National portal on gender data planned

ISLAMABAD:

To address the lack of reliable, comprehensive and consistent national data on gender and the status of women in Pakistan, a new national data portal will be launched by the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) and the United Nations (UN) Women Pakistan.

The first-of-its-kind portal aims to generate comprehensive, localised sex-disaggregated data for inclusive response and recovery plans and the effective implementation, monitoring and reporting of international commitments on gender equality including Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

A statement issued by UN Pakistan on Wednesday said that the portal will be developed by their technical partner in the endeavour, the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) and it is expected to be launched soon.

During the first virtual meeting of a Technical Review Group recently, partners had expressed concerns over various aspects of available gender data in the country. They said that various streams of data sets exist at the national and provincial levels, but they need to be integrated through a comprehensive platform that can generate analysis and reports for guiding policymakers and other stakeholders to advance the gender equality agenda.

“Gender statistics is not just about sex-disaggregated data. We need gender statistics to highlight areas where progress is made, provide evidence of change and identify gaps that need to be addressed,” said Aisha Mukhtar, the country representative at UN Women Pakistan.

“The National Gender Data Portal is about improving the availability and use of gender statistics for policy action.”

The group voiced the need to improve collection of data on lives of women and girls in Pakistan, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 2^nd, 2020.