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The World's Women reports |
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World's women 2000 - Main findings
and future directions
In the Beijing Declaration
adopted by the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, participating
Governments "determined to advance the goals of equality,
development and peace for all women everywhere in the interest
of all humanity". The twenty-first century opens with this
question: "Are these goals for women being met?" Some assert
that progress for women is occurring rapidly, proclaiming
that new technologies and globalization will benefit women
and men equally. Others point out how, in some countries,
the hard-won gains for women have been suddenly lost during
dramatic economic and political transitions. Still others
argue that while progress has been made, real change in
the quality of women's lives-the achievement of social,
economic and political equality and basic human rights-will
take years to accomplish. During the last decade, international
conferences have sought to reshape a vision of women's lives.
In Vienna, in 1993, the World Conference on Human Rights
asserted that women's rights are human rights. In Cairo,
in 1994, the International Conference on Population and
Development (ICPD) built on this assertion and placed women's
rights, empowerment and health, including reproductive health,
at the centre of population and sustainable development
policies and programmes. At the Beijing Conference, the
world's Governments reached a consensus on a Platform for
Action that "seeks to promote and protect the full enjoyment
of all human rights and the fundamental freedoms of all
women throughout their life cycle".
In the last seven years,
Governments, institutions and non-governmental organizations
have worked at every level to implement and incorporate
the agendas of these conferences into national programmes
for action. The success-or lack of success-of these efforts
is the subject of The World's Women 2000: Trends and
Statistics. The publication is also a response to a
1998 request to the Secretary-General from the United Nations
General Assembly to provide a compilation of updated statistics
and indicators on the situation of women and girls in countries
around the world.
The World's Women
2000 is the third in a series of reports (the other two
issued in 1991 and 1995) that look at the status of women
through the lens of statistical data and analysis. The information
and data in the present publication are intended to provide
a "snapshot" of some of the more salient statistical findings
since 1995, while also drawing out recent changes and long-term
trends. As in the past two editions of The World's Women,
the present edition compiles and analyses the data that
are available from countries in the United Nations statistical
system. While these data are essential for a comprehensive
view, they do have a problem of timeliness. Data based on
censuses are generally collected in a 10-year cycle and
household surveys are often not collected on a regular basis.
Furthermore, once these data are collected, tabulation and
delivery to the international statistical services can take
years, particularly in the developing regions where there
are scant resources for statistical activities. As a result,
analysts must rely on data that are often not current in
preparing and producing reports, thus limiting assessment
of the most recent trends.
In six chapters, The
World's Women 2000 focuses on the status of women in
six specific fields of concern: population, women and men
in families, health, education and communication, work,
and human rights and politics. Measuring women's progress
in these and other areas is a new and evolving discipline-one
that depends on the availability of basic demographic, social
and economic data. It also depends on the ability of countries
to meet the challenges of the increasing demand for data,
following on the recommendations of the global conferences.
Even basic statistical
series on women and men, such as literacy, health and causes
of death, family status and economic activity, including
income inequality, are not collected and tabulated routinely
in many countries. Vital statistics registration systems,
which compile data on births, deaths, marriages, divorces
etc., do not exist in many countries of developing regions.
Where data, including vital statistics, are collected and
tabulated, countries often use different indicators or definitions
of indicators, making cross-country analysis difficult and
sometimes unreliable. In other areas, experience is limited
on how data are to be collected and only a few countries
have collected data on topics such as violence against women,
time-use and school drop-outs.
The topics within each
field of concern in The World's Women 2000 were shaped
both by the availability of data and by the calls for action
emerging from the global conferences. For example, the global
conferences made certain life-stage categories-e.g., the
girl and boy child, adolescent girls and boys, women and
men in the reproductive years, and older women and men-central
in setting priorities in policies and programmes. Reflecting
these new priorities, emphasis has been placed in The
World's Women 2000 on specific age groups, especially
in the chapters on population, women and men in families,
health, and work.
Following on ICPD and its
five-year review and the Beijing Conference, The World's
Women 2000 looks at statistical studies that take into
account the rights and responsibilities of women and men
to determine the size of their families, to have access
to contraceptive services and products, and to have access
to adequate maternal care.
Following up on the Beijing
Platform for Action, the present publication takes a more
comprehensive approach to work than earlier editions. In
addition to data on paid employment, the chapter on work
provides data on the informal sector, unpaid work in family
enterprises and unpaid housework, as well as on economic
activity in the formal sector. It also describes new efforts
directed toward measurement of the overall contributions
of women and men to national and regional economies.
