Posted January 2000

Gender and statistics: Key elements for the advancement of women

SOME MILESTONES

1. International References:
   The need for improving statistics and indicators specifically concerned with the situation of women was first recognized internationally by The World Conference of the International Women's Year in 1975. Since then, various steps have been taken by the International Community:
   
   • UN Economic and Social Council Resolutions (ECOSOC) in 1977 and 1981.
   • The World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women, 1980.
   • The Nairobi Forward Looking strategies by the Third World Conference on Women in 1985.
   • The Beijing Platform for action adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.
   • ECOSOC Resolution on Rural Women in 1997.
   • UN General Assembly: Report of the Secretary-General on the "Improvement of the situation of women in rural areas - 1997).

2. FAO's mandate:
   • The World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (WCARRD) Programme of Action. 1979.
   • The FAO Plan of Action for the Integration of Women in Development (WID) adopted by the Conference in 1989.
   • The revised FAO Plan of action on WID in 1995.
   • FAO governing bodies such as COAG, Council... have recently put the emphasis on the need for gender disaggreated data.

3. FAO's selected activities in gender sensitive statistics
   

   The following are the most significant initiatives aimed at rendering agricultural statistics more sensitive to gender issues. They illustrate the variety of actions taken to tackle those issues, ranging from advocacy to field activities.

   1992
   The Inter-Agency Consultation on Gender, Statistics and Database on Gender in Agricultural and Rural Development reviewed the definitions and methods used in collecting gender-disaggregated data.

   1995
   The Women in Development Plan of Action stressed the importance of gender-disaggregated data, not only in the formulation of policy and strategy for the integration of women in development, but also in extension and training activities as well as in technical domains to improve agricultural production and food security.

   1996
   The World Food Summit Plan of Action underlined the need to improve the quality and transmission of information on, and for, women.

   1997
   In collaboration with international NGOs associated with FAO, an Information Campaign on Rural Women was launched and the International Symposium "Invest in Rural Women through Training and Information" was held in Rome on 15 October, World Rural Women's Day.

   1998
   For World Food Day on 16 October, the choice of "Women feed the world" as a theme made it possible to produce a number of print and audio-visual documents to demonstrate the contribution of women to food security and to sensitise international public opinion.

   1998
   A subregional Workshop on User-Producer Statistics was held in Zimbabwe.

   1999
   

   • Celebration of the 8th March International Women's day with a technical seminar on: "Gender related statistics in Agriculture and rural development: conceptual, methodological and technical challenges.

   • High level consultation on Rural women and information, production of a special publication: "Filling the data gap: gender sensitive statistics for agricultural development".

   • Participation in the 16th meeting of the African Commission on Agricultural statistics - Guinea, Conakry, July 1999.

A series of relevant publications, guidelines and training manuals have been issued. Several pilot projects have been initiated to:

1. execute a regional evaluation concerning the collection and processing of data disaggregated by sex on human resources in agriculture;
2. develop links between the agricultural and population censuses including surveys on households and labour; and
3. technically promote and support the establishment of an African network of statisticians in the agricultural and social science fields.

A project is being implemented in four countries in southern Africa (Zimbabwe, the United Republic of Tanzania, Swaziland and Mozambique), aiming to improve the understanding and information-sharing of gender-specific knowledge and traditional expertise with regard to natural resources conservation and biodiversity.

INTRODUCTION

The end of the 2nd millennium is witnessing a formidable paradox as regards rural women and information. On the one hand, thanks to the revolution of communication technology, women are projected into the middle of global market realities. On the other, they are left out of the mainstream of development programmes. The end result of this contradictory situation is that they are impacted by globalization, changing trade patterns or tariff structures without drawing the benefits commensurate to their participation.

Rural women are not part of the global information and communication system which turns the world into a "global village"; they are neither participants nor producers. This is because they are not "media-attractive" and do not constitute an interesting target as potential consumers. Primarily, rural women are invisible: faceless and voiceless.

