What is gender statistics?
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENDER STATISTICS
The UN observed 1975 as International Women's Year and held that same year the First World Conference on Women in Mexico City. This World Conference was the first international forum to recognize the importance of producing statistics on women. Women's machinery and women's advocates were the main forces behind the initial efforts in this area and focused prevalently on making better use of existing data. Over the years, the compilation of existing statistics and indicators necessary to address the demand of those concerned with women's issues revealed many data gaps and problems in data collection methods.
Subsequently, two other UN conferences on Women were held: Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985). By the time of the Third World Conference in Nairobi in 1985, the international statistical system had initiated some work in this area, including training programmes to strengthen the cooperation between policy makers and data producers. After the conference in Nairobi, the general approach in development strategy moved from "women in development" to "gender and development". In statistics, the focus likewise moved from "statistics on women", to "statistics on women and men" and to the mainstreaming of gender issues into the overall statistical system.
Internationally, efforts to develop guidelines and recommendations for the production of statistics that take into consideration women and men's different roles in society were initiated by all relevant agencies. By the time of the Fourth World Conference in Beijing in 1995, many national statistical offices had already prepared user-friendly publications on statistics concerning women and men and had shown considerable effort to improve data collection and adapt their concepts, definitions, and methods to international standards.
The Beijing Conference on women in 1995 marked an important step in the development of gender statistics. For the first time, an international instrument comprehensively addressed the question of producing and disseminating gender statistics. Governments agreed on a set of important actions to "generate and disseminate gender-disaggregated data and information for planning and evaluation" (Platform for Action and the Beijing Declaration, Strategic Objective H.3, United Nations 1996).
International and national work on gender statistics gained new momentum with the Beijing Conference, and over the last few years, many countries' statistical offices have created gender statistics units and developed specific programmes for the mainstreaming of gender issues into the overall production of official data.
Examples of work done in countries show that national statisticians have developed a good understanding of those gender issues that need to be addressed and have begun to produce adequate statistical outputs. The increased availability and dissemination of statistical outputs has in turn generated more demand by users for data and for more refined statistics and indicators to inform and monitor gender-related policies.