The Gender Development Index ( GDI ) is an index designed to measure gender equality .
70-777: GDI, together with the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), was introduced in 1995 in the Human Development Report written by the United Nations Development Program . These measurements aimed to add a gender-sensitive dimension to the Human Development Index (HDI). The first measurement that they created as a result was the GDI. The GDI is defined as a "distribution-sensitive measure that accounts for
140-509: A base year. The result would be that the GDP in 2000 equals $ 300 million × 1 ⁄ 2 = $ 150 million , in 1990 monetary terms. We would see that the country's GDP had realistically increased 50 percent over that period, not 200 percent, as it might appear from the raw GDP data. The GDP adjusted for changes in money value in this way is called the real GDP . The factor used to convert GDP from current to constant values in this way
210-402: A component regarding women's control over their own bodies and sexuality be added by measuring the availability of birth control and the right to abortion. In fact, some have suggested that there is not enough consideration of women's health as a whole in the current GEM. It has been suggested that including infant mortality rate of females (IMR-F) and maternal mortality rate (MMR) be included in
280-518: A country becomes increasingly in debt, and spends large amounts of income servicing this debt this will be reflected in a decreased GNI but not a decreased GDP. Similarly, if a country sells off its resources to entities outside their country this will also be reflected over time in decreased GNI, but not decreased GDP. This would make the use of GDP more attractive for politicians in countries with increasing national debt and decreasing assets. Gross national income (GNI) equals GDP plus income receipts from
350-521: A country's borders, but by an enterprise owned by somebody outside the country, counts as part of its GDP but not its GNI; on the other hand, production by an enterprise located outside the country, but owned by one of its citizens, counts as part of its GNI but not its GDP. For example, the GNI of the US is the value of output produced by American-owned firms, regardless of where the firms are located. Similarly, if
420-406: A country's production has increased (or decreased, if the growth rate is negative) compared to the previous year, typically expressed as percentage change . The economic growth can be expressed as real GDP growth rate or real GDP per capita growth rate . GDP can be adjusted for population growth, also called Per-capita GDP or GDP per person . This measures the average production of a person in
490-653: A gender dimension in the measure. They were created in order to rival the traditional income-focused measures of development such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Gross National Product (GNP). Mahbub ul Haq , the first director of the Human Development Report Office, established several principles for the newly emerging measure including provisions that it had to be simple, had to be represented as
560-532: A measure of welfare (see below under limitations and criticisms ). After the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, GDP became the main tool for measuring a country's economy. At that time gross national product (GNP) was the preferred estimate, which differed from GDP in that it measured production by a country's citizens at home and abroad rather than its "resident institutional units" (see OECD definition above). The switch from GNP to GDP in
630-502: A reliable metric for comparing gender empowerment across different countries. It has also faced some harsh criticisms, and many alterations and alternatives have been proposed. In 1995 in the Human Development Report commissioned by the United Nations Development Program set-out to create two new measurement indices for measuring development. Their aim was to add to the Human Development Index by way of including
700-479: 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 said to represent 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
770-573: 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 (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). The GEM, the more specialized of the two, is focused on indicating
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#1732772396506840-467: Is US$ 5,040,107.75 (in a million). Predictably, as a developed country, Japan has a higher GNI (by 182,779.46, in millions of USD), which is indicative that the production level in the country is higher than that of national production. On the other hand, the case with Armenia is the opposite, with GDP being lower than GNI by US$ 196.12 (in million). This demonstrates that countries receive investments and foreign aid from abroad. The Total income divided by
910-445: Is agricultural wages and employment. Agriculture accounts for a large share of women's employment in the developing world. To account for this in the GEM, West Bengal's 2004 HDR, for example, includes rural agricultural employment in its GEM calculations, whereas typically a GEM equation would only include non-agricultural wages. This alteration allows for a more representative and accurate GEM. Suggestions have also been made to replace
980-425: Is also sometimes expressed as: The third way to estimate GDP is to calculate the sum of the final uses of goods and services (all uses except intermediate consumption) measured in purchasers' prices. Market goods that are produced are purchased by someone. In the case where a good is produced and unsold, the standard accounting convention is that the producer has bought the good from themselves. Therefore, measuring
1050-627: Is another suggested alternative to the GEM, this measure would include a 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
