U.S. Websites
These Web sites are maintained by governmental and non-governmental organizations in the United States. Although most compile U.S. statistics on women, the Justice Department, State Department, Department of Health & Human Services and the CIA compile statistics globally on topics like adoption and human trafficking.
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL (AFL-CIO)
The Department for Professional Employees of the AFL-CIO maintains a fact sheet, Professional Women: Vital Statistics . It can be found on their Web site, www.dpeaflcio.org , under Programs and Publications> Issue Fact Sheets> Professional Women: Vital Statistics.
BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS (BLS)
The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States Department of Labor provides a guide to BLS Data on Women Workers . There are links to annual publications on women in the work force, Women in the Labor Force: A Databook , and Highlights of Women’s Earnings . nbsp; Because it takes some time to compile the data, the latest edition is usually one or two years prior to the current year.
CENSUS BUREAU
The Census Bureau provides some basic facts about women in the
The Census Bureau tracks data on women-owned businesses in the 2002 Survey of Business Owners (SBO). The Survey of Business Owners is conducted every five years, in years ending in 2 and 7. There is additional information about women-owned businesses from the 2008 Statistical Abstract of the National Data Book, at Business Enterprise: Women and Minority-Owned Businesses .
The Census Bureau issued its first report on adoption in October 2003 from the 2000 census data: www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/001281.html
The Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at
EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION (EEOC)
The EEOC provides statistics about women's employment on on their Statistics page. They have statements about ten different types of discrimination, such as sexual harassment or pregnancy-based discrimination , on their Types of Discrimination page. They also have reports on special topics, such as Job Patterns for Minorities and Women and Glass Ceilings: The Status of Women as Officials and Managers in the Private Sector .
GUTTMACHER INSTITUTE
The Guttmacher Institute provides the results of research on sexual health and reproductive health worldwide. They have data on abortion, contraception, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy, and sex and relationships.
HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES (HHS) DEPARTMENT
The Office on Women’s Health maintains links to data on two dozen women’s health issues, including HIV/AIDS, mental health, reproductive health, smoking, and women’s health generally, on a Statistics page provided by a service called womenshealth.gov, advertised as "The Federal Government Source for Women's Health Information."The Administration for Children & Families section of HSS maintains Rescue & Restore Campaign Fact Sheets on Sex Trafficking in English, Spanish, Polish, Russian and Chinese.
HHS also maintains data on adoption and foster care, broken down by state, at Statistics & Research: Adoption and Foster Care Statistics. The Administration for Children and Families provides Adoption Statistics statistics through their Child Welfare Information Gateway, including both domestic and intercountry adoption.
INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN'S POLICY RESEARCH (IWPR)
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research publishes its own research on women’s status in education, employment and economic security, the family, health, and society. Their reports are extremely useful in translating large amounts of Census Bureau data into something more easily understandable to the non-statistician. Reports in their series on The Status of Women in the States are available in print for Arizona , Georgia , Indiana , Michigan , Ohio and South Carolina in 2006. The 2004 series covers Alaska, Illinois, Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
They provide a report on The Best and Worst State Economies for Women as of December 2006 and a fact sheet: The Best and Worst States Overall for Women in 2004 . A report covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia , The National Overview Report 2004: the Status of Women in the States, is available in print. A state-by-state economic summary, Women’s Economic Status in the States: Wide Disparities by Race, Ethnicity, and Region, is available free on their Web site.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, UNITED STATES
The Office of Justice Programs of the United States Department of Justice maintains Trafficking in Persons: Facts & Figures page through their National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS). The Attorney General provides an Annual Report to Congress and Assessment of the U.S. Government Activities to Combat Trafficking in Persons. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has a Special Report: Profile of Intimate Partner Violence Cases in Large Urban Counties.
NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS
The National Center for Health Statistics is a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States Department of Health & Human Services. They maintain a fact sheet on Women’s Health.
NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR RESEARCH ON WOMEN (NCRW)
Information that is missing, incorrect, or unavailable can be as important an indicator as accurate data that has been collected and disseminated. The National Council for Research on Women maintains The Misinformation Clearinghouse to track how knowledge-based information and science has been distorted in the service of political goals. They have compiled “a 24-page report that documents how crucial data on women and girls is disappearing” entitled MISSING: Information About Women’s Lives.
The NCRW also maintains a list of International Newsletters in English from Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mozambique, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Thailand, Togo, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Zimbabwe.
NATIONAL EATING DISORDERS ASSOCIATION (NEDA)
The National Eating Disorders Association puts out a fact sheet on The Media, Body Image, and Eating Disorders .
NATIONAL MENTAL HEALTH INFORMATION CENTER
The National Mental Health Information Center maintains a fact sheet on Eating Disorders . The National Mental Health Information Center is part of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the United States Department of Health & Human Services. They also maintain a “fast facts” sheet on Women and Depression:
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN (NOW)
The NOW Web site provides overviews of such issues as Abortion Around the World and Women Deserve Equal Pay as well as timelines of Reproductive Rights Historical Highlights in the United States since 1976.
NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER
The National Women’s Law Center provides a “national report card” on women’s health entitled Making the Grade on Women’s Health. The 2007 edition is the fourth in a series, allowing researchers to compare current statistics with a previous edition in 2004. An interactive map allows users to click on a state, and view more than 30 health status indicators, as well as data on economic security and education, and state demographics. The health indicators are reported by ethnic group and age group.