Responding to calls from
recent world conferences, The World's Women 2000
also provides, in its chapter on human rights and political
decision-making, new data on violence against women-including
sexual violence, female genital mutilation and trafficking
in women.
While each chapter in the
present publication provides new findings in each of the
subject areas, as well as up-to-date country and regional
analysis of both new and earlier data, a number of cross-cutting
themes emerge that point to changes-some positive, some
negative-occurring in women's lives at the beginning of
the twenty-first century.
A closing but persistent gender gap
in education
The Framework for Action
to implement the 1990 World Declaration on Education for
All, the ICPD Programme of Action and the Beijing Platform
for Action all place priority on the education of women
as a human right. Women's equal access to education is seen
as key to improving the health, nutrition and education
of the family as a whole, as well as to empowering women
to participate more fully in the development process. Among
the targets set for Governments by the Beijing Platform
for Action were: to close the gender gap in primary and
secondary school education by the year 2005; to reduce the
female illiteracy rate by, for example, providing universal
access to the completion of primary education for girls
by the year 2000; and to eliminate gender disparities in
access to all areas of higher education.
The gender gap in enrolment
in primary and secondary levels of schooling is closing.
Enrolment has improved more for girls than for boys in regions
where girls' enrolment was significantly lower than boys'-in
Northern Africa, sub-Saharan Africa (excluding Southern
Africa), Southern Asia and Western Asia. In South America
and the Caribbean, enrolment ratios for girls and boys,
which were at the same level in the past, improved more
for girls than for boys, resulting in a gender gap now in
favour of girls. In Eastern Asia, with slightly improved
enrolment ratios for girls and declining ratios for boys,
there are now more girls than boys enrolled. In Southern
Africa, the gender gap in favour of girls in the past still
exists but has narrowed because of a much larger improvement
in boys' enrolment.
However, it is unlikely
that the gender gap in education will be fully closed by
the target date of 2005. In 22 countries of Africa and nine
countries of Asia, the gap is still wide, with data showing
enrolment ratios for girls less than 80 per cent that of
boys. Furthermore, girls' access to and completion of primary
and secondary education are still limited, particularly
in rural areas, and girls are more likely than boys to drop
out of school (except in the developed regions and in Latin
America and the Caribbean).
Nearly two thirds of the
illiterates in the world are women. Improvements in school
enrolment over the years have resulted in generally higher
literacy rates among younger adults but a large gender gap
in favour of men continues to disadvantage women. The populations
for which the gender gaps in enrolment and literacy are
the widest-Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa-are also
among the fastest growing. This suggests that there will
continue to be enormous numbers of illiterate women in the
world-many more than men. In fact, the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) projects no
decline in the gap in literacy between women and men over
age 15 for the year 2025.
In higher education, women
have made significant gains in enrolment in most regions
of the world. Recently, for example, women's enrolment in
higher education surpassed that of men in the Caribbean
and Western Asia and is now equal to that of men in South
America-although in all of these subregions, enrolment levels
are still below 20 per 1,000 for women and for men. Enrolment
ratios are higher for women than for men in many countries
of Europe and in the United States and New Zealand. Enrolment
in third-level education is the highest in the world in
Australia, Canada and the United States. The lowest ratios
of third-level education enrolments are found in many countries
of sub-Saharan Africa-4 third-level students per 1,000 men
and 2 or less per 1,000 women.
Women's lives shaped by decisions
of the reproductive years
International conferences
over the last decade have recognized women's right to quality
reproductive health and reproductive services as an intrinsic
component of their basic right to health and well-being.
The ICPD Programme of Action, in particular, urged Governments
to use their primary health-care systems to make reproductive
health services available to all individuals throughout
their reproductive years by 2015. Women's overall health,
and especially their reproductive health, was recognized
as being linked to their educational, economic and social
status.
The Beijing Platform for
Action considers that early marriage and early motherhood
can severely curtail educational and employment opportunities
for women and are likely to have a long-term adverse effects
on their and their children's quality of life. Therefore,
recent declines in early marriage and early childbearing
in most regions of the world imply a significant change
in the quality of women's lives. There are, however, exceptions
to this overall pattern-for example, in 3 of 5 countries
in Southern Asia and 11 of 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa
for which recent data are available, at least 30 per cent
of young women aged 15 to 19 have been married.
