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

2 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

3 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;

4 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

5 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);

6 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;

7 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 !

8 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.