The global crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is deepening fast, leaving researchers and policymakers scrambling to collect and analyse data to grasp its impact on affected countries and territories.
COVID-19 is an urgent health crisis, but one which will have massive global social and economic impacts that will reverberate for years to come. In addition to the immediate threat of the virus itself, the pandemic and its response have increased women’s share of unpaid care work, heightened the risk of violence against women, and led to job losses (particularly among women in the informal sector) and rising poverty rates.
The immediate need for gender data cannot be overemphasized. Tracking and responding to the effects of COVID-19 for women and girls requires a robust supply of gender statistics and disaggregated data that are relevant, granular and timely. Demand for gender data is accelerating, even as options to expand supply have become more limited as overburdened and under-capacitated national statistical systems become overstretched.
Join the conversation with UN Women, representatives from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and State Department for Gender, Maldives Bureau of Statistics and Ministry of Gender, and PARIS21 to discuss how we can close gender data gaps within the COVID-19 crisis. Findings from UN Women COVID-19 rapid gender assessments as well as PARIS21 piloting of gender projects will be presented, to shed light on the challenges and opportunities for strengthening gender statistics systems amid the crisis.
