Measuring Key Disparities in Human Development: The Gender Inequality Index

Amie Gaye (), Jeni Klugman (), Milorad Kovacevic (), Sarah Twigg () and Eduardo Zambrano
Additional contact information
Amie Gaye: Human Development Report Office, UNDP
Jeni Klugman: Human Development Report Office, UNDP
Milorad Kovacevic: Human Development Report Office, UNDP
Sarah Twigg: Human Development Report Office, UNDP

No HDRP-2010-46, Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) from Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Abstract: Gender inequality remains a major barrier to human development. Girls and women have made major strides since 1990, but they have not yet gained gender equity. In this paper, we review ways to measure and monitor gender inequality, providing a critique of existing measures including the first global gender indices that were launched in the 1995 Human Development Report – the Gender-related Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure - and introduce a new index that is presented in the 2010 Human Development Report. The Gender Inequality Index, which addresses the key criticisms of previous measures, is unique in including critical issues of educational attainment, economic and political participation, and reproductive health issues and in accounting for overlapping inequalities at the national level. As such, it represents an important advance on existing global measures of gender equity. Measures of the disadvantages for women raise awareness of problems, permit monitoring of progress towards gender equity objectives and help keep governments accountable. In this light, the Gender Inequality Index is designed to reveal the extent to which the realization of a country’s human development potential is curtailed by gender inequality, and provides empirical foundations for policy analysis and advocacy efforts. We also compare our results with the results of alternative gender inequality indices, finding significant variation in rankings across the various indices due largely to differences in the elements of gender inequality they seek to measure.

Keywords: Human Development; Gender inequality; gender index; human development; measurement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 D63 J16 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2010-12
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Published as background research for the 2010 Human Development Report.

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2010/papers/HDRP_2010_46.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hdr:papers:hdrp-2010-46

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) from Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by HDRO/UNDP ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).