The root causes of this prevailing situation are multiple, ranging from the scarcity of reliable statistics on rural populations with respect to their development and the limited scope and coverage of gender data to a weak system of dissemination. This makes it difficult for issues of social equity and the specific needs of male and female agricultural producers to be adequately addressed. The problem is complex and calls for a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach. Moreover, the endeavour should be supported by a political will, coupled with a coherent methodology.

Several international conferences have stressed the importance of encouraging the availability of information and data as a compulsory starting point for any programme for the advancement of women from the First World Conference in Mexico in 1975 to the Beijing fourth World Conference which produced the Platform for Action in 1995. In FAO, the World Food Summit Plan of Action adopted in 1996 recommended in particular "the improvement of the collection, dissemination and use of gender disaggregated data in agriculture, fisheries, forestry and rural development".

The FAO Plan of Action for the integration of women in development adopted by the Conference in 1995, points to the need for data on the role of women in agriculture, and sets precise objectives in this area:

• to improve statistical concepts and methods in agriculture, food and rural development, aimed at gender-specific data collection;
• to speed up the collection of reliable, comprehensive and unbiaised data;
• to disaggregate by sex the standard data items collected by FAO programmes and projects.

As regards social indicators and statistics, FAO concerns are classified into three main areas: agricultural production, food and nutrition and rural development. They are interdependent but do not have the same focus and, more importantly, do not cover the same population groups. Therefore, they do not provide an overall picture of the situation of rural women.

At the national level, official statistics do not reflect the actual roles and contributions of rural producers in general and especially of rural women in all spheres of society and are unable to show both gender differentiation and inequalities in the respective roles of men and women and the differential impact of the development process on each one.

A series of questions needs to be answered if we are to meet the challenges of the 21st century, in particular those set forth in the World Food Summit plan of action: halving the number of undernourished people in the World by the year 2000.

• Is this situation still acceptable in terms of human rights, economic and social efficiency, democracy?

• How to redress the situation in order to reach a more balanced and equitable development?

• Who should be involved in this endeavour and how?

This paper will attempt to address only one aspect of the comprehensive and encompassing strategy needed to address the issue. It will concentrate on gender and statistics as a preliminary and important element of a programme to secure women's social and economic advancement on an equal footing with men and to achieve optimal agricultural productivity and food security. Actually, women's contribution to development should be first and foremost acknowledged and valued. Therefore, the first section will address the issue of how FAO can improve its current programme and practices in this regard while the second will analyse the situation at national level.

1st section: How the improvement of statistics can enhance the knowledge on rural women's living conditions and their contribution to economic development.

Long-term development trends suggest that progressive industrialization of agriculture is associated with decrease of the proportion of populations involved in food production. However, mid-term demographic projections of the United Nations for the developing countries suggest that over the next two decades rural populations will still continue to exceed urban populations. Moreover, food needs in these countries over the next three decades are expected to nearly double. Clearly, for the time being economic growth in the developing world is going to be correlated with agricultural growth and the pressure on agriculture to increase its output, and hence its productivity, will be enormous in the years to come. Production on existing land will almost have to double in order to provide the required food supply sustainably. Thus, critical contributory factors in the intensification of agricultural productivity will be research and the organization of research-supporting databases, new technology, the development of rural human resources - including the agricultural labour force - through special social programmes, as well as the use of public environments as a forum for dialogue on policy issues. All these trends call for a serious effort to learn more about the lives and work of rural men and women, and especially about women's achievements and potentials in cost-efficient food production.

The agricultural census could be defined as "a government-sponsored operation for the collection of quantitative information on agricultural structure, including that on persons belonging to agricultural households, covering in principle the whole of a country within a given agricultural year". The decennial world census of agricultural programmes represent one of the most important information systems in a country and can serve as a basis for many other statistical programmes relating to agriculture.

The FAO's statistical data base, FAOSTAT, contains basic and useful information but more detailed and disaggregated data are necessary to reflect the gender related aspects of agricultural and rural development. Also, they can be combined with the results of population censuses or labour force surveys, for example.

