Gender Equality: a Data and Policy Dialogue

Part of the UN DESA Global Online Policy Dialogue Series

November 24, 2020: 8:00 -9:30 am EST

New data from the UN Secretary-General’s report The World’s Women 2020: Trends and Statistics show that hard-earned gains in gender equality are being challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since most women workers are informally employed and disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, there is an urgent need to apply an intersectional lens to the vulnerabilities they face by reason of the work they do, where they live, their racial/ethnic/caste identity and their gender.

The global data and policy online dialogue “Gender Equality: a Data and Policy Dialogue” organized by UN DESA on 24 November 2020 as part of its Global Online Policy Dialogue Series, explored the unique challenges the regions and countries of the world have faced as they seek to fulfill the strategic objectives of the Beijing Declaration and the 2030 Agenda and address policy actions needed to build a New Social Contract and improve equality for all. More specifically the event sought to answer the following questions:

• What do data tell us about women’s economic empowerment, pre-COVID?
• How is women’s work, paid and unpaid, being affected by the pandemic?
• How should policy and statistics work together to improve gender equality?

WIEGO’s International Coordinator Emeritus and Senior Advisor, Marty Chen’s presentation drew attention to the advances made in measuring informal employment of women and men and the importance of continuing to improve the data so as to empower women informal workers with data and to inform policies.

Moderator

• Ms. Yingqian Chen, Phoenix TV

Introductory remarks

• Ms. Sarah Hendriks, Director of Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division, UN Women
• Ms. Nahla Valji, Senior Gender Advisor, Executive Office of the Secretary-General

Speakers

• Marty Chen (USA), International Coordinator Emeritus and Senior Advisor, WIEGO and Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School
• Ms. Jayati Ghosh (India), Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University
• Ms. Francesca Grum, Chief of the Social and Gender Statistics Section, UN DESA Statistics Division and lead author of The World’s Women 2020: Trends and Statistics
• Ms. Celia Aguilar Setién (Mexico), Director General of Statistics, Information and Gender Learning, National Institute of Women
• Ms. Manuela Tomei, Director of WorkQuality Department, International Labour Organization
• Ms. Ana Güezmes García, Director, Division for Gender Affairs, ECLAC
• Ms. Aurelia Spataru, Deputy General Director of the National Bureau of Statistics, Moldova
• Representative from the Japan -Gender Equality Bureau 

Concluding Remarks

• Mr. Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, member of the UN High-level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, and SDG Advocate

The event was free and open to all and was broadcast live on UN DESA’s Facebook page.