How many women in African countries use fertilizer to help grow their vegetables?

It’s an important question in agriculture-dominant Africa, where many women are farmers—and where the targeting of scarce development funds for farming inputs like fertilizer could mean the difference between an abundant harvest and a poor one.

But there is a dearth of data to help guide the decision-making, and female farmers—usually less vocal than their male counterparts—may lose out.

Such data gaps are common, and they hamper efforts to help women in developing countries, say many in the development community. Now, the World Bank is making its growing number of gender data indicators more accessible through a new gender data portal – the latest move to beef up its work on gender equality.