Cabinet nod for national Women’s Wellbeing survey

April 20, 2024

Economy

Cabinet nod for national Women’s Wellbeing survey

July 05, 2018

A national survey on Women’s Wellbeing would begin in October, this year, in a bid to quantify the status of women in the country. Cabinet approval for the above proposal was received this week. The Cabinet paper, submitted by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, said the Department of Census and Statistics, together with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), would conduct the survey. The UNFPA Ninth Country Programme Action Plan 2018-2022 (CPAP 2018-2022), which would also fund the programme, had agreed to provide a grant of Rs 26,978,109 for the survey. The survey report would be published in June, 2019.

The Cabinet paper on the subject explained that groups of women over 15 years of age would be interviewed around the country for the survey. The Prime Minister, in his Cabinet paper, pointed out that for years, both the government as well as NGOs had undertaken several programmes to empower women, but there had been no official statistics to ascertain whether the programmes had worked or not.

Further, given the downward trend in the labour force participation of women, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe believed that the unofficial statistics on “various physical and mental harm such as gender-based violence and domestic violence,” had a bearing on the low labour force participation rates. “This has paved the way to realise the importance of official statistics on real life situations in society,” the Cabinet paper said.