Gender Inequality Index

The Gender Inequality Index (GII) is an index for the measurement of gender disparity that was introduced in the 2010 Human Development Report 20th anniversary edition by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). According to the UNDP, this index is a composite measure to quantify the loss of achievement within a country due to gender inequality. It uses three dimensions to measure opportunity cost: reproductive health, empowerment, and labor market participation. The new index was introduced as an experimental measure to remedy the shortcomings of the previous indicators, the Gender Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), both of which were introduced in the 1995 Human Development Report.

Countries by Gender Inequality Index (Data from 2019, published in 2020). Red denotes more gender inequality, and green more equality.[1]

Origins

As international recognition of the importance of eliminating gender inequality was growing, the Gender Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) were introduced in the 1995 Human Development Report. The GDI and GEM became the primary indices for measuring global gender inequality for the United Nations Human Development Reports. The GDI and GEM faced much criticism for their methodological and conceptual limitations.[2][3]

Beneria and Permanyer have explained that the GDI and GEM are not measurements of gender inequality in and of themselves. The GDI is a composite index which measures development within a country and then negatively corrects for gender inequality; and the GEM measures the access women have to attaining means of power in economics, politics, and making decisions. Both of which Beneria and Permanyer claim are inaccurate in clearly capturing gender inequality.[4] According to the UNDP, the GDI was criticized for its inability to accurately measure gender inequality for its components being too closely related to the Human Development Index (HDI), a composite measure of human development used by the UNDP.[5]

Thus, the differences between the HDI and GDI were small leading to the implication that gender disparities were irrelevant to human development. The UNDP also claims that both the GDI and GEM were criticized because income levels tended to dominate the earned income component, which resulted in countries with low income levels not being able to get high scores, even in cases where their levels of gender inequality may have been low. The GEM indicators proved to be more relevant to developed countries than less-developed countries. With international growing concern for gender equality, the participants of the World Economic Forum in 2007, among others, recognized that the advancement of women was a significant issue that impacted the growth of nations.[6]

As of 2006, the World Economic Forum has been using the Gender Gap Index (GGI) in its Global Gender Gap Reports, which ranks countries according to their gender gaps, in an attempt to better capture gender disparities.[7] Beneria and Permanyer criticize the GGI for only capturing inequality in certain aspects of women's lives therefore making it an incomplete measure of gender inequality.[4]

Given the amount of criticism the GDI and GEM were facing, the UNDP felt that these indices did not fully capture the disparities women faced. In an attempt to reform the GDI and GEM, the UNDP introduced the Gender Inequality Index (GII) in the 2010 Human Development Report.[5] The new index is a composite measure which, according to the UNDP, captures the loss of achievement due to gender inequality using three dimensions: reproductive health, empowerment, and labor market participation. The GII does not include income levels as a component, which was one of the most controversial components of the GDI and GEM. It also does not allow for high achievements in one dimension to compensate for low achievement in another.[5]

Dimensions

There are three critical dimensions to the GII: reproductive health, empowerment, and labor market participation. The dimensions are captured in one synthetic index, as to account for joint significance. According to the UNDP, none of the measures in the dimensions pertain to the country's development and therefore a less-developed country can perform well if gender inequality is low. The UNDP considers the dimensions complementary in that inequality in one dimension tends to affect inequality in another. Therefore, the GII captures association across dimensions, making the index association-sensitive, and ensuring that high achievement in one dimension does not compensate for low achievement in another dimension.[8]

Reproductive health

Permanyer notes that the GII is a pioneering index, in that it is the first index to include reproductive health indicators as a measurement for gender inequality.[3] The GII's dimension of reproductive health have two indicators: the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR), the data for which come UNICEF's State of the World's Children, and the adolescent fertility rate (AFR), the data for which is obtained through the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, respectively. With a low MMR, it is implied that pregnant women have access to adequate health needs, therefore the MMR is a good measure of women's access to health care. The UNDP expresses that women's health during pregnancy and childbearing is a clear sign of women's status in society.[8]

A high AFR, which measures early childbearing, results in health risks for mothers and infants as well as a lack of higher education attainment. According to the UNDP data, reproductive health accounts for the largest loss due to gender inequality, among all regions.[8]

