Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

Chapter 10
Data and indicators for
monitoring progress
The previous chapters have discussed the seven strategic priorities that need
to be addressed to accelerate progress toward Millennium Development
Goal 3. This chapter suggests indicators to use in monitoring progress on
these strategic priorities at country and international levels. These indicators
are intended to supplement, or in some cases to substitute for, the indicators
chosen by the UN expert group to assess progress during 1990–2015,
the period when the Millennium Development Targets are expected to be
met. 1
The task force has not recommended adoption of new international or
country-level targets for the seven strategic priorities. However, countries may
wish to set their own quantifiable, time-bound targets for establishing national
or subnational progress on each of the seven strategic priorities. Examples of
such targets to be achieved by 2015 are universal access to sexual and reproductive
health services through the primary healthcare system, ensuring the
same rate of progress or faster among the poor and other marginalized groups
(strategic priority 2) and a 30 percent share of seats for women in national
parliaments (strategic priority 6).
For the indicators discussed below to become operational, national governments
and the international system need to improve the quality and frequency
with which sex-disaggregated data are collected. Considerable improvements
have been made in gender statistics over the last decade. Data users know much
more today about differences in women’s and men’s situations. Furthermore,
users of data are asking more questions and demanding high-quality statistics.
Yet, cross-country data are still lacking on many topics that are important for
assessing inequalities between women and men within and across countries.
The conclusion to this chapter suggests key areas for improving current data
gathering efforts.