Pacific Island Countries - Gender Indicators Project

Making gender equality count
How do we know we are making progress towards gender equality? By crunching numbers and using them to monitor progress towards development targets and goals.

Consultant Kim Robertson, a former Secretariat of the Pacific Community statistics adviser, has taken on a project for Human Development Programme and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat which will deliver a core set of gender indicators for Pacific Island countries and territories so they can measure how women are faring.

Gender indicators can include statistics such as the number of girls who complete primary school, or the prevalence of women’s contraceptive use, and when appropriately collated and analysed can provide a very clear and comprehensive picture of women’s overall status.

“We need to have this information to see how we are measuring up to road maps like the Pacific Platform for Action on Advancement of Women and Gender Equality, the Pacific Plan and the Millennium Development Goals,” says Kim, a New Zealander who started her career with Statistics New Zealand. “This project is innovative, building on lessons learned. Pacific Island countries and territories will be involved with the development of the core set of indicators.”

Kim’s work involves compiling a framework which will marry a wide range of existing statistical indicators, national policies in areas such as gender and development, and the goals outlined in blueprints such as the Pacific Platform for Action, the Pacific Plan, the reporting requirements of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the MDGs.

She will seek feedback from Pacific women’s focal points and statistics offices as well as regional and national agencies before delivering a practical, user-friendly “database-ready” product. It will eventually be accompanied by training material developed specifically for non-statisticians so they can compile and analyse the indicators.

Vanuatu-based Kim will report on the progress of her work to the 10th Triennial on Pacific Women, from May 27-31, and the Third Ministerial for Pacific Women, June 1, both to be held at SPC’s Noumea headquarters.

But after the conference there is more to be done. Kim will develop training materials which will help national women’s machineries, other government ministries producing or using gender based statistics and national statistics offices, make good use of the indicators.

Finally, she will review existing SPC data dissemination coverage, methods and strategies to see how the provision of sex-disaggregated data – that is, data that separates out women and men – could be improved, and develop strategies to improve the availability of gender and development information at the regional level and internationally.

HDP Manager Linda Petersen says the project will help countries fill “critical gaps” in the gender equality picture in the Pacific. “This approach will help all of us make more meaningful and lasting contributions to improving it.”