Empowerment

The empowerment dimension is measured by two indicators: the share of parliamentary seats held by each sex, which is obtained from the International Parliamentary Union, and higher education attainment levels, which is obtained through United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Barro-Lee data sets.[9] The GII index of higher education evaluates women's attainment to secondary education and above. Access to higher education expands women's freedom by increasing their ability to question and increases their access to information which expands their public involvement.[8]

There is much literature that finds women's access to education may reduce the AFR and child mortality rates within a country.[6][10] Due to data limitations the parliament representation indicator is limited to national parliament and excludes local government or other community involvement. Although women's representation in parliament has been increasing women have been disadvantaged in representation of parliament with a global average of only 16%.[8]

Labor market participation

The labor market dimension is measured by women's participation in the workforce. This dimension accounts for paid work, unpaid work, and actively looking for work. The data for this dimension is obtained through the International Labour Organization databases. Due to data limitations women's income and unpaid work are not represented in the labor market dimension of GII.[9] In the absence of reliable earned income data across countries, the UNDP considers labor market participation a suitable substitute for economic aspects of gender inequality.[2]

Calculations

The metrics of the GII are similar in calculations to the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), which was also introduced in the 2010 Human Development Report, and can be interpreted as a percentage loss of human development due to shortcomings in the included dimensions. The value of GII range between 0 and 1, with 0 being 0% inequality, indicating women fare equally in comparison to men and 1 being 100% inequality, indicating women fare poorly in comparison to men. There is a correlation between GII ranks and human development distribution, according to the UNDP countries that exhibit high gender inequality also show inequality in distribution of development, and vice versa.[8]

The GII is an association-sensitive, responsive to distributional changes across dimension,[3] composite index used to rank the loss of development through gender inequality within a country.[8] The GII measures inequalities by addressing the shortcomings of other measures through aggregate strategy using multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) in order to avoid aggregation problems.[6] There are five steps to computing the gender inequality Index.[8]

Step 1: Treating zeros and extreme values: The maternal mortality rate is truncated systematically at minimum of 10 and maximum of 1,000. The maximum and minimum is based on the normative assumption that all countries with maternal mortality ratios above 1,000 do not differ in their ability to support for maternal health as well as the assumption that all countries below 10 do not differ in their abilities. Countries with parliamentary representation reporting at 0 are counted as 0.1 because of the assumption that women have some level of political influence and that the geometric mean can not have a 0 value.

Step 2: Aggregating across dimensions within each gender group, using geometric means: Aggregating across dimensions for each gender group by the geometric mean makes the GII association-sensitive.[8] The maternal mortality rate and the adolescent fertility rate are only relevant for females the males are only aggregated with the other two dimensions.

Step 3: Aggregating across gender groups, using a harmonic mean: To compute the equally distributed gender index the female and male indices are aggregated by the harmonic mean of the geometric means to capture the inequality between females and males and adjust for association between dimensions.

Step 4: Calculating the geometric mean of the arithmetic means for each indicator: Obtain the reference standard by aggregating female and male indices with equal weight, and then aggregating indices across dimensions.

Reproductive health is not an average of female and male indices but half the distance from the norms established

Step 5: Calculating the Gender Inequality Index: To compute the GII compare the equally distributed gender index from Step 3 to the reference standard from Step 4.

Changes in 2011 calculations

According to the UNDP there was a minor calculation change to the 2011 Gender Inequality Index from the 2010 index used. The maternal mortality ratio was calculated in the Gender Inequality Index at 10 even though the range of GII values should be between 0 and 1. To correct this the maternal mortality ratio is normalized by 10, which generally reduced the values of the GII.

Rankings

As there is no country with perfect gender equality, all countries suffer some loss of human development due to gender inequality. The difference in dimensions used in the GII and HDI means that the GII is not interpreted as a loss of HDI, but has its own rank and value separate from the HDI.[5] The GII is interpreted as a percentage and indicates the percentage of potential human development lost due to gender inequality. The world average GII score in 2011 was 0.492, which indicates a 49.2% loss in potential human development due to gender inequality.[9] Due to the limitations of data and data quality, the 2010 Human Development Report calculated GII rankings of 138 countries for the year 2008. The 2011 Human Development Report was able to calculate the GII rankings of 146 countries for the reporting year 2011.[11]

The 2019 rankings for all scored countries based on UNDP GII data are:

