The world's women, 2005

This report uniquely focuses on national reporting of sex disaggregated statistics in such areas as demographics, health, education, work, violence against women, poverty, human rights and decision-making. This is the fourth World's Women report since 1990. The previous three focused on statistical trends in the situation of women. Five years ago, the World's Women report emphasized that there was a lack of sex disaggregated data and that the improvement of national statistical capacity -- the ability to provide timely and reliable statistics -- is essential for improving gender statistics. As a response to the concerns raised in the previous issue, The World's Women 2005: Progress in Statistics reviews and analyses the current availability of data and assesses progress made in the provision of national statistics, as opposed to internationally prepared estimates, relevant to gender concerns during the past 30 years. This report proposes a set of strategies to strengthen national capacity to collect and report statistics and also for improved mainstreaming of gender concerns. The annex reports on the availability of national statistics relevant to gender issues and provides updated figures for many of the indicators presented in The World's Women 2000: Trends and Statistics, plus some additional indicators on the status of women and men.