NATIONAL WOMEN'S STUDIES ASSOCIATION (NWSA)
The National Women’s Studies Association maintains data on the field of Women’s Studies in higher education at www.nwsa.org/research/field.php.
SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (SSA)
The Social Security Administration maintains a fact sheet, Social Security is Important to Women . The fact sheet discusses Social Security's importance to women in light of the fact that women tend to live longer in retirement, although, on average, they have had lower wages tham men during their working life.
STATE DEPARTMENT, UNITED STATES
The Department of State has an Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which puts out an annual report entitled Trafficking in Persons Report. The 2008 report is available, as well as prior years back to 2001, at www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt .
WOMEN'S RESEARCH AND EDUCATION INSTITUTE (WREI)
WREI publishes a report entitled The American Woman on the Web: A Statistical Portrait. The information encompasses women in education, women's health, and the employment of women, including earnings, benefits, and economic security. WREI provides information about women in the military and women veterans at their Women in the Military & Women Veterans project.
The Global Status of Women
To select an issue for your assignment, or determine what the current status of women is on a global issue, it is helpful to locate statistics on that topic. The following is a list of governmental and non-governmental organizations that collect statistics about women and make them available free on the Web.
THE INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION (IPU)
ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT (OECD)
POPULATION REFERENCE BUREAU
UNITED NATIONS
THE WORLD BANK
WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO)
THE INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION (IPU)
The Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva, Switzerland maintains several sites on women's suffrage, women in parliaments, and women in politics. These and other similar links are gathered on their page:Demoracy Through Partnership Between Men and Women in Politics
The Women's Suffrage page has A World Chronology of Women's Rights to Vote and to Stand for Election going back to 1788.
ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT (OECD)
The OECD maintains a set of statistical profiles of more than three dozen countries. These include employment rates and life expectancy for both men and women. They also provide statistics through a searchable database called OECD.stat Extracts. Scroll down through the list of "Themes" on the left until you reach "Social and Welfare Statistics." Under that theme, there is a category "Gender," and under "Gender" you will find the "Gender, Institutions, and Development" database, or GID. The GID consists of 60 indicators from 161 countries related to the global socio-economic status of women.
In addition to their databases, there are also reports on subjects of interest to women. Since their URLs are so long, the simplest way to find these materials is to type "women" into the search box in the upper right-hand corner of the OECD home page at www.oecd.org.
The Population Reference Bureau has demographics and statistics on the education, health, economic status, and political participation of women on their page:
Women of Our World 2005 (.pdf file)
The data is gathered from the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
The Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs produces a World Survey on the Role of Women in Development on their Flagship Publications page. Scroll down to see versions in English, French, and Spanish.
Their report Women in Politics: 2008, co-produced with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, is available in English, French, Spanish and Arabic on the DAW's publications page.
The United Nations also procues a series entitled Women 2000 and Beyond. These reports cover topics such as aging, gender equality in sport, gender equality in technology, rural women, sexual violence in armed conflict, and widowhood, among others.
The Statistics Division provides links to Statistics and Indicators on Women and Men. These include women's education, health, population, and work, among others. They have specific reports such as The World's Women 2005: Progress in Statistics.
The Development Fund for Women produces a multimedia report entitled Progress of the World's Women 2008/2009. The Resources link provides a list of addtional reports on women's economic rights, gender equality, HIV/AIDS, politics and governance, and violence against women, among other.
The U.N. has an Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI) in their Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Their page provides a link to the Secretary-General's Report on Women and Peace and Security in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
The United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE) provides link to publications on their WomenWatch page. There is a link to the State of the World Population 2008 report entitled Reaching Common Ground: Culture, Gender, and Human Rights. WomenWatch also provides global data about women on their Women of the World: Regions and Countries Web site and on their Statistics and Indicators page.
WomenWatch has grouped links to the United Nations' resources on women in their Directory of UN Resources on Gender and Women's Issues.
UNICEF, the United Nation's Children's Fund, monitors the status of children and women worldwide, and makes that information available at www.childinfo.org/focus.html. Their data collection on children and education focuses on gender equity in education. Their fact sheet, Strategic Information for Child Protection, includes the issues of child marriage and female genital mutlation. UNICEF also maintains a separate fact sheet on female genital mutilation.
The World Bank maintains a Data and Research page with links to reports such as the Global Monitoring Report. They also have a page on Gender and Development, and maintain a database called GenderStats. GenderStats is searchable by "Theme," or subject, such as Education, by region, and by your own custom query.
The World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland compiles an annual report entitled The Global Gender Gap. They use the data compiled to create a "Gender Gap Index," which ranks 130 countries by the gap between genders in economic status, education, health, and political participation. The data is gathered from the CIA's World Factbook, the International Labour Organisation, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the World Economic Forum's original research. The Global Gender Gap 2008 is available free on the Web at www.weforum.org/pdf/gendergap/report2008.pdf.
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO)
WHO maintains a searchable Reproductive Health Indicators Database. The database can be searched by region and country for reproductive health indicators such as maternal mortality, for example. They also provide statistics on Preventing unsafe abortion.
Links to research and downloadable reports are in the navigation bar on the left of the main page at http://www.who.int/en/. General information about maternal health worldwide and more links can be found at www.who.int/topics/maternal_health.en. WHO maintains fact sheets on abortion, contraception, female genital mutliation, and other women's health concerns at www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/en. They are currently updating a fact sheet on Gender, Health, and Poverty.
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