During the 19th meeting of the Group, held on 30 September 2025 in Tbilisi, Georgia, the session “Looking back and looking forward: a regional lens to the evolution of gender statistics at Beijing+30 and beyond” brought together the five United Nations Regional Commissions to share advances, challenges, and priorities in the production, analysis, and use of gender statistics, in the framework of the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

The Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Gender Statistics (IAEG-GS) has brought together, since 2006, representatives from international organizations, national statistical offices, and development partners, with the aim of strengthening the production and use of gender statistics worldwide. Coordinated by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the Group promotes technical cooperation, reviews progress, and sets priorities to improve the availability, quality, and comparability of data underpinning gender equality and women’s empowerment policies.

The panel featuring ECLAC, represented by Lucía Scuro, Senior Social Affairs Officer of the Division for Gender Affairs, was moderated by María Isabel Cobos, Chief of the Social and Gender Statistics Section of the United Nations Statistics Division. She emphasized that, 30 years after the Beijing Platform for Action, gender statistics have been strengthened and remain essential for public policymaking. She also highlighted the progress made in institutionalizing gender statistics and the budgetary efforts to ensure that national statistical systems incorporate data collection with a gender perspective.

During her intervention, Lucía Scuro highlighted the main achievements of the region since the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action. Among these, she underscored the role of regional cooperation and the development of international statistical frameworks that contribute to the mainstreaming of the gender perspective. She emphasized the importance of Guidelines for Mainstreaming the Gender Perspective in Statistical Production and the Classification of Time-Use Activities for Latin America and the Caribbean as key regional milestones. Another major achievement highlighted was the creation of the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, which has strengthened the production, use, and dissemination of gender statistics, fostered technical exchange between national statistical offices and national machineries for the advancement of women, and supported follow-up to regional commitments. She also pointed out progress in measuring women’s economic autonomy, the systematic production of indicators on poverty and gender inequality, and the region’s leadership in the generation of time-use statistics, with official surveys in at least 24 countries and the official calculation of satellite accounts of unpaid work in five countries. In addition, she highlighted advances in the production of statistics on violence against women, with consolidated systems in 21 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Regarding future challenges, the ECLAC representative emphasized the need to strengthen the gender perspective in national statistical systems and to ensure sustainable financing. She also underscored the importance of incorporating new dimensions, such as the relationship between care, the environment, and climate change, and of fostering innovation through the use of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and geospatial information. She highlighted the need to make visible the multiple forms of discrimination affecting women and girls in all their diversity, as well as to harmonize definitions and methodologies for measuring gender-based violence. Finally, she called for strengthening cooperation between data producers and users, promoting data dissemination, and ensuring the sustainability of statistical processes.

From the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), Andrés Vikat, Chief of the Social and Demographic Statistics Section, emphasized methodological advances in measuring gender equality in the economic sphere, particularly in employment and wages, and highlighted the readiness of national teams to address emerging issues such as gender identity and the digital divide.

Petra Nahmias, Chief of the Population and Social Statistics Section of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), presented progress in the production of gender-responsive statistics on climate change and disasters, through the Disaster-related Statistics Framework, which guides the systematic collection of sex-disaggregated data in contexts of emergency and climate resilience.

Meanwhile, Mustafa Khawaja, from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), underlined progress in integrating gender perspectives into national policies across Arab countries, strengthening technical capacities, and increasing data availability on gender-based violence and child marriage, which has contributed to a rise in women’s representation in national parliaments across the region.

Lastly, in her closing remarks, Lucía Scuro recalled the agreement reached by the member States in the Montevideo Strategy, particularly in its implementation pillar 9: “transforming data into information, information into knowledge and knowledge into political decision.” This continues to guide ECLAC's work to ensure that the production and use of gender statistics translate into more effective, evidence-based public policies aimed at equality and the full exercise of women's rights.

ECLAC’s participation in this meeting reaffirms the commitment to strengthening the statistical capacities of Latin American and Caribbean countries and to promoting high-quality, timely, and comparable data that contribute to advancing substantive gender equality and women’s autonomy. As reaffirmed in the recently adopted Tlatelolco Commitment: “Foster, strengthen and consolidate gender mainstreaming in national statistical systems through coordinated work between bodies that produce and use information, applying regional standards adopted by member States and guaranteeing the allocation of a sufficient budget, the periodicity of measurements and the dissemination of information.”