Dimitri Sanga Senior Statistician

1. Improving Gender Responsive Data Production and Use in African Countries: Challenges and Opportunities IAEG on Gender and the MDGs in the Arab Region 10-11 September 2007 ,Cairo, Egypt DimitriSanga Senior Statistician

2. Outline • Background • Countries’ Development Agendas • Why are Gender Statistics Critical? • Gender Statistics Challenges in Africa • ECA’s Response to Gender Statistics Challenges • Future Developments • Conclusions

3. Background

4. Countries’ Development Agendas • National, regional, and international initiatives aimed at promoting economic and social development in African countries • NEPAD adopted as a reference framework for the Africa’s development (2000) • The Millennium Declaration (2000, MDGs) • The Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSs) • All these initiatives recognize that women and men face different socio-economic challenges

5. Why are Gender Statistics Critical? • Thus, the importance of gender statistics in the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of these initiatives and others • Gender statistics: • Allow for unbiased evidence-based policy formulation and decision making • Address issues of inequalities and empowerment of women • Raise consciousness, persuade policy makers and other stakeholders to take into account the gender dimension in policy and decision making

6. Gender Statistics Challenges in Africa • Inadequate advocacy for gender statistics • Lack of strong commitment to gender statistics development by NSS. Hence, lack of mainstreaming of gender statistics in statistical programmes and activities • Inadequacy between statistical programs and national data priorities • Low profile of statistical units in line ministries where they exist • Lack of technical skills and adequate statistical infrastructure (sampling frames, classifications, concepts, definitions and methods) • Inadequate sex disaggregated data management (archiving, analysis, and dissemination)

7. Particular Difficult Areas • Data on gender based violence are difficult to obtain: • Within the family: intimate partner violence, harmful traditional practices … • Within the community: femicide, sexual harassment, trafficking in women … • Other: Violence against women in armed conflicts, sexual slavery… • Data on women’s contribution to the economy: • Unqualified domestic work • Inadequate data on informal sector

8. ECA’s Response to Gender Statistics Challenges

9. Selected Initiatives • ECA’s initiatives aimed at addressing gender statistics challenges include: • The development of the African Gender and Development Index (AGDI) • Engendering the P&R on population and housing censuses • Setting up an African gender statistics network • Engendering agricultural and trade statistics • Dissemination of methodologies and tools for the development of gender-disaggregated data • Advocating and initiating the undertaking of Time Use surveys

10. The AGDI • A composite index made of two components: • The Gender Status Index (GSI): captures quantitatively measurable issues related to gender equality • The African Women’s Progress Scoreboard (AWPS) complements the GSI by measuring government policy performance regarding transformation of social institutions that affects women’s advancement and empowerment • Some desirable features of the AGDI? • Making use of data sets that are nationally available • Incorporation of qualitative issues • Monitoring mechanism to assess performance in implementing the various instruments African countries have ratified(CEDAW, BPFA, ACHPR, etc.) • 12 African countries completed the process so far

11. Some Components of the GSI

12. Some Components of the AWPS

13. The AGDI: Lessons Learned • Lessons learned from field trials: • Problems with data accessibility even where availablefor confidentiality reasons • Inadequate equipment or training and insufficient resources • Tapping the national information sources of the countries proved to open a rich mine of data and stimulate a consensus binding process • Use of national data allowed access to the most recent data available

14. Engendering the P&R on Population and Housing Censuses • Review and recommendations on how to take into account gender perspectives in census undertaking in the framework of the 2010 RPHC • Built on: • On-going work on the AGDI and its sectoral components • Tools on gender statistics and time use developed by the UNSD and the UNECA • On-going work on the African Supplement to the P&R on PHC undertaken by the UNECA • Potential activities • Review various stages of censuses undertaking with a view to take into account gender issues • Draft an African Gender Supplement to P&R on PHC

15. African Gender Statistics Network • To provide a framework for knowledge sharing, peer learning and networking between all stakeholders dealing with gender statistics issues • The Network would: • Advocate for the integration of gender equality concerns into the policy agenda and the development of standards, frameworks and guidelines (P&R on PHC, RRSF, NSDSs…) • Contributions to the preparation and organization of various consultative meetings from a gender perspective • Participate in other meetings of statistical bodies such as ABSA, StatCom-Africa • Dissemination of information on gender statistics

16. Engendering Agricultural and Trade Statistics • Deepening the work on the AGDI in trade and agriculture. Why these sectors? • Most African economies rely heavily on agricultural production • Women: majority of the agricultural workforce while their access to land, seeds, water… is still limited • Agriculture: An essential part of intra-African and international trade • Understanding the multidimensional aspects of feminized poverty as they relate to food security, access to resources, services… • Activities: • Identification of issues related to gender, trade, and agriculture, current indicators used in these two areas, gender gaps in available statistics • Development of the sectoral indexes

17. Dissemination of Methodologies and Tools for the Development of Gender Statistics • Guide for mainstreaming gender perspectives and household production into national statistics, budgets and policies in Africa • Improve the skills of statisticians, national accountants and policy analysts, on how to engender national planning instruments • Disseminate the methodologies developed by ECA for the collection of gender-responsive data

18. Time Use Surveys • Time Use Surveys are useful statistical tools: • Generating data on how individuals spend their time • Producing sex disaggregated statistics on productive activities by households and estimating the value of unpaid work • Building national gender satellite accounts of household production • Defining macro-economic policies that take into account women’s unpaid work • Experiencing TUS in Djibouti underway

19. Future Developments • Extend the AGDI to more African countries • Advocating for the creation of gender statistics units in NSOs • Putting in place a regional gender statistics programme • Considering the creation of an African gender statistics City Group under the umbrella of the Statistical Commission for Africa

20. Conclusions • Mainstreaming gender within NSS is of paramount importance • Statistics on individuals should be collected, collated, analysed, and presented disaggregated by sex • Identifying gender issues and ensuring that data addressing these (gender-responsive statistics) are collected and made available • NSOs need to be provided with adequate resources to coordinate and generate relevant sex disaggregated data and make them accessible to the public at large • Reinforcing the capacity for the production and use of gender responsive data is crucial in the formulation of comprehensive gender sensitive policies that benefit the entire society

21. Thank you!