Megasites
Statistical Resources
on the Web from the University of Michigan Documents Center is an excellent place to find links to statistical sites. The site is arranged in broad
subject areas, including consumers, health, education, military, sociology,
politics, and several more. Look for statistics on Adoption, Aging, Child
Abuse, Children, Crime, Divorce, Domestic Violence, Entitlements/Grants, Ethnicity,
Homeless, Immigration, Language, Marriage, Non-Profit Organizations, Poverty,
Race, Refugees, Religion, Social Security, Wealth, and Comprehensive Sources
in the Sociology
section.
The Statistical Abstract of the United States, published since 1878, is the "authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States." The Census Bureau mounts the current Statistical Abstract as well as all the earlier ones and charts of historical information. Many tables contain information by gender (called "sex").
The Census Bureau (U.S.) site offers a variety of documents. Documents on the site can be searched by keyword. (Try "women," "gender," "mothers," etc.) The Bureau's "Women in the United States" page suggests using American FactFinder, the Bureau's data retrieval system, and various reports listed and described on "Products on Gender (Sex)". Some Census 2000 Publications pointed to from this page include Gender: 2000 and other Census 2000 Briefs containing information on sex, PHC-T-11: Male-Female Ratio by Race Alone or in Combination and Hispanic or Latino Origin in the United States: 2000 and other PHC-T’s containing information on sex, and We the People: Women and Men in the United States (CENSR-20). See also Women in the United States: March 2000 (PPL-121), issued in March, 2001. There is a press release that summarizes this report. Use the "Women" sections of news releases to find other releases, listed in reverse chronological order. The Census Bureau also mounts an International Data Base (IDB) with data from 227 countries on population, number of births per mother, contraceptive use, literacy, etc. and has a page of links to official statistical agencies in other countries.
CountryWatch is a commercial database (link will only work from UW-Madison -- check your local library for availability) that provides country-specific data. The "Social Overview" category for each country includes "Status of Women."Current Index to Statistics is a commercial product (link will only work from UW-Madison -- check your local library for availability) that is a database of the applied and theoretical statistical literature. It allows you to do keyword searches of dozens of statistics and methodology journals.
Eldis, a gateway to information on economic development and related topics, has a Gender Resources Guide by topic, and many statistics-laden documents, articles, etc.
Fedstats is a gateway to statistics from over 100 U.S. Federal agencies. It is searchable by topic, agency, or state, and includes a statistical reference shelf of online stats. collections. The topic "women" is subdivided into health, job patterns in private industry, retirement security, (see also "Women and Retirement Security," 1998) and women-owned businesses. Searching "women" or "gender" as keywords also works.
The General Social Survey for the U.S. and the International Social Survey Programme and its data center for numerous countries provide survey research data on social issues.
The UW-Madison Data & Information Services Center's website has a searchable feature with over 800 annotated links to data-related Internet resources. It is also browsable by broad categories, such as "migration" and "family life, reproduction and fertility." Data on the Net from Univ. of California at San Diego also offers a search feature to bring up relevant sites.
Data.gov presents U.S. governmental datasets from the executive branch of the federal government. The catalog can be searched by keywords, browsed by topics, such as "births, deaths, marriages and divorces" and "income, expenditures, poverty, and wealth," or browsed by governmental agency.
The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) (link will only work for UW-Madison users) data holdings contain over 5000 studies and 50,000 files covering a wide range of social science areas such as population, health, social and political behavior, social and political attitudes, etc.
UNData is the UN Statistical Division's portal to data sets from various UN agencies and is searchable across all of them. It includes a link to an alphabetical list of GenderInfo data sets. Another way to get at the gender information is to search GenderInfo by time period, indicator or area.
Gender-Specific
The American Woman on the Web: A Statistical Portrait, edited by Anne J. Stone,
is the continuation of what used to be published every two years in print form as The American Woman, by the Women's Research & Education Institute. The site contains statistics on education, health, employment, earnings and benefits, and economic Security (poverty).
Genderstats from the World
Bank is searchable by country.
The United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe maintains a Gender
Statistics Database of sex-disaggregated social data, Trends
in Europe and North America: The Statistical Yearbook of the Economic Commission
for Europe 2005, and other databases.
Also try a search of the UN's GenderInfo.
WIDNET: Women in Development
Network offers regional and country-by-country population, family, household,
health, education, labor, and political power information extracted from statistics
compiled by the International Labour Organization, the UN, and other sources (click on latest data link).
