15 February 2021
The Gender Data Gap referrers to the fact that data around the world is based around males and the lack of data from and about women and girls. This gap can and does affect daily life in the home, school, and workplace. Ranging from inconvenient to deadly.
The lack of data on women and girls, this cause men are often seen as the default. For example, survival rates of heart disease in women are much lower. Research is mostly done on male by males, causing male symptoms to be treated as typical and female’s to be a typical. This leads to women being misdiagnosed up to 50% more, and more likely to be dismissed without treatment.
Another problem is in the collection of data itself. When a woman answers that her main activity is a housewife, the surveyor will generally stop asking her questions there. The problem with this is that these women are often engaged in activities outside the home. For instance, economics, or enterprise. Without these secondary occupations accounted for 75% of men’s economic activities are surveyed, while at most only 30% of women’s activities are.
“When we don’t count women or girls, they literally become invisible”
- Sarah Hendriks-
(Director of Gender Equality at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)
Like I said earlier, these silencers of women are everywhere. From news, to science, to city planning the gender data gap disfigures all of these things in our life. In the workplace, commonly female-dominated industries fail to see the risks, like in a nail salon with all the chemicals they are exposed to because these jobs can often be an extension of things woman are doing in the home. It is not just in female dominated workplaces though, it is in every industry.
A. The affects:
Sets men as the default and women as the “other”.
An insufficient representation in female leadership causes a cycle where males will not consider and neglect women.
Not having women included in studies and research is a safety hazard.
In the workplace, women do 75% unpaid work in the world (read further: Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez).
B. What needs to be done:
Challenge male defaults and chose to see the problem.
Don’t let something that is meant to be gender neutral actually be talking about men. For example, when talking about football call it men’s football instead of just football (read further: What is The Gender Data Gap - And How Can We Tackle It? With a caroline Criado - Perez)
Find new ways to engage and find women and girls in data collection.
Start collecting gender segregated data.
Get women researchers, women won’t forget to include women.
Fix the problem not the females. The women aren’t the problem, it’s the system.
We need to start counting women as completely average humans that they have always been. Sex-disaggregated data is needed to close the gap, using data that doesn’t include women at all and calling it average isn’t acceptable . Only including half of the population in data doesn’t work for the better good for all people.
Writer: Abbie Geering
Editor: Arta Anindita
Picture: Gabrielle Pascal
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