better water infrastructure, which is a vital resource but can also help reduce the time women and girls spend fetching clean water. We think this provides more time for women to work. In reality, some may go out to the labor market. But, others will spend more time with their children. We just don’t have the data to know for sure. The second challenge we have is


that resources are scarce; whether it’s donor resources or national resources. To get budgets, we have to first show results. If you don’t have the data you can’t show results. Particularly for us, as a UN agency, we are accountable to member states; to our donors, and so on. We have to show exactly how our interventions are making a difference to the lives of women. Our role is to strengthen overall statistical systems. And to do so in a sustainable manner. We want gender data to be part and parcel of national gender policy and national development policy in general, so that these policies can be


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monitored. Then governments can be held accountable for results. In the last few years, there’s been quite a lot of funding into this work, led by some real champions such as the US, Australia and Ireland, for example. The Gates Foundation is also a large donor, and is staunchly behind the agenda to improve gender data. We’ve made a leap forward when it comes to funding for gender data. We are seeing other improvements,


too. Yesterday, we held a meeting as part of the UN Statistical Committee (see pages 6 to 15). It was planned very quickly but we ended up with a room full of chief statisticians to talk about gender data. Five years ago, that would never have happened. We’re seeing a ground swell of support – especially from countries that actually do this work. But we also have a long way to


go. It is important to stress that this is a long-term challenge. It is not a result we will achieve in days. We have systemic problems to solve. If we’re going to just close gender


data gaps, we can try to do that quickly and cheaply. But if we don’t solve the systemic problems, we’ll be in the same place five years from now. So, there’s painstaking work that needs to take place. Systemic changes are needed in terms of how gender data is integrated into national studies and policies; there needs to be a better coordination of gender data at national levels and improvements in the frequency and quality of the data. All this has to be done in a sustainable way. Even if key people leave national statistics offices, it still has to continue. In our recent meeting, we brought together gender statisticians from 12 countries and we discussed what’s happening in those countries; how they’re implementing their program; what’s working and what’s not working. Leadership is everything. If you don’t have the buy-in at the highest level – basically a country’s chief statistician – not much happens. In countries where people have been less engaged, it’s more difficult to move the needle. Having


a room full of leading statisticians was perfect. You could see a little bit of peer pressure at work. We heard from the chief statistician of Kenya who explained how his country is laying the foundations for a sustainable system by launching a gender- focused, inter-agency technical committee that will lead the work. We are seeing both technical and donor coordination in Kenya, and that’s leading to a harmonized work program and improved data production across different ministries. We also heard from Colombia’s chief statistician who explained how UN Women has been able to facilitate south-south exchange, particularly with Mexico – a leader in terms of gender statistics. UN Women Mexico and the National Institute of Statistics and Geography have launched the Global Centre of Excellence on Gender Statistics. It’s the first of its kind in the world and will be dedicated to the analysis and generation of


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