Statistical Terms Glossary

Making decisions based on gender that result in favoring one gender over the other which often results in contexts that are favoring men and/or boys over women and/or girls.

Sex selection can take place before a pregnancy is established, during pregnancy through prenatal sex detection and selective abortion, or following birth through infanticide or child neglect. Sex selection is sometimes used for family balancing purposes but far more typically occurs because of a systematic preference for boys. The biologically normal sex ratio at birth ranges from 102 to 106 males per 100 females. However, ratios higher than normal –sometimes as high as 130 –have been observed. This is now causing increasing concern in some South Asian, East Asian and Central Asian countries.

Integrating the gender perspective into the understanding and construction of persons, phenomena, reflections, things, relationships, sectors of action, societal subsystems and institutions.

Anything –a concept, an entity, a style of language –that is unassociated with either the male or female gender. The nature of systemic and embedded or internalized bias is such that, unfortunately often, what is perceived to be gender neutral is in fact gender blind.

Legislation that is drafted in universal terms, ignoring gender-specific situations and power relations between women and men that underpin sex-and gender-based discrimination, including gender-based violence against women.

Gender-neutral policies use the knowledge of gender differences in a given context to overcome biases in delivery, to ensure that they target and benefit both genders effectively. Moreover, they work within the existing gender division of resources and responsibilities.

Programming and policies that do not centre gender concerns or distinguish between genders in their design, interventions and monitoring.

They are considered the first global measures to measure the differences between women and men, which were released by the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report in 1995.

Gender-responsive analysis is a systematic tool to examine social and economic differences between women and men. It looks at their specific activities, conditions, needs, access to and control over resources, as well as their access to development benefits and decision-making. It studies these linkages and other factors in the larger social, economic, political and environmental context. Gender-responsive analysis entails, first and foremost, collecting sex-disaggregated data (that is, data broken down by sex) and gender-responsive information about the concerned population. Gender-responsive analysis is the first step in gender-responsive planning to promote gender equality. Gender-responsive analysis is not confined to identifying differences. More importantly, it recognizes the politics of gender relations and the adjustments needed to be undertaken by institutions to attain gender equality. It looks at the inequalities between women and men, asks why they exist, and suggests how the gap can be narrowed. Gender-responsive analysis in the ILO context entails looking at five key variables: (a) The division of labour between women and men; (b) The different needs of women and men; (c) The gender-based division of access to and control over resources and benefits; (d) Opportunities and constraints in the social and economic environment; (e) The capacity of ILO constituents and other partner organizations to promote equality between women and men in employment.

Government planning, programming and budgeting that contributes to the advancement of gender equality and the fulfillment of women's rights. It entails identifying and reflecting needed interventions to address gender gaps in sector and local government policies, plans and budgets. GRB also aims to analyze the gender-differentiated impact of revenue-raising policies and the allocation of domestic resources and Official Development Assistance.

To usefully address gender concerns, and to understand more fully the labour market functioning, labour statistics should satisfy the following four requirements: (a) They will be based on a political will at all levels, in the various data collection and analysis agencies and in all agencies which can provide administrative information; (b) The data collection procedures for labour statistics will ensure that, as far as possible, all relevant topics for describing gender concerns are regularly included. Such topics may include employment in the informal economy, non-System of National Accounts (SNA) work, employment by detailed occupations and status in employment categories, income from paid and self-employment, statistics on the life course, on lifelong learning and on working time; (c) The data collection and processing procedures for labour statistics programmes will be designed to ensure that definitions and measurement methods cover and adequately describe all workers and work situations in sufficient detail to allow relevant gender comparisons to be made. Household and establishment-based surveys as well as administrative sources are valuable and, in particular, periodical time-use surveys are crucial; (d) The resulting statistics will always be presented as part of regular publications in a way that will clearly reveal differences and similarities between women and men in the labour market and the factors that may influence their situations. This can be done by (i) presenting relevant topics in sufficient and relevant detail, and by (ii) providing statistics according to relevant descriptive variables, such as of personal and family circumstances, work environment and institutional setting.

