Gender-Related Indicators: Issues for Advocacy, Policy, and Research

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• Gender-Related Indicators Issues for Advocacy,
  Policy, and Research
• Stephan Klasen
• University of Göttingen
• Germany
• OECD Workshop
• May 24, 2007

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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

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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

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Advocacy Indicators

• UNDPs Gender-Related Measures currently dont
  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

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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)

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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

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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 !

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Conclusion

• A modest proposal
• Lets 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.