Guest Post: Dr. Valerie Hudson, Woman Stats Project

The WomanStats Project began in 2001 with the aim of investigating the link between the security and behavior of states and the situation and security of the women within them. Since that time, it has grown to include seven principal investigators at five universities, representing four fields of study: international relations, geography, psychology, and sociology. The Project has also been a source of mentoring to over sixty students, many of whom have gone on to post-graduate work.

The Project has several interrelated goals:
· to develop the most comprehensive database on the situation and status of women in the world
· to develop innovative indices and measures to describe the situation and status of women, which will allow for empirical analysis, assessment, monitoring, and evaluation activities
· to perform empirical and spatial analysis of the relationship between the situation and status of women in the world with the behavior and security of states

The WomanStats Project is constructing what is already the most comprehensive database on the status of women cross-nationally (available at http://womanstats.org ). Containing over 110,000 data points and growing every day, it covers over 300 variables for 174 nations with populations greater than 200,000 persons. We also feature several online mappings of the situation and treatment of women (http://womanstats.org/mapEntrez.htm ), and also a student-written blog (http://womanstats.org/blog.htm ).

To demonstrate the difference WomanStats data make, suppose one were interested in assessing women’s security through examining complex issues such as rape. Existing cross-national data sources would provide an indication of the prevalence of rape according to official sources, where available and reliable.

But WomanStats would give you much more. Uploaded onto a publicly available internet site, one would find the following variables concerning rape for any chosen country: official and unofficial estimates of the incidence of rape, laws concerning rape, laws concerning who can testify in a rape case, estimates of the level of enforcement of rape laws within the society and across various subnational regions, customary practice after rape (ostracism, honor killings, effect on marriageability or on divorce), laws concerning abortion in the case of rape, laws on marital rape, customary practices regarding marital rape, presence of resources for women who have been raped (such as women’s shelters), legal punishments concerning rape, estimates of HIV/AIDS transmission due to rape, and even first-hand accounts by rape victims (collected by NGOs) of their treatment within the society. We even have an ordinal scale of rape and sexual assault, so that you may compare this phenomenon cross-nationally.

Clearly, the constellation of information provided in the WomanStats database paints a far more accurate and detailed picture of how rape affects the lives of women in various nations than what is currently available. Policymakers could implement more effective and achievable initiatives based on this stronger empirical foundation and track the success of those initiatives using a chosen set of focused indicators of change. Furthermore, through our web-based interface credentialed experts may directly enter data online. And all of this data would be available with an internet connection and the click of a mouse!

Our research in these areas has already been published in top journals, including International Security and the Journal of Peace Research, and vetted at the United Nations, the US Department of Defense, the CIA, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Because the fate of nations is integrally tied to the status of women in society, this research project has the potential to profoundly affect every society's understanding of itself and the most important determinants of national and international security and their current and future transformation.

Looking for a good project to support? Consider WomanStats! Donations can be made online at http://womanstats.org/donations .

Valerie M. Hudson

I worked on the Woman Stats Project for a year- it is very near and dear to my heart! Dr. Hudson honestly changed my life with everything she taught me about life and being a woman.  You will not regret getting involved with Woman Stats- its an incredible project!