Missing SDG Gender Indicators

The Sustainable Development Goal agenda lays out an ambitious set of 231 indicators to track 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 gender-related indicators, where countries reported on average on 31 percent of these indicators in at least one year from 2016 to 2020. A closer look at this low coverage reveals four salient fundings. 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 gender-related indicators that are sex disaggregated, if countries that had a population estimate also had a sex-disaggregated estimate (which is almost always feasible), the Sustainable Development Goal gender coverage rate would be 43 percent instead of 31 percent. Second, better statistical systems are a major part of the solution, as statistical system strength is correlated with higher coverage. Third, poorer countries are doing no worse in reporting on gender-related Sustainable Development Goal 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 Sustainable Development Goal gender indicator coverage.