How can we understand, identify, and respond to the ongoing challenge of producing policy-relevant data about the lives of women and girls?
Bridging the Gap Africa: Key Findings and Recommendations summarizes the findings in the report, Bridging the Gap: Mapping Gender Data Availability in Africa. This report maps gender data availability in 15 sub-Saharan African countries and builds upon Mapping Gender Data Gaps, published in 2014, which launched efforts to find and test innovative solutions to fill gender data gaps. However, in the five years since Mapping Gender Data Gaps was published, the data landscape has expanded and gender data has received more attention, so there was a need for an updated review.
Through this project, Data2X set out to answer the following questions:
- Which domains of women’s and girls’ lives (health, education, economic opportunities, political participation, human security, environment) do we understand well thanks to existing data, and which domains remain unclear because of a lack of or poor quality data?
- When data exist, where do they come from (sources) and where can they be found in international and national databases? What lessons can we glean from these patterns of availability?
- What can we learn from the 15 countries about the most effective ways to close systemic gender data gaps?