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ABSTRACT
Gender statistics play a crucial role in social research and in the creation of gender sensitive policies. Gender statistics document the situation of women and men around the world, making it easier to raise awareness about inequalities between them, to monitor gender equality and promote actionable change. There is thus a need to encourage awareness about gender statistics and their usefulness in gender mainstreaming. The paper has different aims: (1) to discuss the role of gender statistics and gender sensitive indicators; (2) to give an overview of the main gender sensitive European databases; (3) to present the European Commission Strategy on Gender Equality; (4) to display information collected by the European Institute for Gender Equality (Eige) database; (5) to promote proposal for increasing the gender sensitivity of social indicators.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Alessandra Decataldo is Assistant Professor at the University of Milano Bicocca, expert in the evaluation of university policies, big data, longitudinal analysis of administrative data, experimental designs; from 2014 to 2015 she was the Italian expert of the research ‘Study on drop-out and completion in Higher Education in Europe’ funded by European Commission, Directorate-General for Education and Culture.
Elisabetta Ruspini is Senior Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. She has extensive teaching and research experience on gender and generational issues. Among her recent publications: F. Corbisiero and E. Ruspini (eds), Sociologia del Futuro. Studiare la Società del XXI Secolo [The Sociology of the Future] (CEDAM, 2016); I. Crespi and E. Ruspini (eds), Balancing Work and Family in a Changing Society: The Fathers’ Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
ORCID
Alessandra Decataldo http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2748-1903
Elisabetta Ruspini http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1251-751X
Notes
* The essay is the outcome of a joint research. In the final writing, the Introduction is by Elisabetta Ruspini and Sections 2–5 by Alessandra Decataldo. Section 6 is written by both authors.
1. Equality does not mean that women and men are the same, but rather that women’s and men’s opportunities, rights and responsibilities do not depend on whether they are born female or male (UN Citation2002).
2. From 2016 the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have replaced the MDG for the following 15 years. The fifth of them is Gender Equality.
3. According to the data provided by Italian National Institute of Statistics–ISTAT (Citation2016), approximately 47.2% of women in Italy aged between 15 and 64 are employed. Furthermore, approximately 30% of female workers have a part-time job; numerous women have occasional and seasonal jobs or perform unpaid jobs such as childcare and housework.
4. An index is a multi-dimensional synthesis referring to a collection of indicators and statistics.
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