Ethiopian policymakers are using the findings of gender data produced with UN Women's support to inform gender-responsive changes in various sectors.
“There is a big concern and demand for gender data as a cross-cutting issue,” said Fekade Asrat, Senior National Statistics Data Quality and Standards Expert at Ethiopia Statistics Services (ESS). “Gender data [are] getting increased attention in various sectors – most notably agriculture, labour and education, as well as in household expenditure surveys.”
A broad spectrum of gender data published in the 2024 Country Gender Equality Profile (CGEP), produced by UN Women and partners, underscored gender gaps and inequalities for different groups of women. These data significantly informed the draft 2024 National Gender Equality and Women Empowerment’s Policy , which is pending final endorsement to replace the 1993 National Women’s Policy. The intersecting disadvantages illustrated in the CGEP were critical in shaping the policy’s priorities, which include: unpaid care work, employment, education, gender-based violence, leadership, political participation, humanitarian action, decision-making, and women’s participation and ownership in agriculture.
Changes to migration laws, policies and programmes
Migration laws have also been influenced by data on domestic workers. For example, the Overseas Employment Amendment Proclamation 1246/2021 was revised to remove educational requirements for domestic work, promote equal employment opportunities for migrant women, and provide protection and support to Ethiopian workers overseas.
“The previous migration law was neutral – it didn’t look at gender at all or where women migrate,” explains UN Women Ethiopia Coordination Specialist Yelfigne Abegaz, noting that UN Women shared research on paid and unpaid care work and a 2021 ESS migration survey when the Government was in the process of revising the law. “One of the major findings was that we had many migrants who were people with disabilities coming to the country, so that really triggered the Government to collect evidence.”
The Making Migration Safe for Women (MMS) programme was launched by UN Women Ethiopia in late 2023 with the express goal to create “strong synergies with Women Count to ensure that the programme advances the production and analysis of sex-disaggregated data and gender statistics in the context of migration.”
Under the MSS programme, a 2024 policy brief on migrant women domestic workers revealed that 95% of economic migrants to Gulf Cooperation countries were women, and that they were contributing huge remittances – far outweighing remittances from Ethiopian men (averaging USD $526 from women, versus USD 337 from men).
These and other remittance findings have contributed to changes such as domestic workers now being certified from basic housekeeping and upgraded to primary and high levels with additional skills provisions (e.g., IT for workers who are not highly literate). Workers are now connected to the international labour market through an Overseas Employment Unit. Gender data also played a big role in helping to recognize domestic workers as a resource that needs to be harnessed through a job-creation and skills commission.
The Government of Ethiopia also drafted a National Migration Policy in 2021, which is still awaiting ratification, that integrates gender as a cross-cutting theme across all goals and priority areas. The draft policy outlines measures, including gender-responsive overseas employment policies and gender-responsive data collection and analysis models, among others. Gender considerations in data collection are further emphasized as a way to ensure evidence-based, gender-responsive policymaking and responses that cater to the specific needs of migrant women.
The MSS programme also plans to conduct a survey of migrant women in 2025, which will collect data including their access to social protection, such as pensions or disability benefits.
Changes to WEE and agriculture programmes
The December 2022 Gender Asset Gap Survey, produced by ESS, the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs (MoWSA), Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and UN Women (under Women Count) highlighted that the share of women’s wealth relative to men’s declines from about 58% in the lowest wealth quintile to 47% in the highest wealth quintile, and noted women’s lower participation in decision-making, as well as structural barriers faced by female-headed households. UN Women also highlighted research showing that female-headed households were 3.7% less productive than male-headed households, due to factors such as soil fertility, limited access to credit, machinery and extension services.
In response, Abegaz says Ethiopia introduced a draft law to secure women’s land rights in 2024. Over the past three years, MoA agricultural programmes have also been adapted by targeting women for extension services, adjusting training schedules to accommodate their time constraints, establishing childcare spaces during meetings and promoting women’s cooperatives to improve market access.
“Before, the concept of a farmer was solely based on a male farmer. But the data showed that there is a big discrepancy in the production by women,” says Abegaz. “When designing projects, the Ministry of Agriculture will now organize trainings in local areas rather than holding them in cities, to ensure women can attend. This is data influencing projects. The Government is taking measures to make sure women are reached.”
She says the survey findings, which revealed huge poverty pockets in certain areas, equally shaped UN Women’s own WEE programming, which is more targeted to where poverty is worse since 2023.
