Guidelines for mainstreaming the gender perspective in statistical production

In order to generate data that accurately capture the persistence and magnitude of societal inequalities, the gender and intersectional perspectives must be mainstreamed into statistical production. As noted in the Montevideo Strategy for Implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda within the Sustainable Development Framework by 2030 (2016), it is also crucial for “transforming data into information, information into knowledge and knowledge into political decisions” (ECLAC, 2017a).

Official statistics are therefore an indispensable source of information for use in the design and implementation of policies and programmes that will help to achieve gender equality and autonomy for women.

Over the past 45 years, the region has been forging agreements within the framework of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean that have built upon preceding agreements in order to made headway towards these goals. Those agreements are reflected in the Regional Gender Agenda. In the Buenos Aires Commitment, adopted at the fifteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022, the countries of the region pledged to “promote gender mainstreaming in national statistical systems through coordinated work between bodies that produce and use information and guaranteeing the allocation of a sufficient budget and the periodicity of measurements and the dissemination of information” and to “promote the adoption of a gender, intersectional and intercultural perspective in the production and use of statistical information”. This commitment is also embodied in the ninth pillar, on information systems, of the Montevideo Strategy (2016).

In order to provide support and direction for this effort, the Guidelines for mainstreaming the gender perspective in statistical production are designed to serve as a conceptual and methodological tool for mainstreaming the gender perspective in the compilation of the official statistics of the countries of the region. It is a tool that offers concepts, approaches and recommendations for gender mainstreaming in the management of national statistical systems, the institutional environment of information-producing agencies and the eight phases of the official statistics production process. The Guidelines also provide a conceptual framework for the gender perspective in the field of statistical production and outline approaches for establishing policies and procedures for national statistical systems.