Joint project to effectively record data on women and girls

Even though many organizations around the world have been working with great dedication to ensure basic human rights for people; there is no denying the fact a lot more needs to be done to help women get equal status and rights. One of the biggest challenges in addressing these issues can be the lack of data that can accurately point out these issues and those affected by it.

To address this important problem, Data2X, a joint project by the Clinton Foundation, the United Nations Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation , will allow policymakers to understand these problems better by collecting data more efficiently, a lot of which remains incomplete today.

According to a report by News Week, numbers on global maternal mortality rates are incomplete, statistics regarding women and unpaid work are flawed and conflict-related gender-based violence figures are also missing. Former State of Secretary, Hilary Clinton said, “You can’t understand what the problem is if you don’t have a good grasp of what the facts and figures are.”

The Clinton Foundation: Hillary Clinton

Picture By: Garavi Gujarat News

She also said, “I have been championing the rights of women and girls around the world and here at home for many years… and I got tired of seeing...foreign leaders, business executives, even senior officials in our own government...smile and nod when I raised these issues… ‘Oh right, I knew she was going to raise women and girls, I will just sit here and smile, it will pass, and then we’ll talk about really important things.’”

Earlier this week, the foundation announced new regional and topical partnerships at a press event in New York City. They will be focusing on six categories of data:

• Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) which will team up with different organizations in Africa and Asia, to record births, death, marriages etc.

• Women’s Work and Employment will look into the employment of women. Hillary Clinton said that on an average, women in India spend an average of six hours per day doing unpaid labor, according to the report.

Women in India: Woman labourers work at a road construction site

Picture By: Reuters

• Supply Side Data on Financial Services will concentrate on measuring the gender gap in financial services.

• Women’s Subjective Well-Being and Poverty. There is a lack of gender-segregated data that makes it impossible to understand the exact poverty figures amongst women.

• Big Data and Gender will analyze women’s cell phone data usage patterns to understand women’s socioeconomic welfare, mobility patterns and financial activity.

• Improved Gender Data on U.S. Foreign Assistance Programs.  Specific to the country, this will collect sex and age specific data to recognize the ones most in need of aid are reached.

ORIGINAL SOURCE: News Week

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