1120-838: Is calculated this way it is sometimes called gross domestic income (GDI), or GDP (I). GDI should provide the same amount as the expenditure method described later. By definition, GDI is equal to GDP. In practice, however, measurement errors will make the two figures slightly off when reported by national statistical agencies. This method measures GDP by adding incomes that firms pay households for factors of production they hire – wages for labour, interest for capital, rent for land and profits for entrepreneurship. The US "National Income and Product Accounts" divide incomes into five categories: These five income components sum to net domestic income at factor cost. Two adjustments must be made to get GDP: Total income can be subdivided according to various schemes, leading to various formulae for GDP measured by
1190-474: Is called the GDP deflator . Unlike consumer price index , which measures inflation or deflation in the price of household consumer goods, the GDP deflator measures changes in the prices of all domestically produced goods and services in an economy including investment goods and government services, as well as household consumption goods. Real GDP can be used to calculate the GDP growth rate, which indicates how much
1260-473: Is contributed at each stage of production. This approach mirrors the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) definition given above. Gross value added = gross value of output – value of intermediate consumption. Value of output = value of the total sales of goods and services plus the value of changes in the inventory. The sum of the gross value added in the various economic activities
1330-665: Is correlated with higher smoking levels among women, much closer to that of the men in their country. 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 include 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
1400-507: 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 instrument because it allows certain dimensions that were previously difficult to compare between countries to come into international comparison . One way
1470-404: Is known as "GDP at factor cost". GDP at factor cost plus indirect taxes less subsidies on products = "GDP at producer price". For measuring the output of domestic product, economic activities (i.e. industries) are classified into various sectors. After classifying economic activities, the output of each sector is calculated by any of the following two methods: The value of output of all sectors
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#17327723965061540-423: Is more useful comparing national economies on the international market. Total GDP can also be broken down into the contribution of each industry or sector of the economy. GDP is often used as a metric for international comparisons as well as a broad measure of economic progress . It is often considered to be the world's most powerful statistical indicator of national development and progress. However, critics of
1610-440: Is shared. Additionally, the GDI has been criticized because it does not consider the value of care work as well as other work performed in the informal sector (such as cleaning, cooking, housework, and childcare). Another criticism of the GDI is that it only takes gender into account as a factor for inequality; it does not, however, consider inequality among class, region or race, which could be very significant. Another criticism with
1680-587: Is that GDP defines its scope according to location, while GNI defines its scope according to ownership. In a global context, world GDP and world GNI are, therefore, equivalent terms. GDP is a product produced within a country's borders; GNI is product produced by enterprises owned by a country's citizens. The two would be the same if all of the productive enterprises in a country were owned by its own citizens and those citizens did not own productive enterprises in any other countries. In practice, however, foreign ownership makes GDP and GNI non-identical. Production within
1750-523: Is the Gender Gap Measure which could be interpreted directly as a measure of gender inequality, instead of having to be compared to the HDI as the GDI is. It would average the female-male gaps in human development and use a gender-gap in labor force participation instead of earned income. In the 2010 Human Development Report, another alternative to the GDI, namely, the Gender Inequality Index (GII)
1820-453: Is then added to get the gross value of output at factor cost. Subtracting each sector's intermediate consumption from gross output value gives the GVA (=GDP) at factor cost. Adding indirect tax minus subsidies to GVA (GDP) at factor cost gives the "GVA (GDP) at producer prices". The second way of estimating GDP is to use "the sum of primary incomes distributed by resident producer units". If GDP
1890-546: The OECD and the International Monetary Fund . The ratio of GDP to the total population of the region is the GDP per capita and can approximate a concept of a standard of living . Nominal GDP does not reflect differences in the cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries; therefore, using a basis of GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) may be more useful when comparing living standards between nations, while nominal GDP
1960-409: The growth imperative often argue that GDP measures were never intended to measure progress, and leave out key other externalities , such as resource extraction , environmental impact and unpaid domestic work . Alternative economic indicators such as doughnut economics use other measures, such as the Human Development Index or Better Life Index , as better approaches to measuring the effect of
