A Call to Improve the Quality and Transparency of Women’s Economic Empowerment and Gender Equality Indexes

This blog is cross-posted from the Center for Global Development. As gender equality has gained increased prominence as an important human rights and global development priority, our teams at CGD and Data2X have seen a proliferation of reports, tools, and indexes that seek to track countries’ progress (or lack thereof) in improving various women’s economic empowerment and gender equality outcomes. In a joint paper, Measuring Women’s Economic Empowerment: A Compendium of Selected Tools, we reviewed 20 of these indexes (which we refer to as “population monitoring” or “PM” tools in the report) to better understand the information they reflect and the way they were developed. Since the compendium’s publication, CGD and Data2X launched a learning collaborative on women’s economic empowerment measurement. Through the collaborative’s work, we have taken a deeper dive into a subset of these indexes—those with the most complete and transparent information—with the aim of identifying how these and the…

Fulfilling the Promise of Better Data on Gender and Work

How the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians Impacted the Quality and Use of Gender Data in Policymaking In 2013, an international definition of “work” was agreed upon for the first time as a reference concept to support measurement. Importantly for gender equality, the definition recognizes all paid and unpaid forms of work on an equal footing. This was a critical step towards making all the work that women typically do in the home, workplaces, and community clearly visible in statistics. These changes—based on a resolution adopted by the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians in 2013—were significant for other reasons, too. They affected how employment is measured by governments, narrowing the scope to only those activities done in expectation of payment or making a profit. The new International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) standards on work have had significant impact in the four case study countries (Cote d’Ivoire, Lao…

Measuring Women’s Economic Empowerment: A Compendium of Selected Tools

Any attempt at measurement should begin with a clear understanding of what is being measured. This is a first and major roadblock for measuring women’s economic empowerment (WEE) because the term is complex — it encompasses many dimensions of women’s economic and social lives and can (and often does) manifest itself differently in different cultures and settings. This report selects and reviews tools for measuring women’s economic empowerment (or disempowerment) grouped into 20 population monitoring tools (PM) and 15 monitoring and evaluation tools (M&E). The main objective is practical: helping readers both understand how different measurement tools are built and select among the most well-known and widely (cross-culturally) applicable PM and M&E tools for different purposes. Read the report.

Making Women’s Work Visible: The 19th ICLS Standards, Purpose, and Progress

Unpaid work — such as caretaking, subsistence farming, cooking, and cleaning — overwhelmingly falls on the shoulders of women. This unpaid work is critical to the functioning of communities around the world, yet it is often overlooked in data, which limits the ability of governments to design and implement programs and policies that can strengthen women’s economic empowerment and ultimately improve their livelihoods. This report builds on the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) previous reports on how new measurement approaches can help close gender data gaps in the world of work by further illustrating the differences between how women and men work and how improved measurement can support women’s economic empowerment. Read the report.

World Bank Enterprise Surveys

This database houses World Bank surveys on the business environment.

Labour Force Surveys

This database houses available data from Labour Force Surveys.

Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index

This database measures women’s empowerment in agriculture.

Women, Business, and the Law

This database measures gender inequality in the law.

United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) Gender Statistics Time Use Portal

This database provides data for time-use statistics by country.

Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS)

This database provides relevant data for policymakers and the research community.