Woman Stats Project compiles qualitative and quantitative data "on over 260 indicators of women's status in 174 countries". Users must register in order to use the database.
WomenWatch gateway
to United Nations information "Statistics and Indicators" page
By Topic or Location
Abortion Surveillance data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is found in the CDC's Reproductive Health: Data and Statistics section. As of July 2008, Abortion Surveillance data were available through 2004, including the fulltext of the 2004 report.
For links by year, see the Abortion section of the Reproductive Health: Data and Statistics site.
AgingStats.gov has report "2008 Older Americans: Key Indicators of Well-being."
Women Artists: 1990 to 2005 provides figures on the numbers and percentages of women in the arts in the United States. This is a December 2008 report from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Center for Women's Business Research has figures for national and state-by-state figures on women-owned businesses.
Women in Canada 2005 was published by Statistics Canada. (Check the main site for section updates.)
Prevalence of contraceptive use, by method and by age, is available for numerous countries through the U.S. Census Bureau's International Data Base.
Sourcebook of Criminal
Justice Statistics Online from the University at Albany contains
data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Search by keyword "sex" to find
tables that include a breakdown by gender, or browse the criminal justice
categories. Some of the specific documents from the Bureau of Justice Statistics
include Stalking Victimization in the United States (2009), Intimate Partner Violence in the United States (data through 2005), Sexual Victimization
of College Women (2000), Jail Populations by Age and Gender, 1990-2008 (chart) Women
Offenders (12/99),
Rape and Sexual Assault: Reporting to Police and Medical Attention, 1992-2000 (8/2002) and Rape/Sexual Assault tables. For additional titles, visit the BJS
publications page.
See also "Women in the Criminal Justice System" a May 2007 document from the Sentencing Project: Research and Advocacy for Reform.
The Economic Policy Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that "seeks to broaden the public debate
about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy." Site includes
data and analysis, especially from public opinion polls. Click on search and
search the terms "women" "gender" (Google search of the site).
Trends in Educational Equity of Girls & Women (2004) [still the latest one as of 4/2009] from the National Center for Education Statistics, "examines the extent to which males and females have access to the same educational opportunities, avail themselves equally of these opportunities, perform at similar levels throughout schooling, succeed at similar rates, and reap the same benefits from their educational experiences." NCES publishes an annual Digest of Education Statistics and mounts an "integrated collection of indicators and analyses" from the annual report The Condition of Education. For recent stats. on degrees earned by women, see "Degrees Earned by Women," published in 2008. See also Gender Differences in Participation and Completion of Undergraduate Education and How They Have Changed (Feb., 2005).
To find NCES publications by relevant subject, browse the subject "women's educational equity."
The National Science Foundation has a report on Women, Minorities and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering (2007)
UNESCO has a Global Education
Online (GED) database from which one can find enrollment figures by
gender (database uses "male" and "female") by level of
schooling and country. The Statistical section from UNESCO's Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2003/4, Gender and Education for All, The Leap to Equality (2003/4) has downloadable spreadsheets for tables on topics including Adult and Youth Literacy, Early Childhood Care and Education, Participation in Secondary and Post-Secondary Education, Tertiary Education: Field of Study (%) and Female Share, and more.
Use the advanced search, limit to education, and search for "gender" to find more studies.
Center for Demography and Ecology
of the University of Wisconsin-Madison publishes numerous Working
Papers on cohabitation, fertility and childbearing, and
other topics, from the Center's National Survey of Families and Households. Interviews were conducted in 1987-88, 1992-94, and 2001-2003.
Demographic and Health Surveys Program,
funded by the USAID, conducts national surveys on fertility, family
planning, maternal and child health and household living conditions.
Age-specific fertility rates and number of births per mother for numerous countries are also available through the U.S. Census Bureau's International Data Base.
Women's Health Databook annual compilation since 2002 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Maternal and Child Health Bureau, includes Databooks from 2008, 2007, 2006 (not all topics are repeated each year), and earlier.
National Center for Health Statistics has a "FastStats A-Z" page for Women's Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a Women's Health site, including links to "Facts and Stats" and to the CDC's Office of Women's Health.
The U.S. Office of Research on Women's Health has Comprehensive Reports on Women's Health Research Funded or Co-funded by ORWH.
Kaiser Family Foundation has statistics on numerous Women's Health Facts, by state, including such topics as rates for mammograms; births to teen; sexually-transmitted diseases, by gender; and information on mandated health benefits. The site also has a Women's Health Policy page, covering access and coverage issues as well as reproductive health and Women's Health Data Book, edited by Dawn Misra, a joint project of the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Jacobs
Institute of Women's Health. 3rd ed., 2001 (236p.)
