The workshop was organized as one of the inception activities for project countries of the UNESCAP Gender Policy-Data Integration Initiative, which aims to strengthen data and statistics in the ESCAP region for evidence-based policies and programmes on gender equality and women’s empowerment, a central theme of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Initiative is designed to replicate and build on the approach adopted by the Regional Steering Group on Population and Social Statistics in Asia and the Pacific (RSG-PSS), under the Committee on Statistics, which covers three broad goals (i) creation of an enabling policy environment to create and maintain demand for data (ii) improve availability and quality of disaggregated statistics and (iii) improve data accessibility, analysis, interpretation and use.
The specific objectives of the Inception Workshop, which mainly focused on the first and third goals of the RSG-PSS, were to introduce the Gender Policy-Data Integration Initiative to project countries; introduce and apply the draft tools related to (i) the identification of information needs through review of national policy and planning documents related to women’s economic empowerment and (ii) the template/guidelines for conducting gender analysis and progress assessment in the context of women’s economic empowerment; share existing practices and challenges on collecting, analysing and using data on women’s economic empowerment in project countries; and agree on the project focus and workplan for each project country.
The workshop resulted in identification of a preliminary set of national indicators as well as population groups, issues, disaggregated data needs for the selected policy issue/s related to women’s economic empowerment based on related national policy and planning document/s selected by the project countries; initial recommendations/feedback to refine the draft template/guidelines for conducting gender analysis and progress assessment in the context of women’s economic empowerment issues at the national level; and a preliminary work plan for national activities to be conducted subsequently.