2030-469: The GDI (and the GEM) actually hide more than they reveal. More specifically, there has been a lot of criticism over the Life-Expectancy component of the GDI. As was mentioned previously, the GDI life expectancy section is adjusted by assuming that women will automatically live five years longer than men. This provision has been criticized on multiple grounds; e.g. it has been argued that if the GDI
2100-445: The GDI does not account for sex-selective abortion , meaning that the penalty levied against a country for gender inequality is smaller as it affects less of the population (see Sen, Missing Women). Another area of debate surrounding the GDI is in the area of income gaps. The GDI considers income-gaps in terms of actual earned income. This has been said to be problematic because often, men may make more money than women, but their income
2170-607: The GEM as a whole. One such suggestion is the calculation of separate Human Development Indexes for males and females which would provide a more straightforward 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, sociocultural, religious, political, legal and economic) as well as six levels: individual, household, community, state, regional, and global. The GEE
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2240-490: The GEM has been employed is as a metric in academic research on comparative gender politics. For example, a study by Dr. Michael M.O. Seipel used the GEM to test the hypothesis that countries with less female representation in government will have spending rates that reflect more traditionally masculine values than do countries with more equal gender representation. Seiple took higher GEM to indicate more female representation in government. The study found that Seipel's hypothesis
2310-489: The GEM in a study they conducted at the University of Waterloo entitled " Gender empowerment and female-to-male smoking prevalence ratios ". Employing the GEM as their metric for a country's level of gender empowerment, they found that, as countries increase in gender empowerment, the gap in smoking rates between men and women shrinks. While countries with low GEM ratings see far more men than women smoke, higher empowerment
2380-408: The GEM's "secular bias." Furthermore, statistical information (data) is not very readily available for many of the indicators in the GEM. Not many less-developed countries collect 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
2450-651: The HDI score, and so, it cannot be used on its own as an indicator of gender gaps. Only the gap between the HDI and the GDI can actually be accurately considered; the GDI on its own is not an independent measure of gender gaps. Below is a list of countries by their Gender Development Index, based on data collected in 2018, and published in 2019. Countries are grouped into five groups based on the absolute deviation from gender parity in HDI values, from 1 (closest to gender parity) to 5 (furthest from gender parity). This means that grouping takes equally into consideration gender gaps favoring males, as well as those favoring females. In
2520-550: The United States occurred in 1991. The role that measurements of GDP played in World War II was crucial to the subsequent political acceptance of GDP values as indicators of national development and progress. A crucial role was played here by the U.S. Department of Commerce under Milton Gilbert where ideas from Kuznets were embedded into institutions . The history of the concept of GDP should be distinguished from
2590-427: The accounting year. ) So for example if a car manufacturer buys auto parts , assembles the car and sells it, only the final car sold is counted towards the GDP. Meanwhile, if a person buys replacement auto parts to install them on their car, those are counted towards the GDP. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is responsible for calculating the national accounts in the United States, "In general,
2660-519: The calculations, as they are better suited to indicate women's health and lifecycle than is the more general life expectancy at birth (LEB) measure. 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 parliamentary positions held by females. Lastly, it has been suggested that the GEM could be altered to include female levels of unemployment. Other suggestions include coming up with different ways to deal with
2730-423: The categories of the Human Development Index (HDI) which include life expectancy, adult literacy , school enrollment, and logarithmic transformations of per-capita income. In terms of life expectancy, the GDI assumes that women will live an average of five years longer than men. Additionally, in terms of income, the GDI considers income gaps in terms of actual earned income. The GDI cannot be used independently from
2800-401: The country. GDP per capita is often used as an indicator of living standards. The major advantage of GDP per capita as an indicator of the standard of living is that it is measured frequently, widely, and consistently. It is measured frequently in that most countries provide information on GDP every quarter, allowing trends to be seen quickly. It is measured widely in that some measure of GDP
2870-658: The earned income part so as to make it a more straightforward mode of measurement. In some developing countries where the aforementioned shortcomings of the GEM are especially pronounced, subnational calculations are made differently in order to produce a more accurate representation of women's empowerment. For example, while the number of women in national Indian parliament may be slim, there are more women in local-level government who would be unaccounted for. Thus many Indian states use local level parliamentary numbers when calculating their GEM and overall Human Development Reports (HDR). Another example of these local-level alterations