Women of Color Health Data Book: Adolescents to Seniors, 2006 comes from the
U.S. Office of Research on Women's Health, National Institutes of Health. Previous data books were issued in 1998 and 2002.
Women's Health in Wisconsin 2008 provides Wisconsin-specific data on a range of women's health issues. It comes from the Wisconsin Women's Health Foundation.
Historical U.S. Census
Browser. mounted at University of Virginia Library. Includes statistics from the 1790-1960 counts.
Literacy data, by country, divided by sex, is one of the categories available through the U.S. Census Bureau's International Data Base.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union offers data on women in national parliaments.
OnlineWomeninPolitics.org (the Asia Pacific Online Network of Women in Politics, Governance and Transformative Leadership) statistics page gathers links to women's participation in politics, governance, and decision-making.
Polling data are available through the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, which includes many archived studies and links to other survey research organizations, and PollingReport.com, an independent, nonpartisan resource on American public opinion, published
in Washington, D.C. Some of the polls include breakdowns by gender. Europa Public Opinion Analysis offers summaries and reports of polling surveys sponsored by the European Commission since 1973.
World Values Survey
covers many topics.
Population
Reference Bureau's Gender
section includes excerpts and summaries of demographic reports from this
nonprofit organization. One such report is "Feminization of Migration: Limits of Data"
(February 2007).
Poverty-Related links, by category, such as "aging and retirement," "disability," and "homelessness," on the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty
site. Includes a link to other statistical resources concerning poverty.
Rape/Sexual Assault: The National Sexual Violence Resource Center is a comprehensive clearinghouse for sexual assault information and statistics.The U.S. Dept. of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics collects much data, particularly on reported incidents. There is a search box on the site. However, the search retrieves every table or mention of the term searched, and it may be better to find specific reports through the publications page. Example of report:
Rape and Sexual Assault: Reporting to Police and Medical Attention, 1992-2000 (8/2002). See also the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, the Office of Violence Against Women
and the Arizona Rape and Sexual Assault Surveillance Project conducted by the University of Arizona Prevention Center.
Reproductive Health: Data and Statistics is a section of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. Topics include maternal health, hysterectomy, abortion, etc.
The Institute for Women's Policy Research has a Status of Women in the States project that issues reports, such as "Women's Economic Status in the States: Wide Disparities by Race, Ethnicity, and Region." It assesses five key areas: women’s earnings, the gender wage ratio, the percent of women in managerial and professional occupations, women’s business ownership, and women’s poverty. There are state-level factsheets on all states and in-depth studies on some, including Wisconsin. IWPR has also issued a report on the Status of Girls in Minnesota (80p., 2008).
Brief
Guide to Gender Statistics indicates where the main sources of gender-related
statistical information for the United Kingdom can be found in print
and other formats.
Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Dept. of Justice links to various statistics from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, including Violence Against Women: Estimates from the Redesigned National Crime Vicitimization Survey.
VAWNET has data sets concerning Violence Against Women. See also Evaluating Violence Against Women Research Reports, by Sandra K. Beeman, which provides guidelines on how to read and evaluate different kinds of research studies.
Violence and Abuse
article links from the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse (some include
statistics).
WisStat is a "is
a one-stop shop for Wisconsin data," maintained by the University
of Wisconsin Extension. See also GetFacts, which maps results.
Many Work/Employment statistics are on the
Women's Bureau, U.S. Dept. of Labor site, including Women in the Labor Force: a Databook 2009 Tables or full 101p. pdf). [Prior years: 2008 tables or full 101p. pdf) 2007 Tables or full 91p. pdf]. More recent information is in "Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers". For quick facts, try the factsheets, including Quick Stats on Women Workers, Women in the Labor Force in 2008, 20 Leading Occupations of Employed Women (2008), and Quick Facts on Nontraditional Occupations for Women (2008). See the publications list for more.
101 Facts on the Status on Workingwomen is an 8-page document compiled by the Business and Professional Women's Foundation (October, 2007). Labor force participation is one of the categories.
The Department for Professional Employees of the AFL-CIO Labor Federation has a 2009 Fact Sheet "Professional Women: Vital Statistics".
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has a page of statistics concerning workplace discrimination and enforcement.
The Sloan Work and Family Research Network has a section on "Gender and Use of Workplace Policies" that includes statistics.