Full compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) “entails the rooting out of gender discrimination within the public sphere, the private sphere, the domestic sphere, and the individual sphere” (Englehart and Miller, 2014, p. 24). While ambitious and difficult to enforce, efforts to at least understand, which must come before solving, the complex issues around gender discrimination start with the accounting. The Gender Data Portal from the World Bank is just that accounting.
The homepage allows the user to look at statistics by country, by topic, indicators or microdata. Starting by country, the user can see at a glance ratios of female to male labor force participation rates in percentages, by sex and age and income; percentage of women in paid labor; and percentage of women who are self-employed. Change the tab on the side and find health data: maternal mortality data, female life expectancy, female prevalence of HIV and births attended by skilled health staff. Change the tab for education and find enrolment and completion of primary and secondary school, as well as female literacy rates. Seats held by women in national parliament and proportions of women in ministerial levels are next, followed by the interesting tables for agency. Here the user finds adolescent fertility rates and contraceptive rates. Users can also search by indicators to look specifically for that topic in a country or do a regional or even world comparison. Some of the topics include the non-discrimination clause mentioned in the constitution, spousal violence in past 12 months, women who believe for any number of reasons that a husband is justified in beating his wife and more. Cameroon had 31.4 per cent of women who had suffered spousal violence in 2011, to name but one example. It’s possible to look for the prevalence of female genital mutilation, female smokers and share of women in the non-agricultural sector. In short, it is possible to find very important data, however flawed. Often, of course, girls and women do not report the violence done unto them, whether it be economic, psychological or physical, but these statistics give a glimpse into the experiences of women around the world.
The World Bank’s Gender Data Portal also links out to many very recent reports which supplement the raw data with narratives. Some that are retrieved immediately are: Women, Business and the Law, Gender Equality, Poverty Reduction and Inclusive Growth, and Voice and Agency and Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity. All of these online reports explore in more depth the particular area of women’s experiences. One online book The Little Book on Gender, has compiled data by region and country on women, so it is easy to see at a glance some basic indicators for sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia or an individual country.
It doesn’t count if we don’t count it. The World Bank’s Gender Data Portal gets students one step closer to understanding the world from the vantage point of women, sadly left out of most of the standard encyclopedias of countries we have on our ready reference shelves. At the very least, our gender and women’s studies and political science students should be introduced to this valuable tool.
