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This study explores the significance of gender indicators for advocacy, policy-making, and research, emphasizing the need for actionable and transparent data. It delves into existing measures, proposes revisions, and highlights the importance of historical context in understanding gender-related issues. Recommendations focus on simplifying measures, promoting gender-disaggregated data in policy areas, and improving access to comparable economic data by gender.
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Gender-Related Indicators: Issues for Advocacy, Policy, and Research Stephan Klasen University of Göttingen Germany OECD Workshop May 24, 2007
Three Uses of Gender-Indicators • National and international advocacy regarding gender issues • Simple and transparent • Comparable across space and time • Powerful advocacy messages • Guide to policy-makers regarding priority gender issues • Disaggregated and comprehensive • Covering actionable policy areas • Useful for direct monitoring purposes
Three Uses • Gender data for Research on Gender Issues • Need underlying causal variables • Long time series useful • Data quality issues quite crucial • Comparability across space and time important;
Advocacy Indicators • UNDP‘s Gender-Related Measures currently don‘t fulfill this function: • GDI often misinterpreted as gender gap measure, problems with earned income component, hard to interpret, highly intransparent; • GEM also too complex and dependence on income levels (rather than gender gaps in incomes) • Currently implementing alternatives based on review process in 2006 (see Journal of Human Development 2006); • Other measures (e.g. WEF Gender Gap Index, Africa Gender Index, or Social Watch Index) useful but also generally too complex and rather intransparent; • Conceptual problems: • Compensation versus Cumulation; • Ratio of Rates versus Female Shares; • Averaging of Ratios (arithmetic versus geometric means) • Weigthing Procedures
Proposals to Revise GDI-GEM • GDI: to be replaced with geometric mean of three component gender ratios (life expectancy, education, and labour force participation); • GEM: Use income shares rather than income levels and also use geometric mean of female-male ratios of three components; • Create separately distribution-sensitive well-being measures (including gender inequality as one distributional issue);
Gender Indicators for Policy • Considerable success of MDG3 indicator; • Needed: actionable gender disaggregated measures; • Problem: Many areas simply no data • Distribution of resources within households; • Gender distribution of wealth within households; • Gender-disaggregated input into agricultural production and small enterprises • Gender-based violence • No internationally (or inter-temporally) comparable data on female labour force participation, unemployment, or wages • Sometimes available but not used;
Gender Data for Research • Need data that help develop causal models of gender inequality (across space and time); • OECD database a very useful starting point (but no time series!); • Need to take historical evolution of gender-based institutions much more seriously (and try to find quantitative measures for it); • Comparable data on gender-disaggregated economic data would surely help !
Conclusion • A modest proposal: • Let‘s fix the advocacy problem once and for all with a simple transparent gender gap measure; • Focus our attention on gender gender-disaggregated data in actionable policy arenas; • Try to get time series of internationally comparable economic data by gender • Work on ways to measure and explain historical evolution of institutions of equity or inequity.
