GENDER EQUITY: THE CRITICAL IMPORTANCE OF DATA.

Back in 2015, the United Nations General Assembly established its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with 17 Sustainable Development Goals at its core. It addressed questions of gender parity stating that not only is it “a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a sustainable world.”

The quest for gender parity, however, isn’t as simple as developing processes or even passing legislation. As with nearly all governmental goals, it requires the development of good data to act both as a roadmap and as an indicator of where progress is and isn’t being made.

Take for example, Roseville, Minnesota, which is in the early stages of a concerted effort to publish dashboards that break things down by gender.

“I think that kind of data is so important to figure out how we can improve,” says Rebecca Olson, assistant city manager there. “A couple years ago, when we put together our action plan, we couldn't really move forward with any concrete goals or anything, simply because we didn't know where we were at. In fact, we didn’t even know what we didn’t know.”

One of the steps Roseville took was to publish, on a public dashboard the breakdown of its boards and commissions by gender. Explains Olson, “When we asked ourselves what are the high impact areas that make a difference with equity it came down, really to questions of who the decision makers are. The intent would be to have a broad representation across all of our commissions that reflect the different viewpoints in our city. So, we sent out surveys to our current sitting commissioners and asked them to self-identify.”

With that data in hand, city leaders are able to endeavor to make sure that they are taking gender (and other demographics, like race) into account when they’re filling vacancies. “This is a different way of thinking,” says Olson, “and we’re still learning.”

Bringing that information forward to Roseville’s councilmembers, who appoint boards and commissions, allows them to be “intentional about saying they want all kinds of diverse viewpoints,” Olson says.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Niagara Region has seen a similar benefit to gathering this kind of data. It’s a regional municipality that includes a dozen cities, towns and townships (much like a county in the United States). And, according to Cassie Ogunniyi, Manager of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Indigenous Relations there, in 2024 the region did its second employee engagement survey that included six demographic questions, one of which was about gender.

“We think that’s important because we know that organizations that are more gender diverse and have more women, particularly on leadership boards or in leadership positions, do well,” says Ogunniyi. “We know that the more diversity you have in leadership, the better it is for the organization. The more innovation there is, the better programs and services can be provided to community members and we know also that, it’s important for employees to see themselves reflected in leadership. So, gender is a key component of all that, and we think it’s something that’s important to track.”

A few of Niagara’s discoveries from this data dig: 

• Of the 128 elected council positions across Niagara, 40 (31.3%) are held by females, this just surpasses the 30% target for female representation in governance as set by the UN.

• Of all community advisory committees or boards across Niagara, 45.1% of committee members are female, and 54.9% of committee members are male

• 52% of “people leaders” in the workforce self-identified as women, while 38% self-identified as men (the bulk of the remainder chose not to respond to this query) 

Since there tends to be a presumption that creating gender equality in the workforce is generally a matter of making sure that women keep up with men, that last finding stands out. 

And, in fact, that kind of data has helped to make leaders in Niagara aware that gender equality is a two-way street. As Ogunniyi explains, “We do run a number of programs for long-term care and children, and there are a lot more women in them than men. So, when we’ve followed up and talked to the men who are working in those areas, we’ve found that they face multiple levels of discrimination.

“Most of it is actually coming from the residents in the long-term care homes, or the parents of the kids in the child-care centers, who are saying, you know, things like ‘we don't want a male dressing our child, or I don't want a man caring for my wife in the long-term care homes.’ So, it’s a matter of our raising awareness that men are just as capable of these jobs as women are and really trying to figure out how to deal with the barriers to men in those positions.”

Here again, without the data, this kind of effort would probably never even begin. “It’s steps down the line trying to figure out how to address these things,” she says. “But internally, we've given our leaders some tools to be able to address those issues.”

Meanwhile some other places, like Connecticut have gathered data pertaining to the pay gap between men and women (which can also go both ways). In a current dashboard, that state shows, for example, that among public defenders, the average self-identified male makes $124 thousand a year, while the average self-identified female makes $98.7 thousand. In contrast, for jobs in early childhood, women make $99.8 thousand a year, and men bring in $84.8 thousand.

Despite the presence of valuable data in places like this, the unfortunate truth is that the United States barely uses data to show the use of public sector funds – or the services those funds buy -- by gender.

“The whole idea is to look at the actions that governments take through their budgets and how these actions impact women and men differentially,” explains Marilyn Rubin, a distinguished research fellow at Rutgers University School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) “But if you don't have data on who uses public services, you can't do that. It's been tried twice in the United States, and I was involved in both. One was in San Francisco and the other was in Fulton County, Georgia.” Unfortunately, in both cases, these efforts didn’t sustain support from governmental leaders and so fell by the wayside. 

Beyond the utility of gender-based data for use in allocating limited resources, it also has the potential to track the gender differences in the use of public services – and when there’s a differential, to figure out why. John Bartle, Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at the University of Nebraska Omaha, who has worked with Rubin extensively in researching the topic, provides a clear example:

“If you discovered that women weren’t using the parks as frequently as men, then perhaps you’d find that the hedges were too high and so they didn’t feel safe enough to use the parks. This is the kind of thing that the parks and rec people could easily not recognize.”

This is an area, in which the United States lags the world. According to a paper by Bartle and Rubin, “In recognition of the central role of budgets in closing the gender gap, governments at various levels in more than 80 countries around the world have made efforts to incorporate a gender perspective into their budgetary processes.” 

Based on recent trends, it would appear less likely than in the past that states and localities are going to be inclined to follow suit. As Katherine Willoughby, program director for the department of public administration and policy at the University of Georgia points out, “Things are moving in the opposite direction right now. There are states, like Florida, where you're not allowed, to use the word equity in a public document.”

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