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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.”