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Nepal

UN Women/Narendra Shrestha

Updates

The national gender statistics assessment and project document was completed and endorsed by several key government stakeholders, including CBS and the National Planning Commission (NPC). The results were further validated at a workshop attended by 31 participants, including parliamentarians, government officials and civil society representatives from seven provinces.
UN Women held several consultations with CBS and the NPC and facilitated a Nepal Time-Use Survey Workshop to advocate for quality time-use data, which is currently missing in Nepal.
CBS representatives were supported by UN Women to participate in several capacity-building workshops, including the Regional Workshop on Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX) for Asian countries in December 2018. As a result of CBS participation, the Government of Nepal will convene a country-specific SDMX workshop in 2019 to share lessons learned.
Jointly organized by UN Women, the Ministry of Women, Children and Senior Citizens and UNFPA in May 2019, a workshop on how to conduct the upcoming Violence against Women Prevalence Survey was attended by 104 participants from government, civil society organizations, development partners, UN agencies and academia.

Progress of the Women Count project in Nepal

For detailed results go to the annual report

0-19% 20-39% 40-59% 60-79% 80-100%

Country Fact Sheet

How are we making women count in Nepal?

Photo: Aisha Faquir / World Bank

Create an Enabling Environment

The challenges

Despite political will to monitor gender equality commitments, gender statistics are weak or lacking in Nepal. The National Strategy for the Development of Statistics does not specifically mention gender statistics. Due to ever-increasing demands for data and recent reforms, the mandate to produce statistics has been extended to several institutions, rendering the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) less effective as a leader and coordinator. Its budget has decreased, while other ministries and agencies have no specific budgets for statistical activities.

The Women Count response includes

Ensuring that the Statistics Act implementation integrates a gender perspective, designating core staff and resources for such efforts, and advocating for the national statistical strategy to explicitly include a gender statistics action and financial plan;

Revising and adopting a minimum set of gender indicators as a guide for the federal, provincial and local production and compilation of gender statistics; and

Establishing a coordination mechanism for producing and disseminating gender statistics and capacity-building in relevant offices.

Increase Data Production

The challenges

Nepal lacks mechanisms to monitor many SDG targets, with data available for only 37 per cent of all gender-related global indicators. Most data are extracted from national censuses and surveys which are undertaken only every 5 or 10 years, limiting their effectiveness. Census and survey results are usually disaggregated by sex but often not to subnational levels. Key data gaps have also been identified in important areas such as time use, violence against women and girls and ‘perception’ surveys.

The Women Count response includes

Supporting the conduct of a time-use survey as well as data collection and production of violence-against-women-related SDG indicators;

Developing a capacity-building plan for the regular production of Tier I gender-related indicators from census/surveys and alternative data sources; and

Reprocessing Tier I/II gender-related SDG indicators from existing census/survey data, with disaggregation at provincial and local levels, wherever possible, and publishing these for SDG reporting.

Nepal - Narendra Shrestha - improve image

Improve Data Accessibility & Use

The challenges

Data accessibility is a key challenge for non-government users, with many stakeholders relying on personal and informal contacts to access gender data. When data is available, there are difficulties in using it. Information like metadata may be missing, analytical capacities may be weak, and access can be unpredictable due to the absence of a data dissemination policy or up-to-date release calendar.

The Women Count response includes

Supporting the regular publication of statistical reports and research on gender across the SDGs as well as knowledge products based on violence-against-women and time-use surveys and other gender data;

Assisting the design of national and subnational web-based dashboards presenting a minimum core set of gender indicators and gender-related SDG indicators;

Institutionalizing user-producer dialogues at all levels; and

Supporting capacity-development for subnational governments on the use and analysis of gender statistics in their planning, budgeting, service-delivery, policymaking and decision-making.