New Zealand is the only Asia-pacific country managed to be in top 10 list among 156 countries by closing the gender gap of 84%, where Iceland with 89% topped the chart.
Otago Polytechnic graduates, 2010
Please explore #GenderEquality Data at www.genderequalitydashboard.org
Gender Gap Index
The #GenderGapIndex quantifies the gaps between women and men in four key areas: health, education, economy, and politics. #GenderData is available from 156 countries for select years between 2010-2021. Scores are based on the level of access women have to resources and opportunities relative to men. Countries are given a score from 0-1. A score of 1 indicates full equality between women and men and a score of 0 indicates full inequality.
Overview
There are three basic concepts underlying the Global Gender Gap Index, forming the basis of how indicators were chosen, how the data is treated and how the scale can be used. First, the index focuses on measuring gaps rather than levels. Second, it captures gaps in outcome variables rather than gaps in input variables. Third, it ranks countries according to gender equality rather than women's empowerment.
Method of Computation
Each of the four subindexes is computed as the weighted average of the underlying individual indicators. Averaging the different indicators would implicitly give more weight to the measure that exhibits the largest variability or standard deviation. We therefore first normalize the indicators by equalizing their standard deviations. For example, within the Educational Attainment subindex, standard deviations for each of the four indicators are calculated. Then we determine what a 1% point change would translate to in terms of standard deviations by dividing 0.01 by the standard deviation for each indicator. These four values are then used as weights to calculate the weighted average of the four indicators.
This way of weighting indicators allows us to make sure that each indicator has the same relative impact on the subindex. For example, an indicator with a small variability or standard deviation, such as primary enrolment rate, gets a larger weight within the Educational Attainment subindex than an indicator with a larger variability, such as tertiary enrolment rate. Therefore, a country with a large gender gap in primary education (an indicator where most countries have achieved near-parity between women and men) will be more heavily penalized. Similarly, in the case of the sex ratio at birth indicator (within the Health and Survival subindex), where most countries have a very high sex ratio and the spread of the data is small, the larger weight will penalize more heavily those countries that deviate from this value.
For all subindexes, the highest possible score is 1 (gender parity) and the lowest possible score is 0 (imparity), thus binding the scores between inequality and equality benchmarks. A simple average of each subindex score is used to calculate the overall Global Gender Gap Index score. Similar to subindex scores, this final value ranges between 1 (parity) and 0 (imparity), thus allowing for comparisons relative to ideal standards of equality in addition to relative country rankings. The parity and imparity benchmarks remain fixed across time, allowing the reader to track individual country progress in relation to an ideal standard of equality. Furthermore, the option of roughly interpreting the final index scores as a percentage value that reveals how a country has reduced its gender gap should help make the index more intuitively appealing to readers.
Please explore #GenderEquality Data at www.genderequalitydashboard.org
Source - World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Index, 2021