1GzuFGC

censuses, time use and violence against women andgirls, among others. 24 These resources can greatlyimprove the production of gender statistics.In some cases, new methodological work is needed.Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE)is a three-year initiative led by the United NationsStatistics Division and UN Women, in collaborationwith the Food and Agriculture Organization ofthe United Nations, the World Bank, the AsianDevelopment Bank, the African Development Bankand the Organisation for Economic Co-operationand Development (OECD). EDGE aims to providea platform for international data and metadatacompilation covering basic health, education andemployment indicators, but it is also developingnew standards and guidelines for gendersensitivemeasurement of ownership of assets andentrepreneurship. EDGE is piloting data collectionin several countries. 25 A similar initiative is Data2X,which is a global partnership that aims to fill datagaps in five areas: health, education, economicopportunities, political participation and humansecurity. 26Additional methodological work is needed ina number of other areas. One example is themeasurement of gender pay gaps. Besides thedifficulties in measuring these gaps for selfemployedworkers, the raw unadjusted genderpay gap, as presented in Annex 4, captures thedifference between men’s and women’s earningsbut does not tell us enough about the underlyingdrivers of gender inequality in pay. For example, ashighlighted in Chapter 2, the gender pay gap oftenincreases once education is accounted for. Decliningwage gaps in some countries may therefore be theresult of women’s increasing levels of educationwhile other forms of gender discrimination remainunchanged. Context specific factors - not onlywomen and men’s varying levels of education, butalso related to types of employment, hours worked,and institutional and policy environments – can alsomake cross-country comparisons of the unadjustedpay gap difficult.The measurement of women’s voice andparticipation also needs some work. Householdsurveys usually include questions for women aboutdecision-making at the household level, whichprovide valuable insights into women’s voiceand agency in their daily lives. Women’s politicalparticipation, however, is currently measuredusing the percentage of women in nationalparliaments, which does not reveal anything aboutthe impact of women’s representation on policy orabout women’s decision-making in other spaces,including in local governments or civil societyorganizations.As shown throughout this report, women’smovements play a critical part in catalysing change,so measuring the strength and impact of these mustbe a central component of understanding women’svoice and participation. However, because suchmeasures are inherently qualitative, developingindicators that are comparable across countries isdifficult. Greater collaboration between statisticaloffices, researchers (both quantitative andqualitative) and civil society is necessary to developbetter indicators that can capture processes of socialtransformation.247