Measuring gender equality in the European Union: Scrutinizing the Gender Equality Index

Abstract

Over the last few decades gender (in)equality has become a topic of high interest because it has possible implications on the global economy and the overall level of sustainability. Accordingly, two issues emerge. First, to define the best practice to promote and implement this complex concept, and second, to accurately measure the level of gender (in)equality. As a solution to the second issue, the indicator-based measurement deems as an obvious answer. Having in mind the possible consequences of any gender equality index results, our study has a goal to analyse the Gender Equality Index (GEI), precisely to review its current indicators and weights assigned to them. To conduct the GEI analysis, we applied a statistical I-distance method, i.e. a methodology that can easily overcome the problem of aggregation a composite index which uses subjectively assigned weights. The performed twofold I-distance approach gave us an insight into domains, and total score dynamics while the applied Composite I-distance Indicator (CIDI) methodology proposed the correction of domain weights. Finally, through iterative exclusion of indicators by the level of their significance, we provide an in-depth analysis of the countries’ rank consistency depending on the number of remaining framework indicators. The obtained results indicate that the weights assigned to domains are unbiased, but that there is place for reducing the number of framework indicators.