Global_Gender_Gap_Report

Global Gender Gap Report

Global Gender Gap Report

Index designed to measure gender equality

The Global Gender Gap Report is an index designed to measure gender equality. It was first published in 2006 by the World Economic Forum.[1]

Cover of the 2008 report

It "assesses countries on how well they are dividing their resources and opportunities among their male and female populations, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities," the Report says.[2] "By providing a comprehensible framework for assessing and comparing global gender gaps and by revealing those countries that are role models in dividing these resources equitably between women and men, the Report serves as a catalyst for greater awareness as well as greater exchange between policymakers."[2]

According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2023, it will take exactly 131 years for the gender gap to close.[3][4]

Methodology

The report's Gender Gap Index ranks countries according to calculated gender gap between women and men in four key areas: health, education, economy and politics to gauge the state of gender equality in a country.

The report examines four overall areas of inequality between men and women in 130 economies around the globe, over 93% of the world's population:

  • Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
  • Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher-level education
  • Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
  • Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio. In this case parity is not assumed, there are assumed to be fewer female births than male (944 female for every 1,000 males), and men are assumed to die younger. Provided that women live at least six percent longer than men, parity is assumed. But if it is less than six percent it counts as a gender gap.[5]

Thirteen out of the fourteen variables used to create the index are from publicly available "hard data" indicators from international organizations, such as the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organization.[6]

Upper limiting value of the Gender Gap Index

More information 1. Economic participation and opportunity, ratio ...
More information Compilation ...

Gender Gap Index: 3.98 / 4 = 0.9949

This is the upper limiting value of the Gender Gap Index (limes superior) for the female-to-male ratio and for the male-to-female ratio.

WEF Global Gender Gap Index rankings

The highest possible score is 1.0 (equality or better for women, except for lifespan (106% or better for women) and gender parity at birth (94.4% or better for women[11]) and the lowest possible score is 0. Data for some countries are unavailable.[12][13][14] The three highest-ranking countries have closed over 84% of their gender gaps, while the lowest-ranking country has closed only a little over 50% of its gender gap.

Global Gender Gap Report 2020
More information Location, Year ...

Criticisms and controversies

There are criticisms that the report overly focuses on women's disadvantages compared to men and does not measure equality in the gender gap. Gender imbalances to the advantage of women do not affect the score.[19] So, for example, the indicator "number of years of a female head of state (last 50 years) over male value" would score 1 if the number of years was 25, but would still score 1 if the number of years was 50. Due to this methodology, gender gaps that favor women over men are reported as equality and would not cause deficits of equality in other areas to become less visible in the score, excepted for life expectancy. To put it more simply: women could be better off in all areas and still the index would deem that country perfectly equal.

The index is designed to "measure gender-based gaps in access to resources and opportunities in countries rather than the actual level of the available resources and opportunities in those countries."[16]

In an academic publication from 2010, Beneria and Permanyer criticized the Global Gender Gap Index for only capturing inequality in certain aspects of women's lives therefore making it an incomplete measure of gender inequality.[20]

In an academic publication from 2019, Stoet and Geary argued that the Global Gender Gap Index has limitations as a measure of gender equality, because of the way it caps scores and because it ignores specific issues on which men are known to fall behind (e.g., risks of working in hazardous jobs).[21] According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2021, the index do not penalize a country where women outperform men in certain aspect and consider that parity is achieved in life expectancy only if women live five years longer than men.[18]

See also

Notes

  1. [N 1]
    Years of report publication. Values may reflect data collected the previous year.

References

  1. [1]
    "Global Gender Gap Report 2017". Archived from the original on 2018-05-12. Retrieved 2018-05-11.
  2. [2]
    2008 Report, p. 24
  3. [3]
    "Global Gender Gap Report 2023". World Economic Forum. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  4. [4]
    "To fight climate change, more female leaders are fundamental". European Investment Bank. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  5. [5]
    2014 report, page 5
  6. [6]
    2008 Report, p. 5
  7. [7]
    The Global Gender Gap Report 2018 (GGGR), p. 5, Construction of the Index, § 2. Data truncation at equality benchmark: As a second step, these ratios are truncated at the "equality benchmark”. For all indicators, except the two health indicators, this equality benchmark is considered to be 1, meaning equal numbers of women and men.
    GGGR 2018, p. 42, Country Score Card: … To calculate the Index, all ratios were truncated at the parity benchmark of 1 and thus the highest score possible is 1.
  8. [8]
    GGGR 2018, p. 6; Table 2: Calculation of weights within each subin-dex
  9. [9]
    GGGR 2018, p. 5, Construction of the Index, § 2. Data truncation at equality benchmark: … In the case of sex ratio at birth, the equality benchmark is set at 0.944,
    GGGR 2018, p. 42, Country Score Card: … except for the sex ratio at birth (0.944)
  10. [10]
    GGGR 2018, p. 5, Construction of the Index, § 2. Data trun-cation at equality benchmark: … the case of healthy life expectancy the equality benchmark is set at 1.06.
    GGGR 2018, p. 42, Country Score Card: … and the healthy life expectancy (1.06) indicators.
  11. [11]
    2016 Report, Page 6
  12. [12]
    Ricardo Hausmann; Laura D. Tyson; Saadia Zahidi, eds. (2012). The Global Gender Gap Report 2012 (PDF) (Report). World Economic Forum, Geneva, Switzerland. Retrieved 2012-10-26.
  13. [13]
    "The Global Gender Gap Report 2013" (PDF). World Economic Forum. pp. 12–13.
  14. [14]
    "Global Gender Gap Report 2014 - Reports - World Economic Forum". Global Gender Gap Report 2014.
  15. [15]
    "Global Gender Gap Report 2015 - Rankings". World Economic Forum. Archived from the original on 17 April 2016. Retrieved 28 April 2016.
  16. [16]
    "Global Gender Gap Report 2017 - Rankings". World Economic Forum. 17 November 2017. Retrieved 17 November 2017.
  17. [17]
    "Global Gender Gap Report 2020" (PDF). World Economic Forum. Retrieved 18 December 2019.
  18. [18]
    "Global Gender Gap Report 2021" (PDF). World Economic Forum. Retrieved 30 March 2021.
  19. [19]
    Ricardo Hausmann; Laura D. Tyson; Saadia Zahidi, eds. (2009). "The Global Gender Gap Report 2009" (PDF). World Economic Forum, Geneva, Switzerland. p. 4. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 5, 2013. Retrieved 2009-11-02. (...) the Index rewards countries that reach the point where outcomes for women equal those for men, but it neither rewards nor penalizes cases in which women are outperforming men in particular variables
  20. [20]
    Beneria, L., Permanyer, I.,(2010). The Measurement of Socio-economic Gender Inequality Revisited, Development and Change, 41:3, pp.375-399
  21. [21]
    Stoet, G. & Geary, D.C. (2019). A simplified approach to measuring national gender inequality, PLOS ONE 14(1): e0205349. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205349

Reports
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