WS 101: Women's Studies (Spring 2009), Prof. Anthony 

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.

POPULATION REFERENCE BUREAU

      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.

UNITED NATIONS

      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

      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.

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

      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.