GII Rank HDI Rank Country GII Value
1 2 Switzerland 0.025
2 1 Norway 0.038
3 11 Finland 0.039
4 8 Netherlands 0.043
4 10 Denmark 0.043
6 7 Sweden 0.045
6 14 Belgium 0.045
7 23 South Korea 0.047
8 26 France 0.049
9 4 Iceland 0.058
10 22 Slovenia 0.063
11 23 Taiwan 0.064
12 23 Luxembourg 0.065
12 11 Singapore 0.065
14 18 Austria 0.069
14 29 Italy 0.069
16 25 Spain 0.070
17 19 Japan 0.075
18 38 Portugal 0.079
19 16 Canada 0.080
20 6 Germany 0.084
21 33 Cyprus 0.086
21 29 Estonia 0.086
23 2 Ireland 0.093
24 14 New Zealand 0.094
25 8 Australia 0.097
26 19 United Kingdom 0.109
26 48 Montenegro 0.109
28 35 Poland 0.115
29 32 Greece 0.116
29 43 Croatia 0.116
31 31 United Arab Emirates 0.118
31 53 Belarus 0.118
33 14 Israel 0.123
34 34 Lithuania 0.124
35 64 Serbia 0.132
36 27 Czech Republic 0.136
37 82 North Macedonia 0.143
38 73 Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.149
39 85 China 0.168
40 28 Malta 0.175
41 37 Latvia 0.176
42 69 Albania 0.181
43 45 Qatar 0.185
44 51 Kazakhstan 0.190
45 39 Slovakia 0.191
46 17 United States 0.204
46 90 Moldova 0.204
48 56 Bulgaria 0.206
49 42 Bahrain 0.212
50 52 Russia 0.225
51 40 Hungary 0.233
52 74 Ukraine 0.234
53 64 Kuwait 0.242
54 81 Armenia 0.245
55 43 Chile 0.247
56 105 Libya 0.252
56 40 Saudi Arabia 0.252
56 58 Barbados 0.252
59 62 Malaysia 0.253
60 47 Brunei 0.255
61 49 Romania 0.276
62 55 Uruguay 0.288
62 106 Uzbekistan 0.288
62 62 Costa Rica 0.288
65 95 Tunisia 0.296
65 117 Vietnam 0.296
67 70 Cuba 0.304
68 60 Oman 0.306
68 54 Turkey 0.306
70 125 Tajikistan 0.314
71 99 Mongolia 0.322
71 74 Mexico 0.322
73 88 Azerbaijan 0.323
73 67 Trinidad and Tobago 0.323
75 46 Argentina 0.328
76 61 Georgia 0.331
77 58 Bahamas 0.341
78 66 Mauritius 0.347
79 104 Tonga 0.354
80 79 Thailand 0.359
81 111 Samoa 0.360
82 95 Maldives 0.369
82 120 Kyrgyzstan 0.369
84 93 Fiji 0.370
85 124 El Salvador 0.383
86 86 Ecuador 0.384
87 79 Peru 0.395
88 101 Jamaica 0.396
89 126 Cape Verde 0.397
90 86 Saint Lucia 0.401
90 72 Sri Lanka 0.401
92 160 Rwanda 0.402
93 114 South Africa 0.406
94 57 Panama 0.407
95 84 Brazil 0.408
96 92 Lebanon 0.411
97 110 Belize 0.415
98 107 Bolivia 0.417
99 129 Bhutan 0.421
100 132 Honduras 0.423
101 83 Colombia 0.428
101 128 Nicaragua 0.428
103 91 Algeria 0.429
104 107 Philippines 0.430
105 97 Suriname 0.436
106 130 Namibia 0.440
107 103 Paraguay 0.446
108 116 Egypt 0.449
109 102 Jordan 0.450
110 142 Nepal 0.452
111 121 Morocco 0.454
112 88 Dominican Republic 0.455
113 137 Laos 0.459
113 70 Iran 0.459
115 122 Guyana 0.462
116 100 Botswana 0.465
117 144 Cambodia 0.474
118 147 Myanmar 0.478
119 113 Venezuela 0.479
119 127 Guatemala 0.479
121 107 Indonesia 0.480
122 151 Syria 0.482
123 131 India 0.488
124 185 Burundi 0.504
125 173 Ethiopia 0.517
126 143 Kenya 0.518
127 181 Mozambique 0.523
128 119 Gabon 0.525
129 150 Zimbabwe 0.527
130 168 Senegal 0.533
131 159 Uganda 0.535
132 148 Angola 0.536
133 135 Sao Tome and Principe 0.537
133 133 Bangladesh 0.537
135 138 Ghana 0.538
135 154 Pakistan 0.538
137 146 Zambia 0.539
138 170 Sudan 0.545
139 165 Lesotho 0.553
140 163 Tanzania 0.556
141 153 Cameroon 0.560
142 174 Malawi 0.565
143 138 Eswatini 0.567
144 149 Republic of the Congo 0.570
145 167 Togo 0.573
146 123 Iraq 0.577
147 182 Burkina Faso 0.594
148 158 Benin 0.612
148 172 Gambia 0.612
150 175 Democratic Republic of the Congo 0.617
151 157 Mauritania 0.634
152 170 Haiti 0.636
153 162 Ivory Coast 0.638
154 189 Niger 0.642
155 182 Sierra Leone 0.644
156 175 Liberia 0.650
157 169 Afghanistan 0.655
158 184 Mali 0.671
159 188 Central African Republic 0.680
160 187 Chad 0.710
161 155 Papua New Guinea 0.725
162 179 Yemen 0.795

