Gates Foundation invests $80million to close gender data gaps

Melinda Gates during her key note address at Women Deliver  2016

 The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has made a new  committement of  $80 million to close gender data gaps among women and girls across the world.

 Melinda Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, made this announcement at the ongoing Women Deliver conference in Copenhagen, Denmark on Tuesday.

 In her key note address, Melinda Gates stated that partners across governments, non-profits and philanthropic organisations would be collaborating with the foundation regarding gender data and its importance for accelerating development outcomes.

The foundation  in a statement described data as “power” that could give policy makers and stakeholders the clearer picture of the nature of social or economic challenges that women and girls face around the world.

It noted that with reliable data, women and girls’ lives can become visible and counted, helping to inform programming and hold leaders across the world to account.

The foudation noted that  lack of  comprehensive, current information about women and girls, especially in developing countries could  hinder efforts to advance gender equality.

It added that If the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were to be reached by 2030, the world must advance its knowledge about women and girls’ lives and livelihoods, their welfare and well-being, and their contributions to their communities, countries and economies. 

 “By adopting the SDGs the world agreed to achieve gender equality by 2030. But we cannot close the gender gap without first closing the data gap.We simply don’t know enough about the barriers holding women and girls back, nor do we have sufficient information to track progress against the promises made to women and girls. We are committed to changing that by investing in better data, policies and accountability.” Melinda Gates said.

The Gates Foundation’s noted that the new $80 million commitment will support efforts that improve the accuracy and reliability of data collection, which can reveal at a large scale who owns assets like land, property or credit.

The information gathered,  the foundation said will equip decision makers with more timely and clearer evidence about programmes and interventions that are working and those that are not, so they can be redesigned quickly and more effectively.

Executive Director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said, “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims ‘to leave no one behind’. To bring all women and girls to the finishing line in 2030 at the same time as everyone else, we must be able to target them and their needs, and see what progress we are making. Through our new flagship programme initiative ‘Making Every Woman and Girl Count,’ UN Women commits to supporting countries to improve the production, accessibility and use of gender statistics.”