percentages will add up to unless the categories are not mutually exclusive in gender statistics proportions can be calculated as relative measures of a distributions of each sex by selected characteristics and b sex distributions within the categories of a characteristic these two types of proportions are presented in the table iv in the first case of distribution the proportions are calculated as relative frequencies of the categories of a characteristic for each sex with womens and men s respective totals used as the denominators for example in the third column of data in table iv this is calculated as the number of women employed divided by womens total population in the corresponding age group and multiplied by