in terms of policies the change of focus from women to gender stemmed from a recognition that isolating women s concerns from mainstream development policies and strategies limits the impact of such policies and strategies whereas paying more attention to the roles and responsibilities of both women and men and their interrelationships can make policies and strategies more effective gender statistics are about everybody women and men the production of gender statistics has the role of informing the public and the media raising consciousness encouraging public debate and promoting change in society the dissemination of gender statistics to a large audience is crucial in reducing both gender stereotypes and the misrepresentation of the roles of women and men and their contribution to society and in promoting a new gender balance in the distribution of roles within the family at the workplace and in positions of decisionmaking