In the framework of a cooperative project between the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) with an aim to strengthen the capability of gender statistics in the field of agriculture and rural area, the FAO Office in Ha Noi, in coordination with the General Statistics Office (GSO) held a workshop on “Analysis of Agricultural Statistics by Gender” from 25-26 May 2009 in Ha Noi.

The workshop was chaired by the Director of the Agricultural, Forestry and Fishery Statistics Department of the GSO. Attended were experts of agricultural statistics specialty from the GSO and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD); representatives from agencies and units directly related to the gender issue; Mrs. Josie Perez, the project international consultant and four domestic consultants.

The SIDA-FAO project is supporting Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam in analyzing gender statistics and strengthening the data quality. Gender and development or in other words to ensure sustainable subsistence are main interested objectives of the project.

The workshop focused on discussing the contents of subject-matter papers: (1) Overview of SIDA-FAO “Analysis of Agricultural Statistics by Gender” project; (2) Briefing project activities at GSO; (3) Generalizing the draft “Work frame for analyzing agricultural statistics by gender”; (4) Sketchy gender data of the agriculture and rural area in Viet Nam; (5) Overview of Gender in agricultural, forestry and fishing censuses and surveys; (6) Overview of indicators of agricultural gender analysis; (7) Gender indicators in the questionnaire set used in the 2006 Rural, Agricultural and Fishery Census; (8) General introduction of the 2006  Rural, Agricultural and Fishery Census database; (9) Gender issue in the 2006 Household Living Standard Survey, and (10) Strengthening the capabilities of analyzing statistical data by gender.

An important content of the workshop was to discuss on strengthening capabilities of GSO in analyzing agricultural statistics by gender, which received lots of interests and comments from participants. The workshop was an important basis for implementation of further steps in establishing a frame for gender and agriculture in accordance with FAO drafted frame; initially formulating gender data analysis tables based on the 2006 Rural, Agricultural and Fishery Census appropriate to the Geographical Information System (GIS) and other data management systems; documents of testing the Assessment Frame and lessons drawn, and recommendations and the work plan for the next phase.