Births to young women
have also declined in some regions-for example, in Eastern
Asia, Northern Africa and Western Europe, average birth
rates declined by 50 per cent over the last two decades.
However, fertility rates for young women have decreased
only slightly or have stayed the same in Southern Asia,
sub-Saharan Africa and the developed regions outside Europe.
The framework of the ICPD
Programme of Action asserts the basic right of all couples
and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number,
spacing and timing of their children and to have the information
and means to do so. Monitoring childbearing under this broader
concept of reproductive rights-in terms of desired family
size, unmet need for contraception and the provision of
maternal care-is now incorporated into the data-collection
systems of many countries. The number of children desired
(as expressed by women) has declined significantly in developing
regions. The largest absolute decline is in some countries
of sub-Saharan Africa, where women want, on average, two
fewer children today than in the 1980s.
Whether women and men achieve
their desired family size often depends on whether the demand
for contraceptives is met. Unmet need for contraception
is highest in sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 30 per cent
of women surveyed between 1988 and 1997, who either did
not want another child or wanted to delay their next birth,
had not been using contraception. In Asia and Northern Africa,
unmet need was relatively low.
Contraceptive use has increased
in most developing regions since 1980, and the trend continues
in recent years. In most regions of the world, more than
half of currently married women of reproductive age use
contraceptives. However, in sub-Saharan Africa, levels of
use are below 20 per cent. Low levels of use are also found
in some countries in all other developing regions.
In all regions-and in almost
all countries-fertility rates are declining, but the world's
population is still increasing. The downward trend in overall
levels of fertility has continued around the world and the
upward trend observed during the 1980s in some developed
countries-Finland, Sweden and the United States-has reversed.
Although fertility has declined in most countries of sub-Saharan
Africa, fertility in that region remains the highest in
the world, at 5.4 births per woman.
Despite lower fertility
rates, many women still lack access to reproductive health
services. This situation has been universally recognized
as a leading factor in maternal and infant morbidity and
mortality. In developing countries, for example, maternal
mortality continues to be a leading cause of death for women
of reproductive age. The World Health Organization (WHO)
and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimate
that a woman's lifetime risk of dying from maternal causes
is 1 in 16 in Africa, while a woman's risk is 1 in 1,400
in Europe. Furthermore, millions of women suffer from injuries
and disabilities from maternal causes, often for the rest
of their lives. WHO estimates that more than a quarter of
all adult women in developing regions have pregnancy-related
health problems.
Although new importance
is being placed on women's reproductive health and "safe
motherhood", data are not yet available to show whether
the new concern with safe motherhood has been translated
into improved maternal care. Recent data show that many
women in developing countries receive little or no skilled
prenatal or delivery care-services thought to play a major
role in the reduction of maternal mortality and morbidity.
For example, around half of pregnant women in most countries
of Southern Asia and one third of women in many countries
of Africa receive no prenatal care (WHO recommends a minimum
of four prenatal consultations for a normal pregnancy).
Moreover, in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa and in
Southern Asia, about 60 per cent of women have no skilled
attendant present at delivery, and even fewer women deliver
in health facilities.
According to recent data,
the timing of marriage is changing and the composition of
the family continues to be diverse. For example, most people
still marry but they marry later in life, especially women.
In some countries of developing regions, consensual unions
remain common, while polygynous unions are common in parts
of Africa. In developed countries, marriages preceded by
a period of cohabitation have increased and remarriage after
divorce is more often postponed or never occurs.
In developed regions,
since 1990, births outside marriage have increased greatly
and lone-parent families (families in which children are
raised by only one parent) are becoming more common. In
addition, in developing regions, many children live away
from their parents-for example, at least one third of girls
and one fifth of boys aged 12 to 14 in some countries of
sub-Saharan Africa.
Women still seeking influence
The Beijing Platform for
Action recognized that without the active participation
of women and the incorporation of women's perspectives at
all levels of decision-making, the goals of equality, development
and peace for women and men cannot be achieved. This recognition
itself grew out of the active participation of women. Women,
individually and as members and leaders of non-governmental
organizations, have organized at the grass-roots, national
and international levels to press Governments and international
organizations to address issues central in the lives of
women, including women's human rights, violence against
women, reproductive health and unpaid work. They have engaged
in education programmes to raise awareness, worked for legislation
in these areas and lobbied for new data collection and analysis
on topics of concern to women. The impact of their work
is shown throughout the present publication.
