Gender Empowerment Measure
Encyclopedia
The United Nation's Development Programme's attempt to measure the extent of gender equality
Gender equality
Gender equality is the goal of the equality of the genders, stemming from a belief in the injustice of myriad forms of gender inequality.- Concept :...

 across the globe's countries, based on estimates of women's relative economic income, high-paying positions, and access to professional and parliament
Parliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...

ary positions.

History of the GEM

In 1995 in the Human Development Report
Human Development Report
The Human Development Report is an annual milestone publication by the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme .-History:...

  commissioned by the UNDP set-out to create two new measurement indices for measuring development. Their aim was to add to the Human Development Index
Human Development Index
The Human Development Index is a composite statistic used to rank countries by level of "human development" and separate "very high human development", "high human development", "medium human development", and "low human development" countries...

 by way of including a gender dimension in the measure. They were created, in addition to the HDI, to rival the traditional income-focused measures of development such as the GDP and the GNP
GNP
Gross National Product is the market value of all products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the residents of a country...

. Haq, the first director of the Human Development Report Office, established several principals for the newly emerging measure including provisions that it had to be simple, had to be represented as a single number, had to be easily calculated, had to yield numbers that were internationally comparable, had to use numbers available on a yearly basis and had to use numbers that were easily interpretable. The resulting measures that were created were the Gender-related Development Index
Gender-related Development Index
The Gender-related Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure were introduced in 1995 in the Human Development Report written by the United Nations Development Program. The aim of these measurements was to add a gender-sensitive dimension to the HDI. The first measurement that they...

 (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). The GEM, the more specialized of the two, is focused on indicating the relative empowerment of women in a given country.

Definition and calculation of the GEM

The GEM was designed to measure ‘‘whether women and men are able to actively participate in economic and political life and take part in decision-making’’ (UNDP, 1995, p. 73)(Klasen 257). The GEM tends to be more agency focused than well-being focused. The GEM is determined using three basic indicators: Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments, percentage of women in economic decision making positions (incl. administrative, managerial, professional and technical occupations) and female share of income (earned incomes of males vs. females). The GEM is thought to be a valuable policy instruments because it allows certain dimensions that were previously difficult to compare between countries to come into international comparison.

Debates surrounding the GEM

As time passes, and these measures (the GDI and the GEM) are applied year after year, debate has arisen over whether or not they have been as influential in promoting gender-sensitive development as was hoped when they were first created. Some of the major criticisms of both measures includes that they are highly specialized and difficult to interpret, often misinterpreted, suffer from large data gaps, do not provide accurate comparisons across countries, and try to combine too many development factors into a single measure. The concern then arises that if these indices are not well informed, then their numbers might hide more than they reveal.

In terms of the GEM in particular, it is often accused of representing an elite bias. It has been accused of measuring inequality only among the most educated and economically advantaged women and to focus mainly on the higher echelons of society. Women in grassroots organizations or at the local political level are not reflected, as well as work in lower levels of employment or in the informal sector, where many women in poor and developing countries are forced to seek employment. Furthermore, statistical information (data) is not very readily available for many of the indicators in the GEM. Not many less-developed countries reliable data on women’s involvement in economic participation or labor involvement. As a result, the GEM is only reliable for very highly developed countries which do collect those statistics. It is also often argued that the number of women in parliament isn’t an adequate indication of gender empowerment progress in a given country because many times feminists are considered political liabilities, and as such, female politicians do not always promote female interests. On the other hand, however, information regarding the number of parliamentary seats held by women is very easy to obtain, and very hard to alter, making it one of the more reliable sources of data in the measure. Another criticism of the GEM is it’s failure to address the issue of female control over their bodies and sexuality, which some argue is an important source of female empowerment and as such should be included in the measure. Additionally, the GEM has also been criticized for being far too dependent on the income component of the measure for determining the overall GEM score.

Suggested alterations

Many suggestions have been made to alter the GEM. It has been suggested that the GEM be altered to include female representation in local government instead of only national government to make it less elite. Furthermore, it has been recommended that it should be revised to reflect female participation in political activities such as voting. Additionally, it has been suggested that a component regarding women’s control over their own bodies and sexuality could be added by measuring availability of birth-control and the right to abortion. It has also been suggested that the GEM could be altered to include the proportion of females who are in extreme poverty as opposed to the proportion of females holding parliamentary positions. Lastly, it has been recommended that the GEM could be altered to include female levels of unemployment. Other suggestions include coming up with different ways to deal with the earned income part so as to make it a more straightforward mode of measurement.

Suggested alternatives

Suggestions have also been made to replace the GEM as a whole. One such suggestion is the calculation of separate HDI’s for males and females which would provide a more straight-foward picture of gender inequality (first suggested by Halis Akder in 1994). Another suggestion is to create a Gender-Gap Measure. In 2003 Charmes and Wieringa came up with the Women’s Empowerment Matrix which considers six spheres (physical, socio-cultural, religious, political, legal and economic) as well as six levels: individual, household, community, state, region, and global. The GEE is another suggested alternative to the GEM, this measure would include legal framework and protection of women’s rights, as well as other important areas of women’s empowerment that are overlooked by the GEM like women’s movements, public attitudes, and equal rights. Lastly, in the 2010 Human Development Report, a new measuring mechanism was created entitled the Gender Inequality Index. This new experimental measure considers three dimensions: Reproductive health, empowerment, and labor market participation which aim to ameliorate some of the problems associated with the GEM.

See also

  • Gender equality
    Gender equality
    Gender equality is the goal of the equality of the genders, stemming from a belief in the injustice of myriad forms of gender inequality.- Concept :...

  • Gender inequality
    Gender inequality
    Gender inequality refers to disparity between individuals due to gender. Gender is constructed both socially through social interactions as well as biologically through chromosomes, brain structure, and hormonal differences. Gender systems are often dichotomous and hierarchical; binary gender...

  • Gender Parity Index
    Gender Parity Index
    The Gender Parity Index is a socioeconomic index usually designed to measure the relative access to education of males and females. In its simplest form, it is calculated as the quotient of the number of females by the number of males enrolled in a given stage of education...

  • Gender-related Development Index
    Gender-related Development Index
    The Gender-related Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure were introduced in 1995 in the Human Development Report written by the United Nations Development Program. The aim of these measurements was to add a gender-sensitive dimension to the HDI. The first measurement that they...

  • Human Development Index
    Human Development Index
    The Human Development Index is a composite statistic used to rank countries by level of "human development" and separate "very high human development", "high human development", "medium human development", and "low human development" countries...

  • Social Institutions and Gender Index
    Social Institutions and Gender Index
    The Social Institutions and Gender Index is a composite indicator of gender equality, introduced by the OECD Development Centre. It solely focuses on social institutions that have an impact on the equality between men and women...

  • Human Poverty Index
    Human Poverty Index
    The Human Poverty Index is an indication of the standard of living in a country, developed by the United Nations . For highly developed countries, the UN considers that it can better reflect the extent of deprivation compared to the Human Development Index....

  • National Human Development Report
    National Human Development Report
    The National Human Development Reports take the Global Human Development Report approach to the national level and are prepared and owned by national teams...

  • UN Women
    UN Women
    The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women, is a United Nations entity working for the empowerment of women and girls....

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