Data Collection and Development of Indicators to Measure Progress and Challenges in Africa Experiences from the African Centre of Gender and Social Development (ACGSD), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Ms. Thokozile Ruzvidzo, Director, ACGSD African Conference on Measuring Well-Being and Fostering the Progress of Societies 19-21 April 2012 Rabat, Morocco Free Powerpoint Templates

African Gender and Development Index

Rationale for the AGDI Part of ECA’s mandate coordinate, support, monitor, evaluate and report on the implementation of international human rights agreements on the rights of women and on gender equality. Lack of common set of gender social responsive indicators to measure progress made in the advancement of women ECA’s response: AN AFRICAN-SPECIFIC GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT INDEX

What is the AGDI? The AGDI is an index made up of two complementary components: (1) The Gender Status Index (GSI); (2) The African Women’s Progress Scoreboard (AWPS) Together, they provide a “scan” of the status of gender equality, including the government’s commitment / implementation of gender policies.

Aims of the AGDI Provide African governments with data on the status of gender equality and the effects of their gender policies on reducing women’s marginalization; Strengthen the capacity of member States to effectively monitor progress made in implementing conventions that have been ratified, as well as other gender commitments; Promote change in attitudes, structures and mechanisms at the political, legal and operational levels in order to achieve gender equality and women’s advancement;

Aims of the AGDI cont. Bridge the knowledge and information gap between stated achievements by member States and the real impact of gender mainstreaming efforts; Democratize statistics and qualitative monitoring tools that are effective and easy to use.

The Gender State Index Quantitative gaps between men and women;

Sample GSI For each variable, the indicator of gender equality is calculated by comparing the ratio of female achievement to male achievement. The closer the indicator is to 1, the greater the indication of gender equality.

AWPS For each commitment (e.g. CEDAW), the following indicators make up the scoreboard:- 1. Ratification 2. Reporting 3. Law 4. Policy Commitment 5. Development of a Plan 6. Targets 7. Institutional Mechanism 8. Budget 9. Human resources 10. Capacity Enhancement 11. Research 12. Involvement of civil society 13. Monitoring and evaluation 14. Information and dissemination 15. Accountability and transparency Scoring system based on a three-point scale is used for computation of each indicator. 0 indicates no action; 1 indicates partial action; 2 indicates full action

Challenges Capacity and resource challenges of African member States to undertake and sustain regular collection of gender statistics; Inadequate capacity to generate and use gender and sex disaggregated data in most of the member States thus posing a challenge of ‘invisibility’ of gender inequalities and gaps at various levels. Shortage of the requisite statistical capacities to clean up, collate and analyse nationally generated data. The political will is there as Phali always reminds me, we want to collect gender statistics – just show us how

Challenges (contd.) Often external recruitment of experts is resorted to, to fill the statistical capacity gaps. These experts may not be gender specialists who are not statistically oriented. Non availability of data on certain indicators e.g. time use, informal enterprise, rural land ownership resulting in data gaps;

Time-Use Surveys

Mandate to promote Time-Use Surveys (TUS) “At the national level : Conduct regular time-use studies to measure, in quantitative terms, unremunerated work, including recording those activities that are performed simultaneously with remunerated or other unremunerated activities”. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, paragraph 206 (g) (i)

What are TUS? Comprehensive data to show how children, men and women spend their time over the course of a day or a week Allows for the measurement of remunerative and non-remunerative work

Importance of TUS Recognize the full range of productive activities by children, men and women in the national system; Allow more comprehensive measures for labour force and production; Indicators of well-being e.g., time poverty; Expanding the information upon which policy making and policy monitoring are based; Highlights the burden of unremunerated work, e.g., unpaid domestic care work

Importance of TUS cont. Highlights the gender division of labor; Highlights inequalities within households; Understanding social problems, e.g., child labour; Planning for gender equality; Planning for infrastructure and care policies

African experience in TUS Recent national time-use surveys: Benin (1998) Nigeria (1999 - pilot) Morocco – 1997/98 focused on Women’s time use South Africa (2000) Madagascar (2001) Tanzania – (2005) Mauritius (2003) Tunisia (2005) Ghana (2011) Djibouti (2012) ECA has been actively involved in providing technical services to the Time-Use Surveys, conducted in Ghana and Djibouti.

Challenges Under-use of the survey results by policy-makers, researchers and UN agencies because: Took a long time fro stastical offices to believe in Time Use; Time-use surveys are too often ad-hoc surveys funded by development partners; Publication of the surveys remains at the stage of preliminary results or descriptive statistics; Policy makers are not aware of the potential usefulness of time-use statistics and analyses; Limited capacity to undertake time-use survey and conduct analysis of results; Time-use surveys and time-use analyses are not disseminated by UN agencies to a wide audience; Data quality issues

Recommendations – emerging from UNECA’s Gender Statistics Workshop, December 2011, Ghana For African Countries: African countries should endeavour to undertake regular time-use surveys to collect quality time-use data based on sound and robust methodology and research instruments. African countries should adopt the 1993, and preferably the 2008 System of National Accounts to inform the collection of information, which in addition to time-use data will permit the compilation of household production satellite accounts. In order to reduce the costs of conducting the surveys, African countries should consider integrating time-use surveys with other larger surveys.

Recommendations (contd.) UNECA and other regional and international partners should: Assist African countries to undertake time-use surveys and estimate household production satellite accounts by providing financing and/or technical assistance. Assist African countries to disseminate results of time-use surveys and household production satellite accounts and sharing of best practices; Continue in their efforts to link research institutions working on social science and gender studies to the data from time-use surveys. Continue advocating for the use of time-use data and household production satellite accounts in the analysis, planning and management of gender-aware economic and social policies, including poverty alleviation policies.

Other UNECA Initiatives to Address Challenges in African Statistics

UNECA’s Gender Statistics Programme Series of meetings on gender statistics – December 2011, Ghana Topics covered : a) National Satellite Accounts of Household Production; b) Statistics on Women Cross Border Informal Trade and c) Statistics on Violence against Women One of the main outcomes - support for an African Programme on Gender Statistics (APGS), which aims to bring all current and future initiatives on development of gender statistics under one umbrella programme Endorsed by Third Session of the Statistical Commission for Africa (StatCom-Africa III) meeting in January 2012

UNECA’s Gender Statistics Programme Compendium on Gender Statistics This publication will compile the activities and programs of member States and institutions in the area of gender statistics in Africa. Report on the status of gender statistics Focusing on five African countries, including good practices and how these contribute to gender-sensitive national development policy formulation. Training Manual on Gender Statistics A training toolkit on gender statistics is to be developed, that can be used as a standard training material for statistical personnel.

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