcome of the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women, which urged international, regional, and national statistical services to ensure that statistics are disaggregated by sex and age, and reflect problems and issues related to women and men.

Sex-disaggregated data not enough

The need for quality data on women and men to improve programmes and policies cannot be overemphasised. It is, in fact, due to women’s activism that the call for the availability of sex-disaggregated statistics has been taken up at UN Conferences and has become the buzz word that it is today.

However, there is a need to push the boundaries further. Other relevant characteristics that define potential forms of discrimination, such as ethnicity, race, disability status, sexual orientation and gender identity, place of residence, and socio-economic and educational status, should be collected and presented as well.

A danger exists in treating all women as one statistical entity, as women are not a monolithic bloc. Lesbian women’s engagement or non-engagement with the economy may differ from that of heterosexual women, for example, and indigenous women’s political participation would differ from those in the mainstream.

In addition, many feminists have critiqued the over-reliance in quantitative forms of research. Denise Farran, for example, argues that statistics is “a construction” rather than a representation of social reality, and that it is “divorced from the context of their construction and thus lose the meaning they had for the people involved.” Anne Pugh, also says that statistics need “chaperoning” as it is often used out of context and generalised upon.

Other feminist researchers cite the usefulness of quantitative methods, particularly in producing background data and in looking at the prevalence and distribution of particular social problems. What feminists agree on, however, is the need for qualitative methods to delve further into the issue and give deeper, more nuanced interpretations. As Nicole Westmarland puts it, “although a survey may be the best way to discover the ‘prevalence’ of problems, interviews are needed to fully understand women’s ‘experiences’ and theorise these experiences with a view towards social change.”

A combination of quantitative and qualitative data is a must to fully reflect the complexity of women’s experiences and thus produce policies that could genuinely improve their lives.

Sources:
“Press conference launching report of ‘The world’s women 2005: Progress in statistics.’” Downloaded 18 January 2006, UN Department of Public Information News and Media Division <www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2006/060118_Women.doc.htm>.

United Nations. (2005). The World's women 2005: Progress in statistics. New York: UN. Downloaded 24 January 2006, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Statistics Division, <http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/indwm/wwpub.htm>.

Westmarland, Nicole. February 2001. “The quantitative/qualitative debate and feminist research: A subjective view of objectivity.” Forum: Qualitative social research [On-line Journal], 2 (1). Downloaded 22 January 2006, <http://qualitative-research.net/fqs-eng.htm>.

Doing research the feminist way
Feminist research…

Assumes:
- that the powerful dominate social life and ideology
- that research is owned by the powerful (men) at the expense of women
- that men and women differ in their perceptions of life due to their social status

Employs:
- engaging and value-laden methods and procedures that bring the researcher close to the subject
- subjective principles of research, encouraging taking sides and personal commitment to the feminist cause
- a political stance to research topics and procedures

Aims to:
- expose the structures and conditions that contribute to the present situation
- enlighten the community to the factors that generate this phenomenon and propose ways that can help alleviate the problem
- empower women and give them a voice to speak about social life from their perspective
- ultimately contribute towards social change and reconstruction

Source: Sarantakos, Sotirios. 2004. “Chapter 3: Feminist research.” In Social research (3rd ed.). Hampshire, England: Pagrave MacMillan. Downloaded 24 January 2006, Palgrave MacMillan Sociology and Gender Studies <http://www.palgrave.com/sociology/sarantakos/>.