Top ten countries

The ten highest-ranked countries in terms of gender equality according to the GII for 2008,[8] 2011,[11] and 2012.[12]

2018 rank and value, source: http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/table-5-gender-inequality-index-gii.

2018: 9th is Iceland, 10th is Republic of Korea.

Country GII Rank

(GII value) 2018

 GII Rank 2012 GII Value 2012 HDI Rank 2012 GII Rank 2011 GII Value 2011 GII Rank 2008 GII Value 2008
Netherlands 4 (0.041) 1 0.045 4 2 0.052 1 0.174
Sweden 2 (0.040) 2 0.055 7 1 0.049 3 0.212
Denmark 2 (0.040) 3 0.057 15 3 0.060 2 0.209
Switzerland 1 (0.037) 4 0.057 9 4 0.067 4 0.228
Norway 5 (0.044) 5 0.065 1 6 0.075 5 0.234
Finland 7 (0.050) 6 0.075 21 5 0.075 8 0.248
Germany 19 (0.084) 7 0.075 5 7 0.085 7 0.240
South Korea 7 (0.048) 8 0.08 7 8 0.078 8 0.198
France 8 (0.051) 10 0.083 20 10 0.106 11 0.260
Belgium 6 (0.045) 9 0.068 * * * * GHS

Countries not included[13][14]
Country GII Rank 2012 GII Value 2012 HDI Rank 2012 GII Rank 2011 GII Value 2011 GII Rank 2008 GII Value 2008
Republic of China (Taiwan) 2 0.053 23 4 0.061 4 0.223

Bottom ten countries

The ten lowest ranked countries in terms of gender equality according to the GII for 2008,[8] 2011,[11] and 2012.[12]

2018 rank and value, source: http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/table-5-gender-inequality-index-gii.

Country GII Rank

(GII value) 2018

 GII Value 2012 HDI Rank 2012 GII Rank 2011 GII Value 2011 GII Rank 2008 GII Value 2008
Yemen 162 (0.834) 0.747 160 -- -- -- --
Afghanistan 143 (0.575) 0.712 175 141 0.717 134 0.797
Niger 154 (0.647) 0.707 186 144 0.724 136 0.807
Congo 156 (0.655) 0.681 186 142 0.710 169 0.814
Liberia 155 (0.651) 0.658 174 139 0.671 131 0.766
Central African Republic 159 (0.682) 0.654 180 138 0.669 132 0.768
Mali 158 (0.676) 0.649 182 143 0.712 135 0.799
Sierra Leone 153 (0.644) 0.643 177 137 0.662 125 0.756
Mauritania 150 (0.620) 0.643 155 -- -- -- --

Criticisms

The GII is a relatively new index that has only been in use since 2010. Criticisms of the GII as a global measurement of gender inequality include that the GII may inadequately capture gender inequality, leave out important aspects, or include unnecessary dimensions, and the complexity of GII causes difficulty for some to interpret or calculate.

