It is necessary to transform statistical work to advance towards gender equality: ECLAC

On the occasion of the month of the commemoration of International Women’s Day and the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the creation of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico (INEGI); the National Institute for Women (INMUJERES), INEGI and the College of Mexico (Colmex) organized the hybrid event “Tell and make visible. Gender and care statistics promoted by INEGI and INMUJERES”

The event was inaugurated by Silvia Giorguli Saucedo, President of Colmex; Nadine Gasman Zylbermann, President INMUJERES; and Graciela Márquez Colín, President of INEGI, who highlighted the centrality of the gender perspective within the objectives of the country’s statistical production. Within this framework, INEGI presented the results of strategic statistical operations to inform the design of actions towards equality in Mexico, including the National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relations (ENDIREH) 2021, the Population and Housing Census of 2020 and Well-being indicators with a gender perspective obtained from the Time Use Survey (ENUT) and the National Self-reported Well-being Survey (ENBIARE).

Likewise, a discussion was held on “The use of gender statistics for public policies”, with the participation of Belén Sanz Luque, Representative of UN Women in Mexico; Gabriela Rodríguez Ramírez, General Secretary of the National Population Council; Patricia Uribe Zúñiga, Executive Secretary of INMUJERES and President of the Specialized Technical Committee for Information with a Gender Perspective; Mónica Meltis Vejar, Executive Director of Data Cívica, AC.; and Ana Güezmes, Director of ECLAC’s Gender Affairs Division. The moderation was in charge of Celia Aguilar, General Director of Planning and Evaluation of INMUJERES.

During her speech, Ana Güezmes pointed out: “At ECLAC we have been reporting the cascade of crises that we are going through and that exacerbate the historical gaps and the structural knots of gender inequality. We are facing a development crisis that requires us to act with a sense of urgency and raise the level of ambition and scale in recovery efforts. She added that ECLAC member states have approved the Buenos Aires Commitment that proposes a bold solution, the care society, a new style of development that puts equality and the sustainability of life and the planet at the center, a courageous and civilizing response to the development crisis. And as has been done systematically in the regional Gender Agenda, “reaffirms the importance to strengthen the institutionality and architecture of gender equality, through the hierarchization at the highest level of the mechanisms for the advancement of women and the mainstreaming of the gender perspective at the different levels and powers of the State, by increasing the allocation of financial, technical and human resources, budgeting with a gender perspective and monitoring and accountability with citizen participation”.

During her participation, Ana Güezmes also recognized Mexico as a pioneer in the generation of time use measurements, whose first exercise of this type dates back to 1996; and she highlighted the country as a fundamental global and regional actor in the consolidation of gender statistics and the Regional Gender Agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean. In this regard, Mexico has hosted the International Meetings on Gender Statistics (IEEG, since 2000) and the International Meetings of Information Specialists on Time Use and Unpaid Work (since 2002). In addition, Mexico will be the host country of the next Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, to be held in 2025.

In the same sense, INEGI has led the Working Group on Gender Statistics within the framework of the Statistical Conference of the Americas, a group that achieved the development of milestone products such as the Classification of Time Use Activities for Latin America and the Caribbean (CAUTAL), the Methodological Guide on Time Use Measurements in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Group is currently preparing the Guide to Mainstreaming the Gender Perspective in Statistical Production for Latin America and the Caribbeanwith the accompaniment of ECLAC and UN Women.

In addition, Director Güezmes pointed out some good practices to achieve “transforming data into information, information into knowledge and knowledge into political decision” (the motto of Axis 9 on Information Systems of the Montevideo Strategy). In that sense, she explained, these good practices included the diversification of sources of statistical information, and the existence of inter-institutional committees where entities and organizations that produce and use statistical information meet. They also include strategies for mass dissemination of gender statistics, such as observatories and specialized publications in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean; transparency, to the extent that microdata is increasingly public on issues such as the use of time; and the promotion of exercises directed specifically towards the design of public policies making use of official statistics, such as geospatial statistics on care supply and demand. Thus, Ana Güezmes pointed out, statistical data is not an end, but a means for taking effective action.