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2940-549: The economy on human development and well being . William Petty came up with a concept of GDP, to calculate the tax burden , and argue landlords were unfairly taxed during warfare between the Dutch and the English between 1652 and 1674. Charles Davenant developed the method further in 1695. The modern concept of GDP was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a 1934 U.S. Congress report, where he warned against its use as
3010-462: The globe's countries, based on estimates of women's relative economic income , participation in high-paying positions with economic power, and access to professional and parliamentary positions. It was introduced at the same time as the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) but measures topics like empowerment that are not covered by that index. Since it was first adopted, the GEM has been employed in several academic studies related to empowerment as
3080-492: The history of changes in many ways of estimating it. The value added by firms is relatively easy to calculate from their accounts, but the value added by the public sector , by financial industries, and by intangible asset creation is more complex. These activities are increasingly important in developed economies, and the international conventions governing their estimation and their inclusion or exclusion in GDP regularly change in an attempt to keep up with industrial advances. In
3150-422: The human development impact of existing gender gaps in the three components of the HDI" (Klasen 243). Distribution sensitivity means that the GDI takes into account not only the average or general level of well-being and wealth within a given country but focuses also on how this wealth and well-being is distributed between different groups within society. The HDI and the GDI (as well as the GEM) were created to rival
3220-553: The income approach. A common one is: The sum of COE , GOS and GMI is called total factor income; it is the income of all of the factors of production in society. It measures the value of GDP at factor (basic) prices. The difference between basic prices and final prices (those used in the expenditure calculation) is the total taxes and subsidies that the government has levied or paid on that production. So adding taxes less subsidies on production and imports converts GDP(I) at factor cost to GDP(I) at final prices. Total factor income
3290-519: The income-gap portion of the GDI is that it is heavily dependent on gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP). For most countries, the earned-income gap accounts for more than 90% of the gender penalty. As was suggested by Halis Akder in 1994, one alternative to the Gender Development Index (GDI) would be the calculation of a separate male and female Human Development Index (HDI). Another suggested alternative
3360-443: The information required (especially information on expenditure and production by governments). The raw GDP figure as given by the equations above is called the nominal, historical, or current GDP. When one compares GDP figures from one year to another, it is desirable to compensate for changes in the value of money—for the effects of inflation or deflation. To make it more meaningful for year-to-year comparisons, it may be multiplied by
3430-407: 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. Additionally, the GEM has been criticized for not taking into account the limitations on or differences in women's empowerment within certain religious and cultural contexts. Professor Jawad Syed calls this
3500-405: The more reliable sources of data in the measure. Another criticism of the GEM is its 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
3570-411: The more traditional general income-based measures of development such as gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP). The GDI is often considered a "gender-sensitive extension of the HDI" (Klasen 245). It addresses gender gaps in life expectancy, education, and income. It uses an "inequality aversion" penalty, which creates a development score penalty for gender wander gaps in any of
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#17327723965063640-416: 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
3710-413: The overall GEM score. 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 recommended that
3780-463: The population is the Per capita income . The international standard for measuring GDP is contained in the book System of National Accounts (2008), which was prepared by representatives of the International Monetary Fund , European Union , Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , United Nations and World Bank . The publication is normally referred to as SNA2008 to distinguish it from
3850-430: The previous edition published in 1993 (SNA93) or 1968 (called SNA68) SNA2008 provides a set of rules and procedures for the measurement of national accounts. The standards are designed to be flexible, to allow for differences in local statistical needs and conditions. Within each country GDP is normally measured by a national government statistical agency, as private sector organizations normally do not have access to
3920-442: The problems associated with the GEM. Gross domestic product Gross domestic product ( GDP ) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic health of a country or region. Several national and international economic organizations maintain definitions of GDP, such as
3990-512: The products must be bought by somebody, therefore the value of the total product must be equal to people's total expenditures in buying things. The income approach works on the principle that the incomes of the productive factors ("producers", colloquially) must be equal to the value of their product, and determines GDP by finding the sum of all producers' incomes. Also known as the Value Added Approach, it calculates how much value
