ECLAC Underlines Progress in Gender Statistics in the Region

The availability of gender statistics has taken a leap in Latin America and the Caribbean, giving visibility to women’s issues and allowing the elaboration of public policies, said today Sonia Montaño, Director of the Division for Gender Affairs of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), during the opening of the XV International Meeting on Gender Statistics of Aguascalientes in Mexico.

This annual meeting, which ends on Friday, November 7, is organized by ECLAC, Mexico’s National Institute for Women (INMUJERES), the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) and UN Women, with the support from the Statistical Conference of the Americas (SCA), a subsidiary body of ECLAC.

Montaño highlighted the valuable contribution of the meeting in the development of methodologies and instruments that shed light on the disparities between men and women, especially in terms of time-use, gender violence and quantification of unpaid work.

The official especially stressed the creation of the Working Group on Gender Statistics in 2006 within the Statistical Conference of the Americas. The group is coordinated by INEGI, with INMUJERES and UN Women as consultants, while the technical secretariat office is held by ECLAC’s Division for Gender Affairs.

For the Commission, one of the pending challenges is to incorporate the gender dimension into the measurement of poverty and implement other indicators to nourish the post-2015 development agenda, where gender equality is conceived as a cross-cutting axis.

Other participants in the inauguration of the event, which is held in the capital of the Mexican State of Aguascalientes, include Lorena Cruz, President of INMUJERES; Ana Güezmes, UN Women representative in Mexico; and Eduardo Sojo, President of INEGI, who highlighted the 15th anniversary of the meeting.