    
Gender Statistics branch of the Gender and Macroeconomic initiative is currently focusing on countries within the European and Central Asia region, particularly Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Moldova, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. On the national level, the gender statistics training program is designed to identify statistics currently available on a disaggregated basis, explore the possibility of expanding the availability of additional statistics on a gender disaggregated level, and discuss other issues stemming from data quality concerns. • What is Gender Statistics? and Why is it important?
• Background of the “Gender Statistics Program in CIS and SEE countries”
• Gender Statistics modular training goals
What is Gender Statistics? and Why is it important? Gender statistics is a field that cuts across all areas of statistics. It is about identifying, producing, disseminating, and analyzing statistics to understand how gender issues affect individuals and society. It is a way to show how gender differences can affect the economic and social development of societies. Gender statistics is important for at least three reasons. Firstly, it raises public awareness on the plight and prevailing conditions of women and men. It provides policy makers with sufficient baseline information to institute favorable changes to existing policies affecting women and men differently. Finally, it provides an unbiased source of information to monitor the actual and real effects of government's policies and programs on the lives of women and men. It is recognized that there is still the need to invest in gender statistics in the transition countries of Europe and Central Asia Region. New challenges are: in converting into regular programs of data collection what is now based on ad-hoc initiatives (such as the measurement of time-use and domestic violence) and in developing instruments for gender analysis that go beyond the traditional aspects of women and men participation in the society. There is a need to scrape the surface and, for example, look at quality of employment and access to the labour market rather than to measure only employment and unemployment. There is a need to look at long term unemployment: are women and men affected differently? A lot still needs to be done to further standardize indicators, establish links between official statistics and policies, and to engender the production and dissemination of statistics particularly in those areas where there is little tradition of gendered analysis such as business statistics, transport and communication statistics.  
Background of the “Gender Statistics Program in CIS and SEE countries” Between 1999 and 2005, UNDP RSC Bratislava, the Statistical Division of UNECE, and the World Bank Institute Poverty Reduction division (WBIPR) have worked together to promote the mainstreaming of gender into the production process and dissemination of statistics in the ECA region. Common indicators for monitoring progress towards gender equality in all relevant policy areas were developed based on a series of regional and country-specific consultations. The framework of the common gender indicators is the basis of the Gender Statistics Database and Website developed through an UNDP/UNECE project and currently maintained by UNECE. In 2003 an assessment of the quality and availability of gender statistics in the countries of CIS and South East European (SEE) region was conducted jointly by UNDP and UNECE with the aim to better tailor their assistance to the current needs of the countries and avoid duplications with other donors. It emerged from this assessment that some of the countries in the region are still in an early stage of development in gender statistics. Gender specific publications are rare (or not existent) and often supported only by donors. These countries are still struggling to establish a regular and active gender statistics program and to engage in a productive dialogue with users. They also experience difficulties in the production, analysis and access to relevant gender-specific statistics. The assessment also acknowledged that other countries in the region have made substantial progress in the production of gender statistics. Thanks also to their richer program of data collection; they have regular gender publications with a better coverage of gender-relevant issues. Although there are differences in the development of gender statistics there are still data gaps that are common to all countries. These are related to violence against women, implementation of time-use surveys (or short modules to be included in on-going surveys), methods to measure gender attitudes, and production and dissemination of sex-disaggregated data in decision making (including entrepreneurship, participation in elections, political participation, and leading positions). In 2006, the World Bank Institute and UNECE started a 3-year capacity building program on Gender Sensitization Training for Europe and Central Asia Region.
The program is funded by the Development Grant Facility (DGF) of the World Bank, and includes several components: • Regional and national Training of Trainers (TOT) courses
• Development of a training manual on gender statistics
• Establishment of an interactive web portal, a community of practice for trainers of Gender Sensitization in Europe and Central Asia Region.
• Cross-country fertilization and knowledge sharing
Gender Statistics modular training goals The purpose of this program is to improve and strengthen country’s capacity to produce, analyze, and disseminate gender statistics. The specific goals of this project are: • The improved sensitization of users and statisticians to the production, use and update of gender statistics in order to increase the responsiveness of National Statistical Systems (NSSs) to monitoring gender policies
• The improved sensitization of National Statistical Systems in all areas of work especially in areas where traditionally it has been difficult to integrate gender (i.e., economic and business statistics, administrative registers, etc)
• The development of a critical mass of national trainers to carry out work in spreading gender statistics knowledge at the national level and to different users
• The improved availability and quality of data in areas where gaps are more relevant (entrepreneurship, transport, communications, etc); these gaps prevent good policy from being developed (e.g., violence against women, time-use surveys)
• The raising of awareness in the region about the different conditions of women and men in order to advocate the need for more gender-sensitive policies
|
RSS