UNIFEM Asia-Pacific and Arab States Regional Programme for Engendering Economic Governance demystifying economics and empowering women

Engendering Statistics for Nation Building
in East Timor

Introduction

The UNIFEM Regional Programme for Engendering Economic Governance (EEG) is engaged in engendering statistics in East Timor, acting through Component 4 of the UNIFEM East and South East Asia office’s project TIM/01/WO1 Women’s Leadership for Gender Justice & Peace Building in East Timor. Component 4 of that project is closely linked to the Gender Statistics Component (Component 2) of the Regional Programme which provides regional-level training on engendering statistics.

The component will focus particularly on developing the capacity of women’s groups and women leaders to use both existing statistics and engendered statistics in lobbying and advocacy on key gender issues in nation building. These may include the recruitment and promotion of women in the civil service, gender-based violence, women’s participation in decision-making in both the political and economic spheres, and recognition of the importance and value of women’s unpaid labour force work, particularly in agriculture and informal sector activities, and their unpaid domestic work and child care.

Objectives

To build national capacity, particularly in the National Statistics Office, to provide an engendered national statistical system that:

• routinely provides sex-disaggregated individual level data;
• covers equally the different gender roles, needs and concerns of women and men;
• integrates recognition of the different gender roles, needs and concerns of women and men in the definition, collection, compilation, dissemination and analysis of statistics.

To build the capacity of users, particularly the Office for the Promotion of Equality in the Prime Minister’s Office and the women’s NGO network REDE, to analyze all statistics from a gender perspective, and to use statistics for lobbying and advocacy to promote women’s participation and a gender perspective in the processes of nation building.

Collaboration

Like the Regional EEG Programme, activities under Component 4 involve an active partnership with the Statistics Division of UN-ESCAP, which is supporting technical input from regional experts.

The component works closely with the National Statistics Office, UNFPA, Statistics New Zealand and the Australian Bureau of Statistics to engender data collection for the first East Timor national census 2004.

It is also collaborating with the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and others involved in the development of the System of National Accounts for East Timor.

Activities

The EEG Programme has contracted the Population Studies Centre of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) to provide a gender expert to assist the project.

On August 24 – 29, 2003 the UNIFEM EEG programme, in partnership with the Statistics Division of UN-ESCAP, undertook a planning mission to prepare for the first workshop on Engendering the Statistical System of East Timor with special reference to the Population Census 2004.

Members of the mission were: Lorraine Corner, the UNIFEM Regional Economic Adviser; Dr Yulfita Raharjo, gender expert, LIPI, Indonesia; Ms. Shavitri Singh, gender and statistics consultant, Nepal, and; Ms. Wiwiek Arumwati , BPS-Statistics Indonesia. The Statistics Division, UN-ESCAP funded Shavitri Singh and Ms Wiwiek Arumwati.

Ms Singh reviewed the draft census questionnaire and provided technical advice on implementation of the census from a gender perspective (download the report, Word 41k), while Ms Arumwati provided input on the System of National Accounts (download the report, Word 83k).

Dated: 6Nov2003