The most recent FAO guidelines on demographic characteristics to be monitored in agricultural censuses during the period 1996-2005 (FAO, 1995) are summarized in the table below:

Table 1. Demographic and employment characteristics in the FAO Programme for the World Census of Agriculture 2000

REFERENCE CATEGORY	ESSENTIAL ITEMS	PROPOSED ITEMS
Holder's Household	Number of household members	None
Household members	Age Sex Main occupation Whether engaged in more than one occupation	Marital status Education Whether economically active or not Whether any work done on holding during the year Whether permanent or occasional agricultural on holding
Agricultural workers other than members of holder's household	None	Whether permanent agricultural workers during year Whether occasional agricultural workers employed during year Number of permanent agricultural workers - male (skilled or not) Number of permanent agricultural workers - female (skilled or not)

Source: FAO (1995)

As can be seen from Table 1, the list of essential items, recommended by FAO, includes the sex of household members. Since governments are entirely responsible for their own data collection, decision on the inclusion of a gender dimension is in their hands. FAO's advice is generally not to overload the census by broadening its coverage and to restrict the scope to essential items. Nevertheless data reflecting the gender dimension of food production are necessary.

A. Improving data collection and statistical accuracy: strategies and methodologies

For the time being, in most cases the thrust of the developmental planning and information system has been on physical growth of goods and services and overall welfare. Social concerns like the role of women in the development process have largely been given a secondary status in preparing national programmes dealing with raising the standard of living and productivity. It needs to be realized that:

• Although women are involved in the development process, many aspects of their involvement differ from those of men: total hours worked, the kind of work undertaken, rates of pay, age of participation in the labour force, domestic responsibilities, work hazards, etc.

• Job segregation and wage discrimination against women persist;

• Women have less access to training, capital, land and the new information technologies.
  

Policy-making for rural development will require not only more accurate and systematic statistics on rural producers, but also officially collected data that are more relevant to the needs and concerns of data users and producers' associations, academic institutions and public and private development practitioners at all levels.

Adequate statistics to address the above issues particularly in connection with the rural and agricultural development are lacking. In fact what women do is often unrecorded, undervalued or not valued at all. To address this problem, the FAO Statistics Division has formulated the following objectives:

1. Review of existing methodological publications on gender aspects related to agricultural survey design and data collection procedures with the objective of preparing guidelines and training materials to provide more accurate statistics on:
   • Men's and women's participation in agricultural and other secondary economic activities in rural areas;
   • Unpaid family work undertaken (time use) by women in agricultural households;
   • Social and human factors affecting the productivity of the agricultural labour force by gender, and especially the female labour force;
   • Constraints faced by female holders in efficiently performing agriculture and other secondary economic activities in rural areas;
   • Income generated by female labour force in rural/agricultural households.

2. Providing support to member countries in adopting these guidelines keeping in view the local condition and social customs;

3. Providing support to member countries in compilation and analysis of the data for supporting programme and policy formulation.

4. The database compiled in FAO does not aim at addressing social and development issues of rural populations in their roles as producers and consumers, or as human capital autonomously involved in the process of production (i.e. people using technology, knowledge, and information directly in their daily work). FAOSTAT gives data mainly about the production tool itself as a process of management of agriculture and the input/output balance of material resources involved. Thus, the focus of FAO agricultural statistics does not include the human resources themselves as a force directly shaping the production of food, its quantitative and qualitative characteristics. However, in view of the current trends and long-term prospective for development of agriculture, and in view of FAO's mandate as a UN agency in charge of providing data pertinent to current processes of agriculture in development, it is of specific interest for FAO to be able to use demographic and labour force data and to combine these data to those derived from agricultural censuses and surveys at subnational level. Why is this integration at subnational level necessary? One of the main problems in most UN statistical publications is that a disaggregation by rural/urban residence is not usually available when different population characteristics are reported. From the perspective of FAO's needs this makes it impossible to retabulate data on the various categories of rural populations including by gender, even at the national level. Therefore, the integration of data has to be based on subnational linkages between demographic, labour force and agricultural sources of data (i.e., censuses and surveys) so as to make possible the compilation of a gender-sensitive database on producers with an agricultural/rural profile. To make this possible, the co-operation of both, UN agencies and member countries' responsible institutions is of primary importance.

