Gender Equality Index

Background

The Gender Equality Index is rooted in EU gender equality policy, being first introduced in the European Commission’s Roadmap for Equality between Women and Men 2006-2010. Several indices have been developed to measure gender equality during the last decades, one of the most well-known being the Gender Gap Index, which has been published annually since 2006 by the World Economic Forum. The United Nations Development Programme (UNPD) has also introduced gender indices at international level, which includes the Gender-related Development Index (GDI), the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) and the Gender Inequality Index (GII). Another statistical tool is the Gender Equity Index (GEI), compiled by Social Watch, an international network of citizens’ organisations.

All these statistical indices show that gender inequality is pervasive, and they disseminate the results as a tool for further analysis and advocacy. In spite of their existence, a Gender Equality Index focused on EU is needed, since these indices are not always appropriate for use at the EU level given that EU differences on these indices are sometimes too small to be meaningful. The theoretical positions of various gender indices are different and have developed from several theoretical perspectives including human development, women’s empowerment or gender equality. The Gender Equality Index relies on a gender perspective which means that gender equality is posited as relevant to both women and men, and while not underplaying the unequal relations of power harming women in society, to emphasise that all gender gaps are detrimental to both women and men within society. When the European Institute for Gender Equality began its operations in 2010, it undertook the task of developing a Gender Equality Index tailor-made for the European framework, aimed at supporting evidence-based decision-making. The Gender Equality Index is the only gender index specifically tailored towards the EU and the Member States.

Main results

The Gender Equality Index shows that in 2010, despite more than 50 years of gender equality policy, the EU is only just over half way towards a society that is both gender equal and performant with a score of only 54 out of 100. A breakdown of the scores by Member States and domains is provided in the table below.

The worse scores for the Gender Equality Index are in the areas of time and power, highlighting that it is important to address both the division of time between women and men and their representation in decision-making. The average score for the domain of power in the EU is of only 38 out of 100, placing the question of the representation of women and men in decision-making as a central one. The Country Profiles, the complementary publication to the main Gender Equality Index report, not only provides a breakdown of the Gender Equality Index scores and variables used, but also gives supplementary comparable information and an update on the development of each Member State in the area of gender equality since 2005 (navigate the map of the Gender Equality Index).

Domains measured

The conceptual framework of the Gender Equality Index describes gender equality in various aspects of economic and social life by analysing strategic policy documents at EU and international level, treaties, international platform reports and literature reviews. The main themes are summarised into a hierarchical structure of domains and sub-domains. Core domains include work, money, knowledge, time, power and health. In addition to these domains, it opens up a space for satellite domains that can measure gender equality issues from other perspectives (so far violence and intersecting inequalities). The satellite domains cannot be included in the core index because they measure a specific phenomenon that applies only to a selected group of the population. The domain violence measures gender-based violence against women while intersecting inequalities examines gender gaps among specific population groups (people with disabilities, lone parents, migrants etc.). Core domains

Satellite domains

Construction

The data sources used for constructing the Gender Equality Index are Eurostat, Eurofound and the European Commission Directorate-General for Justice. The construction of a statistical measurement framework, for a robust composite indicator, necessitates a solid methodology which entails different steps. Among those, three are the most critical: imputation (estimation of missing data), aggregation (groups data according to the structure provided by the measurement framework) and weighting (assigns a relative importance to variables, sub-domains and domains). These steps involve several alternatives, such as for example in the aggregation process, the arithmetic, geometric or harmonic mean, which produce a different result of the Index. The selection of one particular alternative introduces subjectivity in the process. The calculation of the Gender Equality Index relies on eliminating as much subjectivity as possible, by applying the multi-modelling approach: computing a wide set of potential indices, based on the considered alternatives, from which to select the best index. Methodologically this index is defined as the most robust because, among the 3 636 possible indices that were computed its result relies more on the variables used rather than on the alternatives chosen in its formula.

The weights and aggregation methods used at each level are summarised in the table below:

Download the report

Gender Equality Index Report, European Institute for Gender Equality