Statistics Portugal carried out the second edition of the Fertility Survey. This survey is part of the Project National Statistics System on Gender Equality, promoted by Statistics Portugal and financed by the EEAGrants.
Data from the survey will reinforce the Gender Database, ensuring the availability of data on the set of reasons for the low number of births in Portugal, namely gender inequalities in the labour market and imbalances within families. As a relevant tool to support the definition and evaluation of policies related to family and birth, the results of this survey should contribute to raise awareness about the urgent demographic problem, as well as to support the formulation of public policies.
The fieldwork of the Fertility Survey was carried out between September 2019 and February 2020, and both women and men were surveyed. The total number of completed interviews was 7 709: 5 178 women aged 18 to 49 and 2 531 men aged 18 to 54. The first results of the survey are expected to be available in December 2020.
The project National Statistics System on Gender Equality, encompassing three activities, aims to improve the Gender Database, so a more comprehensive system of gender statistics and information on various dimensions of (in)equality between women and men would be available for policy users and for the whole society.
The first activity comprises reviewing, updating and enhancing the content and coverage of the Gender Database, including a platform to map relevant data from an equality point of view, taking into consideration international best practices from other National Statistics Offices and international organizations, namely the European Institute on Gender Equality (EIGE).
The second activity refers to the design and implementation of the Survey on Fertility, which data collection has already been carried out.
The third activity refers to the development of a report on the methodology and technological solutions to be adopted in a future Time Use Survey. Inequalities in the distribution of time are of great importance from the point of view of public policies. In this sense, it is considered an important source of data for measuring time distribution, in particular from a gender equality perspective, including paid and unpaid working time, voluntary work, new forms of work, participation in daily household tasks, care work, time spent on commuting, use of transports, leisure time and culture, balance between work and family life, use of technology, loneliness and isolation, as well as elements related with quality of life, including its subjective perception.
Considering the increasing need for these data, the fact that Statistics Portugal does not carry out a survey on this subject since 1999 and the challenge of using new tools and innovative technologies, Statistics Portugal will work in close cooperation with Statistics Norway to develop this action, benefiting from their experience in collecting data using such innovative tools.
The microsite about the results of the project is also being developed, to be available in Statistics Portugal website.