How to make India's National Family Health Survey more gender-sensitive

India's five rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) have provided large datasets with which to monitor progress on household sanitation, health and nutrition of women and children, and even the empowerment status of women. Whether these data accurately represent the condition and position of women in India is questionable.

The NFHS records data about couples and specifically on women's household decision making, mobility, use of a bank account and mobile phone, home or land ownership, and barriers to medical treatment, all of which are considered empowerment indicators for women. Each couple receives one survey. In a stereotypical patriarchal society where the man is usually head of the household, most respondents are men. A couple's record therefore often misses the women's point of view. The latest survey, NFHS-5, misses to a large extent woman's outcomes, and this might reflect women's voices in society generally.

In reality, data collected by the survey generate evidence for policy making only from men's perspectives. Hilary Graham argues that the survey method treats all individuals as being equal, and the subjectivity involved in framing questions for a survey might not fit a woman's answer to the question.

Gender perspective should be considered early in the survey system, from composing questions and designing survey tools to sensitising the administrators and data entry operators to analyse data about women. Creating an encouraging environment for women to respond to the survey is the prerequisite for women's participation in the survey. The complete set of NFHS questionnaires needs to be evaluated from a gender perspective.

Identifying gender-specific or differentiated data from the available data sources is difficult because of the limited policy space, poor coordination, and restricted resources, all of which are barriers to the development of additional gender data. Monitoring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals will be difficult without gender-segregated differential data. Timely and accurate information about the status of women and girls is crucial for determining whether they are gaining from the activities designed to realise the 2030 agenda, particularly those activities that directly target gender equality.