When it comes to understanding and fostering women’s economic empowerment, measuring the gender dimension of trade has emerged as an increasingly important endeavour. But for a long time, the lack of data on gender equality in international trade has posed a bottleneck, hampering countries’ abilities to apply the gender lens needed to design policies that equally empower women and men. To bridge this gap, UNCTAD in 2018 began developing a framework to help countries link existing national statistical data to assess gender in trade. The process, called “microdata linking”, offers a cost-effective and sustainable alternative to creating new one-off surveys. The framework has been tested by half a dozen countries, and the methodology is now outlined in UNCTAD’s newly published guidelines for measurement of gender-in-trade statistics, aimed at helping national statistical offices enhance data to inform trade policy development. “Today’s increasingly complex data needs require interoperable data systems to help derive new insights from the data we have,” said Anu Peltola, who leads statistics work at UNCTAD. “This is especially important in developing countries where resources are scarce. We cannot afford to leave data unused.” Ms. Peltola added. Pilots lay bare persisting gender gap in trade The guidelines were developed as […]
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