GEOSTAT celebrates the 100-year anniversary with a conference on gender statistics
By Levan Abramishvili
Friday, July 26
The two-day conference opened on July 25, is dedicated to 100 Years’ Anniversary of the National Statistics Office of Georgia to mark 20 Years of Collecting the Gender Statistics.
The conference brought together high-level representatives of the National Statistical Offices of Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia countries, delegates of international organizations, data users, including representatives from policymaking, civil society and media. It was sponsored by the UN Europe and Central Asia Regional Office, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and Austrian Development Cooperation.
The conference participants discussed the successes achieved towards the nationalization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); the collection and dissemination of gender statistics; gender aspects of assets ownership and time use; the challenges revealed as a result of studies on the violence against women; and other priority issues.
Gogita Todradze, Executive director GEOSTAT, First Deputy Chairperson of the Parliament of Georgia Tamar Chugoshvili and the Chief Statistician of UN Women, Papa Seck opened the conference.
In his welcoming speech, Todradze thanked the UN Women and the statisticians of GEOSTAT.
“To celebrate the anniversary of the National Statistics Office of Georgia, a number of events are planned, including the regional conference, which is attended by the heads of the statistics departments of around ten countries. I want to congratulate all the statisticians on this day and thank them for fruitful cooperation. At the same time, I would like to thank the UN Women, which allowed us to celebrate the 100th anniversary on such scale,” noted Todradze. “We firmly believe that gender data is at the heart of gender-aware policy making and implementation that in turn is the foundation for inclusive and sustainable development,” he added.
Chugoshvili spoke about the importance of statistical data in policymaking.
“I would like to emphasize the importance of reliable, objective and impartial statistical data in the decision-making process, because it is impossible to develop policy and make the right decisions if it is not based on correct research, if it is not based on correct formation, correct assessment and correct statistics,” she said.
Papa Seck spoke about the partnership of UN Women and GEOSTAT, lasting over 10 years.
“UN Women Georgia has been partnering with GEOSTAT for over 10 years around the development of gender statistics; this cooperation includes, but is not limited to, the development of Women and Men, Gender Data Portal, enhanced communication with gender data users, the first ever GEOSTAT national study on violence against women and the upcoming time-use survey,” noted Papa Seck. “UN Women and GEOSTAT have invested significant time and resources in Gender Pay Gap research with the support of the Swiss and Austrian governments. And last but not least, the gender assessment of Georgia’s statistical system carried out in 2018 generated findings and recommendations that can take gender statistics at yet another level in the country,” he added.
Chugoshvili also emphasized the importance of Gender Pay Gap research, noting that this year, economic strengthening of women is the priority of the Parliament.
“This year, for the Parliament, the economic empowerment of women is a priority. We have some key directions on this issue. These are: women’s labor rights; access to vocational education for women’s economic strengthening; women’s participation in state economic programs and another direction that we try to give our maximum attention is the difference between the remuneration, the so-called Gender Pay Gap, which cannot be calculated and cannot be worked on without the National Statistics Office,” said the First Deputy Chairperson of the Parliament.
At the end of the first day of the conference, the heads of national statistics of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan signed a joint agreement to celebrate the anniversary.
According to the document, the parties expressed readiness to deepen friendly and constructive cooperation between the statistics services of the countries and further development of the statistical system.
In the framework of the conference, a hackathon of visualizing gender data was also held. Devoted to the data of gender statistics, it aimed to raise awareness in youth regarding the use and analysis of data for the development of innovative products. The participants of the hackathon worked on the gender data collected by GEOSTAT over the past 20 years.
Reliable, accessible and appropriately disaggregated statistics are essential for monitoring Georgia’s commitments towards gender equality, through various international treaties and declarations, such as the Beijing Platform for Action, the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
During the short-lived Democratic Republic of Georgia (often referred as the ‘First Republic’), on July 25, 1919, under the Law adopted by the Constituent Assembly, the Central Statistical Committee of the Republic was set up at the Ministry of Agriculture. The Committee was tasked to manage all the statistical works of state significance. After the Soviet occupation, the statistical activities carried out in Georgia made up a portion of large scale statistics of the Soviet Union.
At present, the statistical activities are carried out by an independent body of GEOSTAT, the Legal Entity of Public Law. It carries out its functions taking into account the international methodology and standards. It is an institution established to produce the statistics and disseminate statistical information according to the Georgian legislation.