On 7 May, Papa Seck, chief statistician of UN Women, delivered the keynote address at the workshop on ‘Advancing Women’s Economic Empowerment through Data´ in Valparaíso, Chile. In his remarks, Papa underscored the importance of gender data for "putting the spotlight on inequality and underscoring the need to realize the rights of poor and marginalized women and girls who are left behind. When used for advocacy and awareness-raising, they can stimulate democratic debate on gender equality, ensuring accountability for the realization of women’s rights."
The workshop, which took place on 7-8 May, was organized by APEC Chile 2019 and the Australian Government, with a goal to bring together experts and practitioners to highlight the importance of producing and collecting sex-disaggregated data for evidence-based policy design. Other speakers included experts from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), International Trade Center (ITC), the World Bank, among others. It was held in the margins of the Second APEC Senior Officials Meeting.
In addition to being the keynote speaker, Seck also participated in a session on 'Best Practices for Catalyzing Gender Equality: Improving Gender sensitive Data Collection', where he shared the example of the Women Count programme in improving how gender data is collected, used and shared.
