U.N. Reports Lack of Data on Women in Poverty
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: January 21, 2006
Rock stars, movie actresses and heads of state have shined a bright light on global poverty in the past year, often highlighting the particular burden on women, but a report from the United Nations released this week painstakingly details the huge gaps in data needed to understand how poverty - in all its ugly guises - affects women.
Many poor countries simply do not collect the most basic facts about births, marriages and deaths by sex and age, or the employment status and wages of men and women.
The dearth of information makes it difficult to pinpoint where girls are being married off while they are still children, or where female fetuses are being aborted because boys are preferred, or where girls are dying because they get less food and medical care than boys, says the report, which was released Wednesday.
Its authors, and specialists in the field, say better information is urgently needed if the world is to fashion sensible, effective solutions to reflect conditions that are constantly evolving and vary greatly even within a single country.
Africa, the world's poorest region, has the weakest systems for data collection. Four in 10 Africans live in countries that did not conduct a census in the past decade, and 8 in 10 live in countries with inadequate national collection of vital statistics....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/21/international/21poverty.html