UN Women and the Kenya Government to launch a national programme to enhance the capacity of the government to generate gender statistics to inform planning, programming and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The programme is part of UN Women’s global programme, Making Every Woman and Girl Count. It will be implemented in collaboration with partners led by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Gender statistics reflect the realities of the lives of women and men, girls and boys and are essential for national planning. However, a national assessment conducted this year by UN Women found that in Kenya, the existing policy and legislative provisions for statistics do not have a specific focus on gender, and that county governments lack the necessary infrastructure and capacity to collect and manage gender-differentiated data. The assessment also found that there is lack of updated or full implementation of the national statistical plans in some sectors. Without gender statistics, policymakers in Kenya are missing significant information about the state of women and girls and cannot plan adequately. For instance, lack of data on women’s income, number of women and girls living in poverty, financial and physical assets that women possess, and data on the time that women spend working, it is difficult for the government to plan poverty eradication activities to benefit women. At national level, lack of gender-focused data impedes the country’s ability to track progress towards the SGDs and constitutional commitments to gender equality and women empowerment.

The new initiative will support the generation of high-quality, timely and reliable data, disaggregated by key aspects of gender equality and women’s empowerment. Some of the activities that will be implemented include the establishment of statistical coordination mechanisms for gender statistics at national and county level and supporting national and county governments to ensure systematic integration of gender statistics in sector strategic plans. Among the research activities to be conducted include the estimation of monetary and non-monetary poverty by age and sex, a time use survey, and a study to update the Standard Chart of Account. Staff at national and county levels will also be trained on a system to track and make public allocations for gender equality and to produce data for SDG indicators related to gender.  and use the information generated to develop women empowerment index. The project will also support South to South learning to enhance knowledge and skills in gender statistics for state and non-state actors.  National and county policymakers and other stakeholders will receive training on gender statistics to enhance their appreciation of its importance and application.

Please see this document for more information: BETTER GENDER STATISTICS FOR SDGS pdf

UN Women picks Kenya as one of ‘Pathfinder’ countries introducing gender statistics

UN Women has identified 12 countries (called “pathfinder countries”) in which the programme, Making Every Woman and Girl Count, will be implemented. The programme will support governments to improve the production of gender statistics to monitor SDGs, inform policy and ensure accountability.  These pathfinder countries were selected through a rigorous and independent process based on their commitment to women’s and girls’ rights and to high statistical standards and demonstrated need and institutional commitment to improve gender statistics, and to be part of a global and inclusive learning process on gender statistics. The countries will be supported to improve the production and use of gender statistics in all areas of the SDGs and other national policy priorities. As one of the selected pathfinder countries, Kenya is set to benefit from the technical and financial support provided as part of this programme.