With the support and encouragement
of women's groups around the world, Governments were urged
at the Beijing Conference to take measures to ensure women's
access to, and full participation in, governance and leadership.
However, in the years since the Conference, women's participation
in the top levels of government and business has not markedly
increased.
During the first part of
2000, only nine women were heads of State or Government.
In 1998, 8 per cent of the world's cabinet ministers were
women, compared to 6 per cent in 1994. Sweden is the only
country with a majority of women ministers-55 per cent.
Worldwide, more progress has been made in the appointment
of women to sub-ministerial positions, particularly in the
Caribbean and the developed regions outside of Europe, where
women hold approximately 20 per cent of sub-ministerial
positions.
Gender parity in parliamentary
representation is also still far from being realized. In
1999, women represented 11 per cent of parliamentarians
worldwide, compared to 9 per cent in 1987. Women's representation,
on average, was highest in Western Europe (21 per cent)
and in the developed regions outside Europe (18 per cent).
Only the Nordic countries and the Netherlands have at least
one third women parliamentarians.
Women are faring no better
in the corporate world. For example, in 1999, women accounted
for 11 to 12 per cent of corporate officers in the 500 largest
corporations in the United States. While women accounted
for 12 per cent of the corporate officers of the 560 largest
corporations in Canada in 1999, they occupied only 3 per
cent of the highest positions of those corporations. In
Germany, in 1995, between 1 and 3 per cent of top executives
and board directors in the 70,000 largest enterprises were
women.
While women's share of
administrative and managerial workers rose between 1980
and the early 1990s in every region of the world, except
Southern Asia, the proportion of women in these positions
is still low. For example, women's share at least doubled
in sub-Saharan Africa (from 7 to 14 per cent) and in Western
Asia (from 4 to 9 per cent). Even in developed regions outside
Europe, women's share is only 35 per cent, although it has
increased from 16 per cent since 1980.
The Beijing Platform for
Action also highlights the potential of the new communications
technologies to empower women and to advance their concerns.
Girls, however, are much less likely than boys to enrol
in mathematics and computer science courses, and, in a recent
survey, men outnumbered women by about three to one among
those planning careers in computer or information sciences.
While, in some countries, women represent a rapidly increasing
proportion of Internet users, they are more likely than
men to lack the basic literacy and computer skills required
for access to the emerging information and communications
fields. Today, for the most part, a small minority of the
population has access to the Internet, even in developed
regions.
Toward a more comprehensive approach
to work
As part of the Beijing
Platform for Action, statisticians were called upon to develop
a more comprehensive knowledge of all forms of work and
employment. Efforts to improve measurement of women's participation
and contribution to the economy and of the conditions of
their work have been under way for some years and were strengthened
by the Beijing Conference. Often, standard concepts and
measurements inadequately represent the reality of women's
work, however, and available statistics are still far from
providing a strong basis for its assessment.
Over the past two decades,
women's economic activity rates increased in all regions
except sub-Saharan Africa, the transition economies of Eastern
Europe and Central Asia, and Oceania. The largest increase
occurred in South America, where rates rose from 26 to 45
per cent between 1980 and 1997. The lowest rates were found
in Northern Africa and Western Asia, where less than one
third of women were economically active.
An important aspect of
these increasing rates of economic participation is that
more women are in the labour force during their reproductive
years. In Asia and Africa, women have always remained in
the labour force until well beyond their reproductive period.
But in other regions-in Latin America and the Caribbean,
Europe, North America and Oceania-economic activity rates
peaked for women in their early twenties throughout the
1970s. Now, according to regional data for 1990, labour
force participation rates are high for women in their twenties,
rise through their thirties and decline only after age 50.
Increasingly, women remain in the labour force during their
childbearing and child-rearing years because women now have
fewer children and even those with young children are now
likely to be employed.
Although the gender gap
in rates of economic activity is narrowing, the nature of
women's and men's participation in the labour force continues
to be very different. Women still have to reconcile family
responsibilities and market work and they work in different
jobs and occupations than men, most often with lower status.
Women have always engaged in the less formal types of work,
working as unpaid workers in a family business, in the informal
sector or in various types of household economic activities.
