four main areas are covered politics and governance the judiciary civil service and the private sector statistical agencies in many countries do not routinely collect and disseminate data on women in power and decisionmaking and few international or regional organizations compile those statistics the most readily available information on decisionmaking is the number and proportion of women in national parliaments and key elected positions collected under the auspices of the interparliamentary union and monitored within the framework of the millennium development goals mdgs the european commissions database on women and men in decisionmaking gives a comprehensive regional picture of women and men in top positions the united nations economic commission for europe s unece gender statistics database and the united nations development fund s unifem biennial progress of the world s women provided additional statistics on some of the topics covered in the chapter the statistics and analysis on some of these topics are based in large part on sources available from private or nongovernmental organizations the presentation and analysis on these topics are therefore relatively limited