Drawing percentage graphs without percent variables

Question

I have a dataset in Stata that looks like the following :

Year	Gender	Presidents	Presidents_F	Presidents_M	Presidents_Total
2023	Male	5	6	5	11
2023	Female	6	6	5	11
2023	Total	11	6	5	11
2022	Male	3	2	3	5
2022	Female	2	2	3	5
2022	Total	5	2	3	5

I want to be able to draw stacked graphs that show the percentage share of female and male presidents (sum to 100) over years (dataset goes from 1970 to 2023) without generating separate percentage variables but using the absolute numbers already available.

I earlier tried generating line graphs from percentage variables and that worked well in showing the trends. However, my supervisor wants me to not generate additional unnecessary variables but still be able to graph the percentages across years.

She suggested using catplot but I am unsure how catplot can give be the ability to define the formula for the percentage within the command.

Please suggest the best way to go forward.

Answer 1

Your data already show considerable redundancy. You don't cite your previous threads in which I advised (twice over) against keeping totals in separate observations.

Conditional Division in Stata

Is there a way to calculate percentages comparing observations?

catplot (from SSC, as you are asked to explain) can give you stacked bars, using its percent() option, but the redundancy of showing two complementary percentages can be avoided by using a line graph of either one.

* Example generated by -dataex-. For more info, type help dataex
clear
input int year str6 gender byte(presidents presidents_f presidents_m presidents_total)
2023 "Male"    5 6 5 11
2023 "Female"  6 6 5 11
2023 "Total"  11 6 5 11
2022 "Male"    3 2 3  5
2022 "Female"  2 2 3  5
2022 "Total"   5 2 3  5
end

catplot gender year if inlist(gender, "Male", "Female") [fw=presidents],  percent(year) asyvars stack

bysort year (gender) : gen pcfemale = 100 * presidents[1] / presidents[3] 
levelsof year, local(years)
line pcfemale year , ytitle(% female presidents) xla(`years')