TECHNICAL NOTES

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GEI

1. Dimensions and indicators

• Empowerment (% of women in technical positions, % of women in management and government positions, % of women in parliaments, % of women in ministerial posts).
• Economic activity (income gap, activity rate gap).
• Education (literacy rate gap, primary school enrolment rate gap, secondary school enrolment rate gap, tertiary educa tion enrolment rate gap).

2. Gaps

To construct the gaps in those indicators not presented as such in the original sources, the following operation was carried out. In the first place, percentages for men were calculated by difference with those for women:

• % of men in technical positions,
• % of men in management and government positions,
• % of men in parliaments,
• % of men in ministerial posts.

Secondly, for each country the weight of the female population in relation to male population was
calculated for the relevant age ranges (over 19 years old, except for the economically ac tive population indicator, for which over 14 years old was used).
Weight of female population = % of female population / % of male population
The gap was calculated for each indicator for each country, with the rate for women as the numerator and the rate for men as the denominator, weighted by the inverse of the weight of the female population.(1)
% female rate * (weight of female popula tion)-1 / % male rate

3. Construction of the components for each dimension of the index

For each dimension the average of the indicators of the gaps was calculated, but no values were assigned for those countries lacking available information for half the indicators of the dimension.

4. Construction of the index

The index was calculated as an average of the values obtained in the three dimensions (the average of the gaps in each dimension).

(1) The value 0 was re-codified as 0.01 to allow algebraic calculations. At the other end of the scale, values greater than 1 were re-codified as 1, since this is the normative limit proposed in accordance to the purposes of the index.