What is Gender Inequality Index and how is it measured?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: The United Nations has found that there is gender inequality in every single country in the world. In every country, women are not treated as well as men. Whereas some countries have made progress in addressing equality, at best women have achieved near-equality with men in some countries, whereas in other countries the level of development of women lags far behind the level for men.

To measure the extent of each country's gender inequality, the United Nations has created the Gender Inequality Index (GII). The GII measures inequality between men and women. The higher the score the greater is the inequality between men and women. As with the other indices, the GII combines multiple measures, in this case reproductive health, empowerment, and labor.

For the empowerment component, the GII measures two indicators. The first is the percentage of seats held by women in the national legislature. The second is the percentage of women who have completed high school. In both of these measures, developed countries do better than in developing regions.

For the reproductive health measure, the GII examines two indicators. these are maternal mortality ratio and adolescent fertility rates. Maternal mortality ratio is the number of women who die giving birth per 100,000 births. Adolescent fertility rate, on the other hand, is the number of births per 1,000 women age 15-19. In both of these measures, the figures are generally worse in developing countries except in East Asia, where the GII is comparable to that of developed regions.

The third component of the GII is the labor force participation rate. This is the percent of women holding full-time jobs outside the home. Women in developing countries are less likely than women in developed countries to hold full-time jobs outside the home.

Generally, the GII is better in developed countries than in developing countries, except in East Asia, where the GII is comparable to that of developed regions. Compared to other developing countries, China has high female education levels and participation in the labor force and low maternal mortality and teenage fertility rates.