Gender-responsive planning consists of developing and implementing specific measures and organizational arrangements (for example: capacity to carry out gender-responsive analysis and collect sex-disaggregated data) for the promotion of gender equality, and ensuring that adequate resources are available (for example through gender budgeting).

Gender-responsive policies recognize that within a society, actors are women and men, who are constrained in different and often unequal ways, and who may consequently have differing and sometimes conflicting needs, interests and priorities.

Intentionally employing gender considerations to affect the design, implementation and results of programmes and policies. Gender-responsive programmes and policies reflect girls’ and women’s realities and needs, in components such as site selection, project staff, content, monitoring, etc. Gender-responsiveness means paying attention to the unique needs of females, valuing their perspectives, respecting their experiences, understanding developmental differences between girls and boys, women and men and ultimately empowering girls and women.

Refers to the skills capacity with respect to “creating an environment… that reflects an understanding of the realities of women’s lives and addresses the issues of the participants.” All capacities that can be applied or measured in action, e.g. the capacity to analyse a specific context from a gender perspective, to develop gender-sensitive performance indicators, etc.; to allocate budgets in a gender responsive way, etc.

Policies and programmes that take into account the particularities pertaining to the lives of both women and men, while aiming to eliminate inequalities and promote gender equality, including an equal distribution of resources, therefore addressing and taking into account the gender dimension.

Obligation and responsibility on the part of state structures and public officials to implement gender mainstreaming and achieve gender equality policy objectives, to report on progress achieved, and to be answerable in the event of a failure to meet stated gender equality objectives.

Takes into account the diversity of various groups of women and men and their specific activities and challenges and aim to reduce sex and gender bias in data collection, such as the underreporting of women’s economic activity, the underreporting of violence against women and the undercounting of girls, their births or their deaths.

Process that aims to integrate gender equality into the regular rules, procedures and practices of an institution, leading to its transformation of an institution, thus also impacting on the organisational culture.

Realisation of gender equality in written and spoken language attained when women and men and those who do not conform to the binary gender system are made visible and addressed in language as persons of equal value, dignity, integrity and respect.

Methods of resolving disputes through a means other than judicial decisions, which may better serve women seeking justice, in particular by providing more flexibility, decreasing costs and delays, and ensuring that victims are not subjected to secondary victimisation.

Method of gender mainstreaming that integrates gender equality concerns into the evaluation objectives but also into the evaluation methodology, approaches and use.

programmes and policies that are aware of and address gender differences.

The process of girls and boys, women and men learning social roles based on their sex, which leads to different behaviours and creates differing expectations and attitudes by gender. An example is that concept that girls and women do more household chores, such as cooking and cleaning, while boys and men do more work out of the home. Gender roles often lead to inequality.

Programming and policies that transform gender relations to achieve gender equity.

A situation wherein someone, particularly a woman, has been promoted into a risky, difficult job where the chances of failure are higher.

Is sometimes used to describe the rapid promotion of men over women, especially into management, in female-dominated fields like nursing.

It describes the theory that some factor both limits women's progress but also limits their numbers in situations like imprisonment. Biological factors are often quoted, although obviously any research into this would be highly contentious.

This is a concept used to describe the ways in which care responsibilities are transferred from one household to another, across national borders, forming chains. As individuals move, work in the care sector is internationalized. Through these chains, households in different places around the world are interconnected, as they transfer care giving tasks from one household to another based on power hierarchies such as gender, ethnicity, social class, and place of origin. Global care chains are a phenomenon which is taking place within the context of globalization, feminization of migration, and the transformation of social welfare states. Chains are formed when women migrate to work in the care sector (domestic work, personal healthcare services, etc.), while transferring care work in their own households in origin and sometimes in destination to other women.

Body within government whose purpose is to design, coordinate and implement government policies for gender equality, and which is normally located in the government hierarchy (i.e. in a ministry or in the Prime Minister’s Office).