Missing SDG gender indicators

The Sustainable Development Goal agenda lays out an ambitious set of 231 indicators to track global progress. Countries continue to fall short in terms of reporting on the indicators in general, and this is particularly the case for the subset of 50 SDG gender indicators, where on average countries reported on 38 percent of these indicators in at least one year from 2016 to 2020. A closer look at this low coverage reveals four salient findings. First, this is not just a problem of missing data; lack of reporting on existing data is detected to be a problem. For example, of the 32 SDG gender indicators that are sex disaggregated, if countries that had a population estimate also had a sex-disaggregated estimate (which is almost always feasible), the SDG gender indicator coverage rate would increase to 47 percent. Second, better statistical systems are a part of the solution, as statistical system strength is correlated with greater coverage. Third, poorer countries are doing no worse in reporting on SDG gender indicators than high-income countries, despite weaker statistical systems. Lastly, sizable over (and under) performance in reporting, conditional on statistical strength, suggests that country-level advocacy and focus can yield wins in terms of improving reporting on SDG gender targets.