B. Some examples of improved statistics on rural women's contribution to economic development.

Table 2 is an example of additional useful data which can be derived from population censuses/labour force surveys to highlight women's share in agricultural and non agricultural labour-force. Such data are of key importance in order to understand the farmer population, its composition at a given time and its dynamics over time. It also raises additional issues such as the extent of male migration, employment level, measurement and characteristics of women's labour.

Table 2. Sex distribution of the total, agricultural and non-agricultural labour force

World/ region

Women's share in:

Total labour force

Agricultural labour force

Non-agricultural labour force

	1990	1997	1990	1997	1990	1997
World	40.0	40.4	42.7	43.3	37.3	38.0
Developed countries	43.4	44.2	38.4	36.7	44.0	44.9
Developing countries	38.8	39.3	42.9	43.6	32.3	33.7
Sub-Saharan Africa	42.4	42.5	46.9	47.3	31.4	32.7
Asian developing countries	39.4	39.8	43.5	44.0	31.7	33.1
Latin America and Caribbean developing countries	32.6	34.1	16.9	17.0	37.9	38.8
Oceanic developing countries	39.1	40.3	43.5	44.8	29.8	31.9
LIFDC's	39.6	40.0	43.5	44.0	31.7	33.4
Low-income* countries	36.2	36.9	41.3	42.1	26.0	28.4

* Low-income food-deficit countries
Source: FAOSTAT

Table 3 shows the type of detailed and gender related information data which can be obtained in cross-tabulating, the share of women in the agricultural labour force by several variables such as level of income, size of holdings, and the sex of land holders .

Table 3. Women's share in the total agricultural labour force in selected developing countries, classified by income and agricultural land classes

2nd Section: How the Governments of FAO member states can help changing the situation

Generally speaking, developing countries suffer from the failure of statistical systems to respond to data needs. As a result, they do not have the social, demographic, economic data needed for an accurate development planning.

In the production and use of gender-specific statistics, nearly all countries are facing similar problems which can be summarized as follows:

• lack of adequate concepts, definitions and methods that reflect the different role and contributions of women and men in society;
• cultural and religious factors, stereotypes and local customs that contribute to making women less visible and prevent both enumerators and respondents from providing correct and reliable information;
• under-utilization of existing data by gender;
• lack of communication between producers and users of data;

• setting up priorities for development research and development programmes. Such priorities cannot be addressed by fragmented efforts; instead, they should rely upon strategies for integrated analysis and treatment. A first step is to make sure that there are integrated data available, so as to make complex issues understandable by politicians and development workers.

• Establish relationships of government with all pertinent stakeholders:

  • The role of official statistics;

  • The role of academic data sources;

  • The role of special applied and programme evaluation research for development;

  • The role of rural women and men themselves, as well as that of their respective associations and groups. respective associations and groups.

Table 4 gives the list of countries which have simultaneously included in their agriculture censuses demographic items such as the sex and age of the household members. Despite several problems related to concepts, time references, operations, this attempt is commendable and encouraged.

Table 4. Coverage of demographically relevant items in agricultural censuses in developing countries, 1986-1985

Region-Country	Census year	Demographically relevant items in the census:
		Members of holder's household classified by sex	Member of holder's household classified by age
Africa:
Benin	1992	X	X
Burkina Faso	1993	X	X
Cape Verde	1988	X	X
Congo, Dem. Rep.of	1990	X	X
Guinea	1989	X	X
Guinea Bissau		X	X
Reunion	1988	X	X
Sao Tome & Principe	1990	X	X
Tanzania	1994/95	X	X
Uganda	1991	X	X
North and Central America:
Bahamas	1994	X	X
Dominica	1995	X	X
Grenada	1995	X	X
St. Vincent & Grenadines	1986	X	X
South America:
Argentina	1988	X	X
Colombia	1988	X	X
Paraguay	1989	X	X
Korea, Rep. of	1990	X	X
Myanmar	1993	X	X
Nepal	1992	X	X
Pakistan	1990	X	X
Philippines	1988
Thailand	1991	X	X
Oceania:
Cook Islands	1988	X	X
New Caledonia	1991	X	X
Niue	1989	X	X
Western Samoa	1989	X	X

Source:FAO (1997)

Table 5 shows a slight decline in the number of countries collecting data on the sex of holders: 36 in 1980 versus 26 in 1990. Only 10 did the recording in both dates. It is therefore difficult to make a comparison over time and indicate the trends.

