Open Data Watch launched a guide for national statistical offices, other government agencies, development practitioners, and donors to build robust, inclusive, and effective gender data systems. The Gender Data Compass helps users “recognize problems, identify solutions, and track progress, bringing to light differences in the status and role of men and women and their lived experiences.”
The report examines data landscapes, uncovers gaps in national gender data, and illuminates the way forward by identifying factors that drive progress. It assesses gender data capacity in 185 countries and provides quantitative and contextual country-level data across development sectors. These assessments aim to support national statistical offices and their partners in charting country-specific pathways towards data-driven policymaking for an inclusive and equitable world.
The Gender Data Compass assesses gender data availability for 53 gender-relevant indicators, gender data’s openness to access and use, institutional foundations to support its collection and publication, countries’ capacity to manage and maintain statistical systems that produce gender data, and financing for gender data.
The report reveals that many countries face significant challenges in producing gender indicators to monitor progress towards equitable and sustainable development and that gender data systems around the world require urgent support to close gaps. On average, it finds, countries do not publish 30% of gender-relevant indicators and when data are published, 48% are not sex disaggregated. For example, while over 80% of countries publish digital connectivity indicators, more than half of all countries do not disaggregate them by sex. The least likely indicator to be published with sex disaggregation is child immunization.
The report concludes with a call to action. To improve data availability, it recommends: prioritizing publishing sex disaggregated data; collecting gender data with disaggregation by multiple characteristics; and implementing data instruments at the household level that also collect intra-household information.
To enhance data openness, the Gender Data Compass stresses the need to: publish a uniform open data license on every website and portal where data exist; adopt an open by default gender data policy; and prioritize publishing data in open formats.
To bolster institutional foundations, it calls for: mainstreaming gender data in statistical plans; strengthening collaboration between national statistical offices and gender ministries; and promoting data integration within gender ministries.
To build capacity, the report recommends: improving census and civil registration and vital statistics systems to increase frequency of data production; exploring innovation in gender data collection; and prioritizing time use and labor force surveys.
On financing, it underscores the need to: allocate dedicated funding for gender data; mainstream gender data in bilateral and multilateral support; and improve transparency and monitoring of funding for data and gender data.
The Gender Data Compass was formally launched at the Data for Development Festival (Festival de Datos) in November 2023. [Publication: Gender Data Compass]