COVID-19 and gender data resources

Yes. Various UN Women regional and country offices have, in some form or another, initiated data collection activities to measure the impact of COVID-19 on the lives of women and girls.  Specifically through UN Women’s global gender data programme, Women Count, at least four regions are leading rapid assessment surveys. The general aim of the survey is to provide information on how the livelihoods and circumstances of women and men are affected by COVID-19. The results of the survey will also inform UN Women’s own programming to respond to the crisis, and our advocacy to improve the well-being of women and girls, during and after the pandemic.  

The Asia and the Pacific Regional Office is rolling out a rapid assessment survey in at least seven countries, starting with the Philippines and extending to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand and Indonesia. The survey is available in regional languages widely used in these countries.

Three other regions – East and Southern Africa, Europe and Central Asia, and Western and Central Africa – have been finalizing and/or working on their survey tools and are in talks with countries that are interested in conducting the survey. In addition, at least three countries – Senegal, United Republic of Tanzania and Viet Nam – are exploring the possibility of including a module on COVID-19 impacts in planned surveys of their national statistical offices.  

The survey responses will cover the following common themes: knowledge of COVID-19, economic empowerment, access to basic services and safety, and unpaid care and domestic work. Some regions/countries have added questions based on their needs and priorities. These additional themes include: violence and safety, social protection, coping mechanisms, household food production, and disability/functional difficulty.  

Given the nature of COVID-19 and related mobility restrictions, traditional ways of collecting information, such as face-to-face interviews with groups or individuals, are currently not possible. We are thus giving participating countries several data collection options, focusing on the use of online or telephone data sources. 

These can be done either as a stand-alone survey or a module on COVID-19 integrated to another survey already being planned or executed. 

The rapid assessment survey will target both women and men, although the scope varies by country. For example, a number of countries are targeting all phone users (e.g. The Philippines). This is, however, limited to women and men phone subscribers. Some countries will be rolled out by governments and will cover a broader population beyond phone subscribers (e.g. Ukraine, Moldova and Pakistan).  

No. The results will be representative of the population of phone subscribers only. In as much as we would like to make the survey as nationally representative as possible, we are very much limited by the data collection modalities.

Data privacy is very important to us and we at UN Women are guided by the Principles Governing International Statistical Activities, particularly its confidentiality principle. That is: individual data collected will be kept strictly confidential and used exclusively for statistical purposes. 

The survey results, once available, will be published on the Women Count Data Hub. Preliminary results for Asia and the Pacific are now available as of 29 April.

UN Women’s COVID-19 resource page contains a live global tracker of cases (see the tab: The emerging picture), as well as regularly updated data on infections by sex, as well as by sex and age, including infections among health-care workers by sex. Provided to UN Women by the WHO, the total number of cases reported by sex may not reflect the current total number of cases, as they are reported from the date when sex-disaggregated data were last available. These may also only reflect a subset of data where countries have reported sex-disaggregated data. 

In addition, UN Women has compiled a list of 29 indicators to support country-level assessments and gender within COVID-19 response plans. The indicators are grouped into 10 policy priority areas. For each, an array of relevant data, statistical indicators and other types of data are provided. Visitors to the page have the option to download the data in either Excel or PDF format. This page will be updated frequently, as more data and research become available, particularly on the gendered impacts of the pandemic and the efforts to address them.