Equality Insights hosted a webinar for the Commission of the Status of Women (CSW66) exploring ways to accelerate women’s economic empowerment using gender-sensitive data. Economic empowerment initiatives often focus on strengthening women’s capacities and opportunities. However, many barriers women face are systemic, rooted in patriarchal norms and unseen by male decision-makers, because they don’t experience them. Progress is further hampered by lack of age and disability disaggregated data about multiple barriers to women’s economic empowerment. Individual-level, multidimensional data on poverty and inequality can help reveal these barriers.

With COVID-19 reversing gains on poverty and inequality, such data is critical to ensure gender-equal recovery. In this webinar, panelists illustrate how availability of disaggregated data enabled gender-responsive action, with a focus on action in the Pacific.