Turning Data into Insights for Women’s Empowerment
by Kwok Kin LeeLinkedIn Gender
Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls are central to achieving sustainable development. As one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 5), gender equality is widely recognized as essential for building inclusive economies, reducing poverty, and fostering long-term prosperity. However, progress toward this goal depends on a clear understanding of the challenges women face across different sectors.
Reliable, timely, and large-scale data are key to understanding these challenges. Without accurate information about women’s participation, skills, and career progression, policymakers and organizations cannot design effective solutions to advance gender equality.
The Development Data Partnership brings together international organizations and companies to enable the responsible use of data for the public good. By providing researchers with access to datasets contributed by data partners, the Partnership supports analyses of development challenges across sectors.
In celebration of International Women’s Day (March 8), we highlight two projects supported through the Development Data Partnership that use LinkedIn data to better understand gender gaps and inform solutions.
Mapping Gender Gaps in the Energy Sector
Women are pivotal to the energy sector and their participation can improve global energy security and facilitate transitions toward more sustainable practices. Yet efforts to understand gender gaps are often limited by the scarcity of gender-disaggregated data and ongoing challenges in defining sector classifications in energy.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), a sister entity to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, launched the Gender and Energy Data Explorer in 2022 to compile gender-related data, identify gaps, and track trends over time. The Explorer draws multiple sources, including a LinkedIn dataset received through the Development Data Partnership. This dataset covers LinkedIn’s Skills Genome and ranks the 10 most prominent skills by country, gender, and energy subsector, offering a unique, self-reported view of how women and men present their skills in the energy industry workforce.
Findings from 2017 to 2023 illustrate differences in skills patterns. Both men and women in the oil and gas and mining industry in Europe reported oil- and gas-related technical skills as their most prominent skills. However, women were more likely to report additional skills of a more generic nature, including software, language, and soft skills.
In Europe’s utilities sector, the contrast was more pronounced: women predominantly reported soft skills and proficiency in software tools as their most prominent competencies, while men were more likely to report skills related to renewable energy. Read more about this project.
Addressing the “Broken Rung” in Women’s Career Progression
Across Latin America and the Caribbean, one of the most significant barriers to women’s career advancement occurs during the transition from entry-level roles to managerial positions. Understanding where women’s participation declines along the career ladder is critical for designing policies and initiatives that support their advancement.
Through the Development Data Partnership, IDB Invest collaborated with LinkedIn to analyze aggregated labor market data across 18 countries in the region. The analysis examines how women’s representation changes across career stages and sectors. The findings show that women represent about 49 percent of entry-level positions, but their share declines to 35 percent in managerial roles and only 26 percent in senior executive positions, highlighting a significant leadership gap.
The research also reveals that gender representation varies across industries. Women remain underrepresented in leadership roles in high-income sectors such as oil, gas, and mining, as well as in the sectors of technology, information, and media. By contrast, women’s leadership roles are concentrated in service-oriented industries, particularly in health, education, and consumer services.
This analysis provides valuable insights to design better-targeted policies that remove barriers and accelerate women’s advancement into decision-making positions. Find out more about the project.
The two projects above demonstrate how data sources can help illuminate gender gaps that are often difficult to measure using traditional statistics alone. By combining large-scale datasets with analysis, international organizations can uncover patterns in women’s workforce participation, skills development, and leadership progression that inform better policies and programs.
As efforts to advance gender equality continue, data sharing will remain essential. By working together to unlock the potential of data, the global community can better understand the barriers women and girls face and design solutions that create more inclusive opportunities for them worldwide.