Quality Considerations for EIGE’s Gender Statistics Database (European Institute for Gender Equality)

While much progress has been made to reach equality between women and men in the European Union (EU), remaining gender gaps still need to be addressed. Moreover and owing to international conventions, gender sensitive policies are of prominent importance. The adoption of a gender mainstreaming approach is therefore crucial to reach gender equality. The follow-up of these goals is impossible without the evidences provided by statistics. This leads to an increase demand for gender statistics and need for additional guidance to improve the availability of data throughout national and international statistical sources. This paper reflects recent developments on Quality Considerations for the Gender Statistics Database of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). It presents the latest technological developments, the latest updates to statistical metadata system, and the latest conceptual approaches to producing equality data in general and gender equality data in particular. This includes improving the collection and use of equality data and a key area of focus on intersectional inequalities.  Together with its Database, EIGE also developed quality considerations applied to gender statistics included in the tool. Those considerations provide clarity on the limitations of the data available and recommendations on how to produce data in a gender-sensitive way, avoiding common pitfalls that lead to gender biases.