Table 5: Developing countries collecting information on sex of holder, 1980 and 1990 census rounds

Region/Country	1980	1990
Africa:
Benin		X
Botswana	X	X
Burkina Faso		X
Cape Verde		X
Central African Republic	X
Congo, Dem. Rep. of	X	X
Djibouti		X
Ethipoia	X
Kenya	X
Lesotho		X
Madagascar	X
Malawi	X
Niger	X
Reunion	X	X
Rwanda	X
Sao Tome & Principe		X
Sierra Leone	X
Swaziland		X
Tanzania
Togo	X
Uganda		X
Zambia		X
North and Central America:
Antigua and Barbuda	X
Bahamas	X	X
Belize	X
Dominica		X
Grenada	X	X
Guadeloupe	X	X
Guatmala	X
Jamaica	X
Martinique	X	X
Saint Lucia		X
Trinidad and Tobago	X
South America:
French Guyana	X	X
Paraguay	X
Asia:
Bahrain	X	X
Cyprus	X
Jordan	X
Korea, Rep. of	X
Myanmar		X
Nepal	X	X
Oman	X
Philippines	X
Saudi Arabia	X
Sri Lanka	X
Thailand	X
Tonga	X
Turkey	X
Yemen Arab Rep.	X
Oceania:
Fiji		X
Niue		X
Western Samoa		X

Source: FAO (1997)

• Identifying and carrying out actions needed to improve the situation: medium and long term data generating and data management strategies along with resource commitment, an implementation plan and a monitoring system are needed. This could be part of the national efforts to rehabilitate national statistical institutions.

Formulation of strategies for maximizing the use of available data.

In order to have a more comprehensive picture of rural women's participation in food production and food security, alternative opportunities should be explored for further development of relevant data systems that are both cost-efficient and organizationally sustainable. Four possible strategies for action are considered:

1. Supplementing the data from agricultural surveys, available national and subnational data from population censuses and labour force surveys, household income and expenditure surveys, etc.

2. Developing common coding systems and methods for data merging between population and agricultural censuses.

3. Increase the use of diagnosis and evaluation surveys. These methods are avitally important to measure productivity and technical efficiency by sex in various socio-cultural, family and production contexts.

Moreover, in most cases, qualitative indicators as well as quantitative measures are needed in order to achieve meaningful and valid analytical models.

CONCLUSIONS

Statistics are both an instrument of knowledge and a tool for advocacy. There is a need for joint and concerted efforts between FAO and its member governments, on the one hand, and between FAO and other UN and international specialized institutions on the other, to obtain meaningful results in the field of gender disaggregated statistics.

In order to ascertain accurately the real situation of rural women and men and their labour contribution, development agents should draw qualitative information from sources such as socio-anthropological studies, values and attitudes surveys, market analysis and feasibility studies. As regards more specifically rural women, they should also use special studies on key issues such as land and credit access, institutions and participation in rural organizations. This implies a series of adjustments:

• changes in political attitudes towards women and their access to and control over resources;

• changes in the definition and measurement of economic activities so as to accommodate household and productive activities, including food processing, marketing, performed by women which are very often ignored in government statistics.

• changes in the scope and methodology used for collecting, exploiting, diffusing and using information and data;

• raising the public's and policy makers' awareness on the importance of the multiple roles of women and thus leading to the promotion of their social and economic advancement in the national development plans.

• finding new indicators and mechanisms to assess and monitor the progress made in targeting development interventions at rural women;

• securing rural women's access to information and to become eventually producers, gatherers and diffusers of information, interacting with policy makers and planners and communicating through their own words and images.

• convincing mass media such as newspapers, radio, television, films, websites, to allocate special space, time and voice to rural women.

Governments should be aware of the fact that by addressing the issues of gender equality, they will also touch upon those of labour force dynamics and development, productivity and poverty. Moreover, improving gender statistics is part of a strategy to create an enabling environment for improving food security and achieving sustainable development.