Gender Equality Strategy: Baseline Picture
Development of gender indicators
The Gender Equality Strategy indicated that accompanying the strategy and the Departmental action plans would be high-level gender equality indicators to provide, initially, a series of selected benchmarks of the position of men and women in Northern Ireland. These indicators were agreed in the formal consultation.
As outlined in the strategy, these indicators will be used to measure change in the longer term in the position of men and women, and will facilitate the assessment of progress and the overall effectiveness of actions in tackling gender inequalities and promoting gender equality.
The identification and development of the indicators selected for inclusion alongside the strategy were informed by research commissioned by OFMDFM and published in 2004 in the report ‘Gender Equality Indicators for Northern Ireland: A Discussion Document’. Completed by Breitenbach and Galligan, the research considered, through the available data, the levels of gender imbalance across policy areas in Northern Ireland with a view to assessing the potential and utility of selected key indicators to monitor progress in the promotion of gender equality. The report considered three types of indicators:
- Gender disaggregated statistics across a range of policy areas which provide a description of the relative position of men and women in relation to specific areas of policy, though do not measure performance.
- Performance indicators which measure success in achieving specific goals and targets.
- High level composite indicators formed by bringing together data from a range of areas into a single combined index.
The decision was taken to pursue the first type of indicators given that the strategy intended for the publication of departmental action plans containing specific actions and targets in support of the strategy. That is, the performance element of the strategy would be reflected by departmental targets in support of the strategy whilst the high-level gender disaggregated statistics would enable an overview of the change to the relative position of women and men across the breadth of policy areas. Understanding the complexities of the social processes involved in the gender patterns detailed in this report would benefit from further work in analysing data to examine the inter-relationships of gender with other social and economic characteristics.
Selection criteria
Given there are, potentially, an extremely large number of statistics which could be included, a means of selection and prioritisation was required. On that basis, a statistic was considered suitable for inclusion in the current report on the basis that it satisfied certain criteria which included:
- strategy relevance
- high level
- publicly available
- unambiguous in interpretation
- regular and timely
- ability to be disaggregated
- ability to track change over time
The purpose of these indicators therefore is three-fold: first, to reflect the aims and strategic objectives of the strategy; second, to chart and reflect broad social and economic gender change against a baseline; and third, to facilitate an interim review of the strategy.
On that basis, this report provides a picture of gender differences in Northern Ireland. The baseline year for data is 2006 where possible. However, data is presented in this report for years prior to 2006 in order to give the reader a better insight into the historic trend of the statistical indicators chosen.
Issues of interpretation
Statistics can be illuminating and misleading in equal measure and the treatment of the statistics reported here is, in the main, descriptive.
No attempt is made to fully reflect or assess the complex interplay of the various social, economic and personal factors which result in the statistical outcomes reported here. Importantly, with an inevitable reliance on statistics reflecting outcomes, any consideration of issues of equality of opportunity on the basis of these statistics, and of change over time, should be made with due caution. As Jamison et al (2007) indicated See the 'Project Executive Summary' document '…inequalities in outcomes are often – although importantly not always - pointers to inequalities in opportunities and/or inequalities in process’.
On that basis, these statistics will be helpful in facilitating both the interim assessment of the strategy and any ex post evaluation of the strategy. It should be acknowledged however, that these statistical indicators are unlikely to be of utility as a direct assessment of the success or otherwise of the strategy. In addition, given that these statistics are high-level in nature, they may additionally be unable to reflect the success, or otherwise, of specific departmental actions. Any assessment or evaluation of the strategy therefore, is likely to rely heavily on the extent to which gender has been successfully mainstreamed and the extent to which Departmental targets in support of the strategy have been met.
Report Layout
The Key Points summary provides an overview of the current positions on the range of statistical indicators. The main body of the report contains detailed information on each indicator organised by broad policy area. Annex 1 contains a summary table detailing the indicators and the source of data.