They also continue to receive less pay than men. In manufacturing,
for example, in 27 of the 39 countries with data available,
women's wages were 20 to 50 per cent less than those of
men. However, the limited data suggest that the differential
between women's and men's earnings narrowed between 1990
and 1997 in the majority of these countries.
In many regions-in Africa,
South America, Southern Asia and Eastern and Southern Europe,
self-employment in non-agricultural activities, such as
petty trading, service repairs, transport and small manufacturing,
increased between 1970 and 1990. In these regions, women's
self-employment as a proportion of the non-agricultural
labour force has grown. The largest increase was in sub-Saharan
Africa, where women's self-employment grew from 44 to 90
per cent between 1970 and 1990. There is also evidence that
more self-employed women are becoming involved in the micro
and small enterprise sector. For example, the number of
women business owners and operators rose in nearly every
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
country during the last decade.
Close to half or more of
the female non-agricultural labour force is in the informal
sector in seven of the 10 Latin American countries for which
data are available and in four Asian countries. In India
and Indonesia, for example, nine out of every 10 women not
working in agriculture are working in the informal sector.
Official statistics on
home-based work-work performed in the home for an outside
enterprise for wages or in-kind remuneration-are scarce
and, even where they are collected, the statistics probably
underestimate its prevalence. However, data available for
the 1990s indicate that home-based work is an important
and expanding source of employment worldwide, and that women
predominate in this sector. The unsatisfactory conditions
of home-based workers are also a source of concern. In 1996,
the ILO International Convention on Home Work recognized
the rights of home-based workers to treatment equal to that
of other workers, and set a standard for minimum pay and
working conditions.
Perhaps the major factor
still influencing gender-based differentials in the labour
market is the division of labour within the household-the
time spent in the unpaid work of cleaning, caring for family
members and preparing meals. Seven national studies undertaken
between 1995 and 1999 in seven countries (mainly in the
developed regions) show that women continue to spend substantially
more time on unpaid work than men, even as they get old.
Moreover, in most countries surveyed, the presence of small
children requires women to allocate more time than men to
unpaid work. It is difficult to tell from the data at hand
if there has been any movement in recent years toward gender
equality in unpaid work.
The toll of HIV/AIDS on the world's
women
The HIV/AIDS pandemic continues
to wreak havoc throughout the world and is of growing concern
at every level of life: families are being decimated; social
services are becoming overburdened; and the development
prospects of entire countries are being threatened. Moreover,
there is evidence to suggest that the toll of HIV/AIDS on
women may be increasing. According to recent Joint
United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) global estimates,
women now account for almost half of the 32.4 million adults
currently living with HIV/AIDS and of the 12.7 million adults
who have died from the disease since the epidemic began.
In 1999, 52 per cent of the 2.1 million adults who died
from AIDS worldwide were women. The majority of these deaths
occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, where women account for
55 per cent of those infected with HIV/AIDS-i.e., there
are 12 African women currently infected with the virus for
every 10 African men. Women's risk of becoming infected
with HIV during unprotected sexual intercourse is also known
to be two to four times higher than that of men.
The Beijing Platform for
Action recognized that social and cultural factors often
increase women's vulnerability to HIV and may determine
the course that the infection takes in their lives. Women
too often do not have the power to insist on safe and responsible
sex practices and have little access to public health information
and services, both of which have been found to be effective
in preventing the disease and/or slowing its progress.
HIV/AIDS reaches beyond women's health to their roles as
mothers and caregivers and their contributions to the economic
support of their families. This requires that Governments
continue to collect and analyze gender-disaggregated data
on the prevalence and consequences of HIV/AIDS.
Progress in generating gender statistics
The production and dissemination
of gender-sensitive data have increased with each of the
world conferences on women, slowly at first but gaining
new momentum by the time of the Fourth World Conference
on Women in Beijing in 1995. While a great deal of work
had been done on gender statistics before Beijing, there
was much more left to be done, both in countries and by
international agencies. The Beijing Platform for Action
outlined a comprehensive set of actions to "generate and
disseminate gender-disaggregated data and information for
planning and evaluation" (see annex 1, which reproduces
strategic objective H.3 of the Platform for Action).
Many of the actions required
to implement the comprehensive mandates on gender statistics
put forth by the Beijing Conference are under way. In addition
to the data and analysis presented in The World's Women
2000, the following represent some of these efforts:
Some developments in disaggregated
data collection
For many years, most national
statistical agencies have had a policy of disaggregating
data by sex and age whenever it is appropriate to do so.
