Gender Inequality Index
The Gender Inequality Index (GII) is a measure of gender disparity that takes into account reproductive health, empowerment, and labor market participation. It provides a comprehensive assessment of gender inequality within a country, with higher values indicating greater disparities between men and women. The GII is a valuable tool for understanding and addressing gender inequality on a global scale.
4 Key excerpts on "Gender Inequality Index"
eBook - ePubGender Inequalities
GIS Approaches to Gender Analysis
- Esra Ozdenerol, Esra Ozdenerol(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...The Gender Inequality Index was first introduced in the 2010 edition of the Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 2000). It measures the human development costs of gender inequality. Thus, the higher the GII value, the more the disparities between females and males and the more the loss to human development. It is a measurement of the difference between men and women in the respective country. Figure 1.8 sheds new light on the position of women in 162 countries; it yields insights into gender gaps in major areas of human development. The component indicators highlight areas in need of critical policy intervention, and they stimulate proactive thinking and public policy to overcome systematic disadvantages of women. The Gender Inequality Index ranges from 0, where women and men fare equally, to 1, where one gender fares as poorly as possible in all measured dimensions. The countries with lower GII values have a higher success rate considering gender equality, as the GII measures the loss of success due to gender inequality. The worst-performing countries considering gender inequality are Yemen, the Central African countries, and Papa New Guinea. This is mostly due to the poor equality in empowerment and labor in these countries. FIGURE 1.8 Map of Gender Inequality Index (Mapped by Spatial Analysis and Geographic Education Laboratory, University of Memphis, Data source: UNDP-United Nations Development Program, Human Development Data 2019, http://hdr.undp.org/en/data. Accessed April 12, 2020). The Female Reproductive Health Index is used to assess a country’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (Barot et al. 2015)...
eBook - ePubAdvances in Women's Empowerment
Critical Insight from Asia, Africa and Latin America
- Araceli Ortega Díaz, Marta Bárbara Ochman, Araceli Ortega Díaz, Marta Bárbara Ochman(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Emerald Publishing Limited(Publisher)
...In particular, it measures gender inequalities in three important aspects of human development: reproductive health, empowerment, and economic status. Nevertheless, as we mentioned previously, the GII offers aggregated information and does not allow us to analyze the different dimensions behind the concept of women’s empowerment. In this same line, the World Economic Forum (WEF) (2018) developed the Gender Gap Index to measure gender differences across a wide sample of countries based on gender indicators that are classified into four dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. Nonetheless, it should be noted that, as the authors remark, the index ranks countries according to gender equality rather than women’s empowerment. Due to the need for available data that enable in-depth research on gender issues, several new measures of women’s empowerment use survey data at the individual and household level across countries. Nevertheless, most of these indexes are based on a specific dimension of women’s empowerment such as reproductive health (Afifi, 2009 ; Tadesse, Teklie, Yazew, & Gebreselassie, 2013 ; Upadhyay & Karasek, 2012), partner violence (Msuya, Adinan, & Mosha, 2014), or the inclusion of women in the agricultural sector (Alkire et al., 2013). Indeed, these indexes are constructed for specific countries (Ethiopia in the case of Tadesse et al., 2013 ; Tanzania in Msuya et al., 2014 ; or Egypt in the research of Afifi, 2009) or for a small group of countries, thus complicating comparisons across countries. Based on the data from 170 countries over the period 1900–2012, Sundström, Paxton, Wang, and Lindberg (2017) constructed an index of women’s political empowerment...
eBook - ePub- Nan de Graaf, Dingeman Wiertz(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...For example, the GDI had been criticized for not fully capturing the disadvantages that women face in society and for allowing a very good performance on one dimension to compensate for a very poor performance on another dimension. The idea behind the GII is that it measures a country’s overall loss in terms of human development due to gender disparities. As such, the GII effectively answers the question how much more developed a country could have been if women faced the same living conditions as men. In terms of its calculation, the GII is a composite index based on three aspects of human development: reproductive health (measured by maternal mortality and adolescent birth rates), empowerment (measured by the proportion of women in parliament as well as the proportions of men and women with at least some secondary education), and economic status (measured by the labour force participation rates of men and women). Importantly, income in no way enters the calculation of the GII, allowing poor countries to still obtain a good score on the GII. A low GII score indicates low inequality between men and women and vice versa. In Table 8.1 we report the ten highest and lowest ranked countries in terms of the Gender Development Index and the Gender Inequality Index for 2015. With respect to the lowest-ranking countries, the two indices yield a fairly consistent picture, with Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Chad, Yemen, Niger and Afghanistan ranking very low on both the GDI and GII. Most of these countries have in common that they are poor and located in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, a few of these countries represent Islamic countries in the Middle East or Asia, where women are often discriminated against. Table 8.1 Country rankings for the Gender Development Index and Gender Inequality Index in 2015 Note: Data are from the 2016 UN Human Development Report (UN 2016). Regarding the highest-ranking countries, the GDI and GII sketch a contrasting picture...
eBook - ePubMultidimensional Inequalities
International Perspectives Across Welfare States
- Bent Greve(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
...Furthermore, this also reflects the fact that inequality is a multidimensional issue not only across dimensions and topics, but also within specific issues such as gender inequality. Figure 5.1 gives an example from the European Index. Figure 5.1: Gender equality index for EU countries in 2019. Source: https://eige.europa.eu/gender-equality-index/2019/compare-countries/index/graph, accessed 26 August 2020. The snapshot in Figure 5.1 indicates a large difference in Europe, with a higher degree of equality in the Nordic countries than in Eastern and Southern Europe. This does not indicate that it is the same within all 31 different indicators; however, it indicates a systematic difference among welfare regimes. Health is, in fact, the field where on average across the indicators there is the highest degree of equality, as also shown in Conceição (2019). There is also a relatively high degree of equality within education. The same picture can be found in a report related to the global gender gap. Globally, it shows that when it comes to health and survival and educational attainment the situation is close to gender equality, whereas with regard to economic participation and opportunity as well as political empowerment, there are still strong differences across countries in the options for men and women (World Economic Forum 2019). In this report one might question whether the indicator of wage inequality is solid, given it is based upon a survey among business leaders in 140 countries, but not on actual differences. A longer-time analysis of 129 countries from 1950 to 2003 also shows a development in a number of indicators in a composite indicator towards stronger gender equality, albeit not to the extent that it has disappeared (Dilli, Carmichael, and Rijpma 2019). The four domains used are socioeconomic, health, households and politics...
