To move past 'male unless otherwise indicated' in data, just ask women

When organizations fail to acknowledge the differing experiences of men and women, they treat men as the default and women as the exception — an approach that often extends to their data collection. For example, collecting data at the household level often means that men answer on behalf of women, because men are typically regarded as the head of the household. The results are “male unless otherwise indicated,” as coined in the landmark book “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.” This approach undermines global development outcomes and hurts women, said Mara Bolis, a gender justice advocate, and advisor at Value for Women. Without gender-disaggregated data, which distinguishes between men and women, women and girls are effectively invisible. Governments, donors, and NGOs need to collect information on women in order to understand and meet their needs, Bolis said. “So much of the research that our projects and our programs are built upon is informed by male respondents speaking on behalf of humanity,” she said in a talk last month at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The best way for leaders and organizations to disrupt this “male unless otherwise indicated” default is simple: just ask women for feedback. Food security is one area where a lack of gender-disaggregated data holds back progress. For example, evidence suggests that women eat last and least in order to protect other family members from going hungry. Organizations charged with tackling global hunger, like the United Nations’ World Food Programme, aren’t able to fully capture women’s experiences if only men answer surveys. “If you ask a male head of household if he’s experiencing food security, the man, having recently eaten or being too ashamed to admit people are hungry in his household, is likely to respond that his household is food secure,” Bolis said in her talk at Harvard. Around the world, households are being counted as food secure, even when they house women who are hungry. It’s just one example of why the gender data gap is so dangerous, leading women to suffer and even die, Bolis said. The COVID-19 pandemic, and its disproportionate impacts on women, from job losses to unpaid care work to domestic violence, raised awareness of the need to ask about the differing experiences of men and women. “I think we were introduced to the problem statement really clearly," Bolis told Devex. Increasingly, organizations are seeing the need to design interventions around women’s unique needs. That could mean, for example, taking their household responsibilities into account, considering their access to transportation, or ensuring they have safe access to restrooms. The blindness to women’s experience is not project-specific, but systemic, said Bolis, who has worked for development finance institutions, NGOs such as Oxfam, and now as an advisor to Value for Women, which consults with businesses to bring a gender lens to their work. She concluded her recent talk with a slide featuring one word: Ask. If development organizations don’t ask women about their experiences, Bolis said the best case scenario is they won’t be as effective as they could be, and the worst case scenario is they’ll put women at risk.