4060-445: The ratio between the value of money in the year the GDP was measured and the value of money in a base year. For example, suppose a country's GDP in 1990 was $ 100 million and its GDP in 2000 was $ 300 million . Suppose also that inflation had halved the value of its currency over that period. To meaningfully compare its GDP in 2000 to its GDP in 1990, we could multiply the GDP in 2000 by one-half, to make it relative to 1990 as
4130-417: The relative empowerment of women in a given country. 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 (what people are actually able to do) than well-being-focused (how people feel or fare in the grand scheme of things). The GEM
4200-587: The rest of the world minus income payments to the rest of the world. In 1991, the United States switched from using GNP to using GDP as its primary measure of production. The relationship between United States GDP and GNP is shown in table 1.7.5 of the National Income and Product Accounts . Another example that amplifies the difference between GDP and GNI is the comparison of developed and developing country indicators. The GDP of Japan for 2020
4270-408: The same result. They are the production (or output or value added) approach, the income approach, and the speculated expenditure approach. It is representative of the total output and income within an economy. The most direct of the three is the production approach, which sums up the outputs of every class of enterprise to arrive at the total. The expenditure approach works on the principle that all of
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#17327723965064340-487: The scores from the Human Development Index, but not on its own. Additionally, the data that is needed in order to calculate the GDI is not always readily available in many countries, making the measure very hard to calculate uniformly and internationally. There is also worry that the combination of so many different developmental influences in one measurement could result in muddled results and that perhaps
4410-401: The source data for the expenditures components are considered more reliable than those for the income components [see income method, above]." Encyclopedia Britannica records an alternate way of measuring exports minus imports: notating it as the single variable NX. GDP can be contrasted with gross national product (GNP) or, as it is now known, gross national income (GNI). The difference
4480-536: The total expenditure used to buy things is a way of measuring production. This is known as the expenditure method of calculating GDP. GDP (Y) is the sum of consumption (C) , investment (I) , government expenditures (G) and net exports (X − M) . Here is a description of each GDP component: C , I , and G are expenditures on final goods and services; expenditures on intermediate goods and services do not count. (Intermediate goods and services are those used by businesses to produce other goods and services within
4550-473: The words of one academic economist, "The actual number for GDP is, therefore, the product of a vast patchwork of statistics and a complicated set of processes carried out on the raw data to fit them to the conceptual framework." China officially adopted GDP in 1993 as its indicator of economic performance. Previously, China had relied on a Marxist-inspired national accounting system. GDP can be determined in three ways, all of which should, theoretically, give
4620-421: The world. "Cross-national reports of housework: An investigation of the gender empowerment measure" concludes that the GEM and the elements that comprise it are key to understanding the proportional breakdown of housework between men and women. However, the total GEM and its compositional elements, Ruppanner warns, are not to be used interchangeably. In 2011, Professors Sara C. Hitchman and Geoffrey T. Fong used
4690-476: The years since its creation in 1995, much debate has arisen surrounding the reliability, and usefulness of the Gender Development Index (GDI) in making adequate comparisons between different countries and in promoting gender-sensitive development. The GDI is particularly criticized for being often mistakenly interpreted as an independent measure of gender gaps when it is not, in fact, intended to be interpreted in that way, because it can only be used in combination with
4760-478: Was correct: the higher a country's GEM score, the higher its rate of spending on domestic programs like education and health care, which are correlated with traditional feminine values. Inversely, countries with low GEM scores had higher rates of military spending, which correlate with traditional masculine values. Professor Leah E. Ruppanner used the 2004 GEM in to study the relationship between women's empowerment and women's share of housework in countries around
4830-529: Was proposed in order to address some of the shortcomings of the GDI. This new experimental measure contains three dimensions: Reproductive Health, Empowerment, and Labor Market Participation. Gender Empowerment Measure The Gender Empowerment Measure ( GEM ) is an index designed to measure gender equality . GEM is the United Nations Development Programme 's attempt to measure the extent of gender inequality across
4900-676: Was really looking to promote true equality, it would strive to attain the same life expectancy for women and men, despite what might be considered a "normalized" advantage. In terms of policy, this could be achieved through providing better treatment to men, which women's rights organizations sometimes argue to be discriminatory against women. Critics also argue that the UN provides a number of strategies and plans giving preferential treatment to women and girls that are not seen as discriminatory towards men ─ not only for health issues but also for education and job opportunities. Furthermore, it has been argued that
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