September 2004

Adding a social dimension to agricultural statistics

Incorporation of gender considerations into FAO’s statistical support to member countries

by John Curry
Gender and Development Service
FAO Gender and Population Division

As part of the Strategic Framework for FAO: 2000-2015 (FAO 1999c), the Gender and Population Division (SDW) of FAO contributes to the integrated use of data and information for Sustainable Development through the incorporation of gender and population factors into national agricultural statistics. To this end, the Gender and Development Service (SDWW) has collaborated since the early 1990s with the Statistics Division (ESS) to build capacity at national level by providing training and technical support in gender and statistics for ministries of agriculture and central statistics offices (CSOs) for Member Countries.

This capacity building can be seen as a multi-faceted process involving several or all of the following activity areas:

Sensitisation/Training of both producers and users (actual and/or potential) in gender issues, concepts and tools for the production, analysis and use of gender-disaggregated data;
Promotion of user-producer dialogue to ensure quality and relevance of agricultural statistics;
Production of technical guidelines for gender and statistics to support data production and use;
Technical Support to agricultural censuses/surveys in GDD
Separate studies to develop statistical information on gender and rural women
Recoding/retabulation of existing data to produce gender-disaggregated data sets
Preparation of GDD data bases/data sets
Dissemination strategies
Linking with other institutions to avoid duplication of effort, develop common concepts, definitions, methodologies, etc.

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For related information, please see:

Establishment of a core set of gender-sensitive indicators for the agricultural sector: A preliminary proposal