while gaps still persist across certain policy sectors the trend is to increase the availability of data disaggregated by gender to enable a sound assessment of the impacts of policies and laws on men and women figure there is significant progress globally in terms of the development of gender indicators and the collection and dissemination of gender statistics among eu countries several national mechanisms for example in finland france ireland latvia portugal and sweden report close cooperation with national statistical offices and the regular gathering and publication of statistical profiles of women and men tavares da silva sweden s ordinance of official statistics stipulates that all official statistics concerning individuals or groups must be presented disaggregated by sex horsburgh