Complexity

Klasen and Schüler as well as Permanyer argue that the complexity of the GII will make it difficult to interpret or understand for the professionals who would likely want to make use of it because so many non-linear procedures are applied to the data.[3][15] Permanyer believes that simplicity is required in order for analysts, policy-makers, or practitioners to convey a clear message to the general public.[3]

Klasen and Schüler claim that the GII is meant to represent a loss of human development, but the standard against which the losses are measured is not stated anywhere, unlike the GDI where the losses were measured against the HDI, making the HDI represent perfect equality.[15] The UNDP explains that the complexity of the calculations are needed in order to maintain an association-sensitive measure, but Permanyer argues that alternative indices that are much less complex have also shown to be association sensitive.[3]

Mix of indices

Both Klasen and Schüler as well as Permanyer argue that the GII mixes indices in a few ways which furthers the complexity and poses other issues. The measurement combines well-being and empowerment which becomes problematic in that it increases the complexity, lacks transparency, and suffers from the problem of using an arithmetic means of ratios.[3][15] Permanyer argues that it also combines two different, absolute and relative, indicators within the same formula. For example, if the MMR is higher than 10 per 100,000 it is considered inequality. Yet, parliamentary representation is only considered inequality if there is a deviation from 50 percent. Therefore, if women and men fare equally in all dimensions the GII would not equal a zero value as it should. Permanyer gives an example for this problem:

Consider a hypothetical country with PRf = PRm, SEf = SEm, LFPRf = LFPRm and with the lowest MMR and AFR observed in the sample of countries for which data is available (MMR = 10, AFR = 3.8). In that case, that hypothetical country would have a GII value well above 0 (GII approximately 0.15).[3]

Regional relevance

Permanyer also criticizes the GII for whether or not its assessment of gender inequality, and uses of the same set of indicators, are equally relevant or meaningful across all regions of the Globe. For less-developed countries the use of the MMR and AFR in the dimension of reproductive health may be penalizing although the loss may not be entirely explained by gender inequality.[3] Less-developed countries performance in the reproductive health dimension may differ regionally or locally. Access to or use of health services can be influenced by socio-economic levels, public health policies, or social and cultural practices. In developed countries, specifically European countries, gender inequality levels are not very "robust to alternative specifications of gender-related indicators" and analysts and policy makers may choose specific methods to yield desired results.[3]

Choice of variables

Klasen and Schüler briefly criticize the GII for its failure to capture the informal work and unpaid domestic or care work where women are primarily over-represented. In many underdeveloped societies women and girls spend the majority of their time in domestic work whereas men and boys spend far less, if any.[10] Therefore, the if the GII lacks the capturing of the time women spend in unpaid labor, it is insufficient in capturing the true global disparities of women.[15]

See also

References
  1. Nations, United (2020). "Human Development Report 2020 - Table 5: Gender Inequality Index". United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved 2021-01-22.
  2. Bardhan, K., and Klasen, S.(1999).UNDP's Gender-Related Indices: A Critical Review, World Development, 27:6, pp.985-1010
  3. Permanyer, I.,(2011). Are UNDP Indices Appropriate to Capture Gender Inequalities in Europe? Archived 2020-09-11 at the Wayback Machine, Social Indicators Research, pp. 1-24
  4. Beneria, L., Permanyer, I.,(2010).The Measurement of Socio-economic Gender Inequality Revisited, Development and Change, 41:3, pp.375-399
  5. United Nations Development Programme,(2011).Gender Inequality Index FAQ
  6. Ferrant, G., (2010). The Gender Inequalities Index (GII) as a New Way to Measure Gender Inequalities in Developing Countries, SciencesNew York, pp.106-112
  7. Hausmann, R., Tyson, L.D., Zahidi, S., (2006). "The Global Gender Gap Report 2006", World Economic Forum, Geneva, Switzerland
  8. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2010; The Real Wealth of Nations, 2010
  9. United Nations Development Programme, Gender Inequality Index FAQ's, 2011
  10. Hill and King, Women's Education and Economic Well-Being, Feminist Economics, 1995
  11. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2011; Sustainability and Equity, 2011
  12. "Table 4 Gender Inequality Index 2012". United Nations Development Programme. Archived from the original on 3 January 2014. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
  13. "我國HDI、GII分別排名全球第23位及第2位" (PDF) (in Chinese). Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics. Retrieved 2013-12-26.
  14. 台灣性別平等 2012排名全球第2, Liberty Times, 2014-09-23
  15. Klasen and Schüler,Reforming the Gender-Related Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure: Implementing Some Specific Proposals Archived 2013-12-02 at the Wayback Machine, Feminist Economics, 17:1, 2011.
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