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Women are one-half of the world’s population, one-third of its official workforce and do two-thirds of its productive work, yet they earn one-tenth of its income and own less than one-hundredth of its property.

To think that poverty alleviation can occur without considering the lives of both women and men, and their roles and contributions, is short-sighted. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by poverty, this itself is nothing new — as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently stated, poverty is sexist.

So why is it that, in our data-driven universe, we don’t know more about women and their lives? Sex disaggregated data plays a crucial role in measuring women’s equality. As funders request for evidence to poverty interventions, we need to collect better data, which includes sex disaggregated data.

Is There A Sexist Data Crisis?

In a recent BBC article, David McNair, Director of Transparency at the One Campaign, says that we have a sexist data crisis because, “women and girls are disproportionately left out of data collection. They are uncounted, therefore they don’t matter.”

If we want to genuinely make an impact, and work towards a gender-equal playing field, we need to think very carefully about what data it would take for us to truly understand the realities of women.

• How can we collect data without a sexist bias?
• Where can we collect meaningful and actionable data beyond just benchmarking the gaps?
• What errors and assumptions are researchers, funders, and practitioners making in the collection of this data?
• How should we construct surveys to thoughtfully and positively collect data to understand and improve poverty’s gender disparity?

Help Us Understand If There Is a Sexist Data Crisis

Please answer our short survey, and tell us about your experiences with sex disaggregated data. We want to hear from you and we’ll even offer a swank reward: we’ll give away an Apple Watch to a random survey respondent.

So no joke – we really want to hear from you!

We will present the survey response and further analysis at our MERL Tech session: “How Sexist is Our Data?” with Catherine Highet, FHI 360; Sara Seavey, FHI 360; Zoe Dibb, Girl Effect. We’ll also announce the Apple Watch winner in the session – you don’t need to be present to win.

You do need to answer our short survey to be eligible for the Apple Watch. So what are you waiting for – answer the survey now!