This report presents an overview of the available data on gender equality in public administration in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Countries and territories in the region face challenges similar to those in other regions when it comes to addressing gender equality in public administration. Women are absent at decision-making levels in public administration systems, which tends to perpetuate gender-biased policies, practices and attitudes. There is also a critical lack of data necessary to advocate for change, set policy, and monitor progress towards gender equality goals. These data gaps need to be addressed to establish a global tracking mechanism for women in public administration.

The research presented in this report was conducted with three operational goals in mind: (1) to map the availability of statistical data on the participation of women and men in public administration, the representation of women and men in non-elected managerial positions and the representation of women and men in different branches of public administration; (2) to identify the main challenges in collecting data on public administration and gender barriers and develop recommendations for the improvement of national monitoring mechanisms; and (3) to advance recommendations for the establishment of a global monitoring mechanism that will track the participation of women in public administration.

Since the release of the UNDP Global Report - Gender Equality in Public Administration (GEPA) in 2014, a research team at the Gender Inequality Research Lab (GIRL) at the University of Pittsburgh has been tracking publicly available GEPA data collected by each country. Data presented in this report as of August 2020 include and build upon previous data tracking efforts in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region, such as Gender Equality in Public Administration: A snapshot of Eastern Europe and Central Asia (2017).

This overview is three-pronged: first, it offers an update of the publicly available sex-disaggregated public administration data in the region; second; it focuses on gender parity in decision-making levels across different sectors of public administration; and third, it presents the gaps in sex-disaggregated data in public administration as a means to set the stage for SDG 16.7.1b reporting, which will be required of member states within the next calendar year.