The Beijing Platform for Action also gave new importance
to the reflection in statistics of all issues relating to
women and men in society. These mandates have received support
in legislative statements and in other directives. Some
examples include:
-
The Statistical
Commission of the United Nations reported to its legislative
body (the Economic and Social Council) that, as a basic
working method, the Commission incorporates a gender
perspective in its work by (a) advising countries to
collect, compile and analyse statistics related to individuals
disaggregated by sex; (b) ensuring that gender stereotypes
are not implicit in country data-collection programmes
and methods; and (c) ensuring that statistics reflect
problems, issues and questions related to women and
men in society;
-
The South Africa
Statistics Act of 1998 underlines the necessity of disaggregating
statistics by sex;
-
Republic Act
7192 in the Philippines-the Women in Development and
Nation-Building Act-mandates all Government agencies
to collect sex-disaggregated data and to include such
data in their programmes;
-
In Finland,
a chapter on the improvement of statistics was included
in the 1997 National Plan for Promoting Gender Equality;
-
In Iceland,
the 1998 Parliamentary resolution on a four-year action
programme for gender equality requests that all ministries
and official institutions present statistics by sex;
-
In Sweden,
the Ordinance of Official Statistics states that "official
statistics related to individuals should-if no special
contradictory reasons exist-be disaggregated by sex";
-
In the United
Kingdom in 1997, the Social Statistics Committee of
the Government Statistical Service agreed on a statistical
policy on the collection and dissemination of statistics
disaggregated by sex;
-
A 1999 expert
meeting of the Economic Commission for Latin America
and the Caribbean (ECLAC) agreed on a comprehensive
plan for the development of gender statistics in the
region.
Policy-oriented publications on
gender statistics
The general approach
in the development of gender statistics has involved efforts
to promote dialogue and understanding between statisticians
and the various users of statistics-policy makers, representatives
of non-governmental organizations, activists and researchers.
User-producer seminars and training workshops, which are
the first step in the development of gender statistics,
have been held in countries around the world over the past
15 years. In recent years, for example, training workshops
were conducted in Arab, Central American, and Caribbean
countries and in many countries in transition .
Some Governments
and international organizations are making a concerted effort
to produce statistical publications on gender that present
and interpret topical data on women and men in a form suitable
for a wide range of non-technical users.
Sweden has been at
the forefront of producing publications on gender statistics.
For example, Women and Men in Sweden: Facts and Figures,
first published in 1985 by Statistics Sweden, has been a
model for work supported by the Swedish International Development
Authority (SIDA), in consultation with Statistics Sweden,
in 35 countries in Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe,
Latin America and transition countries in Eastern Europe
and Central Asia. In addition, four publications were prepared
for cities and regions in the Russian Federation. Sweden
was also instrumental in the production of a regional publication,
Women and Men in East, Central and Southern Africa: Facts
and Figures 1995, as well as a training manual, Engendering
Statistics: A Tool for Change, published in 1996, which
is now available in four languages (Chinese, Japanese, Russian
and Spanish).
Other efforts to
produce statistical publications on gender include:
- Three editions
of The World's Women: Trends and Statistics-in
1991, 1995 and 2000-produced by the United Nations Statistics
Division. The Division also produced, in 1997, the Handbook
for Producing National Statistical Reports on Women
and Men, a guide to preparing national publications,
based on the format of The World's Women;
- Women and Men in the ESCAP
Region, a statistical profile, published in 1999,
as well as profiles prepared according to the same format
by national experts, published since 1995 in 16 countries
in the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the
Pacific (ESCAP) region;
- Statistical
profiles on men and women in the South Pacific islands
of Kiribati and Palau, published in 1997;
- Arab Women 1995: Trends,
Statistics and Indicators, produced for the Economic
and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) region,
as well as national reports being prepared in connection
with gender-sensitive training activities in nine countries
of Western Asia and Northern Africa;
- Efforts at
the national and regional levels in the Economic Commission
for Latin America and the Caribbean region, which focused
on the development of socio-economic indicators for
use in the formulation of public policies; and ongoing
work that includes the development of a set of indicators
to facilitate the accurate measurement of changes over
time in women's situations and cross-country analysis
within the region;
- La Mujer Mexicana: Un Balance
Estadístico al Final del Siglo XX, a statistical
analysis of women and men, published in 1995 in the
format of The World's Women.
