Gender Empowerment Measure

Gender Empowerment Measure or GEM is a system used in measuring of a nation when it comes to both the political and economic opportunities. Using data from different nations, GEM is able to ranked nations on how the gender inequality issue is improving over time. The system used a more complex formula when it comes to measuring the political and economic participation of women relative to that of men. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) used four indicators in order to create a composite GEM.

These indicators are seats held by women in parliament, female professional and technical workers, female administrators and managers, and the real GDP per capita of women. A GEM table is an indicator of gender inequality between different nations. It captures three major areas of gender inequality among nations. The first area is the extent to which women participate in decision-making in terms of political aspect. The second is the economic participation of women as well as their decision-making power. The third area is the measure of the power that women exert over the nations economic resources.

In the 2009 Human Development report, Sweden was ranked first in GEM with 47% sets in parliament held by women, 32% female legislators, senior officials and managers, 51% female professional and technical worker and 0. 67 ratio of estimated female to male earned income. The figures show that Swedish women enjoy the most gender equality than any other nation included in the report. GEM is also a measure of how the inequality between men and women are changing through time. Thus, having a greater GEM means that a country is likely to develop a sense of equality between the role of men and women in society.

Reference

Human Development Report (2009). Gender Empowerment Measure and its Components.