Though few of these books are published
on a regular basis, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Philippines,
Sweden, the Nordic Council and the Economic Commission
for Europe (ECE) have each published at least two gender
statistics publications.
Involving additional
stakeholders
Responding to the Beijing Platform,
centres for women's studies and research organizations,
both at the national and international levels, are becoming
more involved with statistical producers in developing
and testing appropriate indicators and research methodologies
to strengthen gender analysis, as well as in monitoring
and evaluating the implementation of the goals of the
Beijing Conference. Examples include:
- The United
Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) publication,
Progress of the World's Women, published in 2000,
complements The World's Women series by focusing
both on benchmarks for progress established at international
conferences and on women's visions and ideas of "progress".
The UNIFEM publication looks at ways of assessing women's
progress using a variety of indicators and examines
the issue of accountability, focusing, in particular,
on how to measure the impact of Government policies
and programmes on women and men;
- The Japan Statistics
Research Institute of Hosei University has had an active
role in the development of gender statistics in Japan.
The Institute has translated various international documents
on gender statistics into Japanese, introduced papers
on gender statistics into sessions and journals of the
Society of Economic Statistics in Japan and promoted
the debate on the needs in the field of gender statistics
in Japan;
- The International
Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C.,
continues research and analysis of data on the measurement
of gender and poverty, as well as on the allocation
of resources within households;
- Women in Informal
Sector Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), a coalition
representing international organizations, academic institutions
and non-governmental organizations, is working with
the ILO and the United Nations Statistics Division to
improve statistics on the informal sector, homeworkers
and street vendors (some of the findings of which are
included in Chapter 5 of The World's Women 2000);
- The World Health Organization (WHO)
is working with international experts and local women's
organizations and institutions to improve methods for
collection of data on violence against women.
Moving ahead on gender statistics
A review of progress in
gender statistics shows that considerable work has been
done and advances made in ways of presenting gender statistics
effectively. Data users know much more today than they did
10 years ago about how women's and men's situations differ
in terms of their social, political and economic life. Further,
as reflected in the Beijing Platform for Action, users of
data are asking more questions than ever, thus increasing
the demand for statistics.
Much remains to be done,
however, to provide the statistics necessary to understand
what is happening with respect to the main issues related
to gender and to meet the requirements of the global conferences.
Some of the work required relates to new data on issues
unique to women-for example, violence against women and
maternal health. Other work is required for the development
of new data on men, especially in the areas related to their
roles and responsibilities in reproductive health, fatherhood
and unpaid work. The World's Women 2000 describes
efforts initiated since the 1990s to collect data on these
and other topics.
Much of what is needed
to understand the situation of women and men requires that
all countries improve the capacity of their national statistical
systems to regularly collect basic data, including births,
deaths, marriages, place of residence, household formation,
employment and other aspects of work, health and economic
status. The improvement of national statistical capacity-the
ability to provide timely and reliable statistics from censuses,
household surveys and administrative systems-is essential
for improving the quality and timeliness of gender statistics.
The United Nations Economic
and Social Council (ECOSOC) has recognized the importance
of statistical capacity-building for the implementation
and follow-up of the global conferences. The Council has
urged countries, international and regional agencies and
donors to work together to support national statistical
capacity-building in developing countries.
The Beijing Platform asks
Governments to appoint staff to strengthen gender statistics
programmes, to ensure coordination, monitoring and linkage
to all fields of statistical work, and to prepare output
that integrates statistics from the various subject areas.
Few countries have designated staff responsible for gender
statistics and among those that have, the arrangement is
generally for part-time work in connection with other work
in social statistics. Whatever the specific arrangements,
a necessary condition for carrying out work on national
gender policy is leadership by the national statistical
agencies, in order to develop the necessary databases, to
undertake the analytic work and to develop the new concepts
required to measure women's situations and their contributions
to society.
Recent international
conferences recognized that gender-based data collection
and analysis are invaluable tools not only for understanding
the situations and conditions of women's and men's lives
but also for informing policies and practices to improve
their lives. By recognizing and filling some of the gaps
that exist in data collection and analysis, The World's
Women 2000 hopes to shed light on the progress made
to date-and challenges still ahead-in achieving equity and
equality for the world's women.
The
World's Women 2000: Trends and Statistics |