The Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) is an index designed to measure gender equality. GEM is the United Nations Development Programme's attempt to measure the extent of gender inequality across the globe's countries, based on estimates of women's relative economic income, participation in high-paying positions with economic power, and access to professional and parliamentary positions. It was introduced at the same time as the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) but measures topics like empowerment that are not covered by that index. Since it was first adopted, the GEM has been employed in several academic studies related to empowerment as a reliable metric for comparing gender empowerment across different countries. It has also faced some harsh criticisms, and many alterations and alternatives have been proposed.
History
In 1995 in the Human Development Report commissioned by the United Nations Development Program set-out to create two new measurement indices for measuring development. Their aim was to add to the Human Development Index by way of including a gender dimension in the measure. They were created in order to rival the traditional income-focused measures of development such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Gross National Product (GNP). Mahbub ul Haq, the first director of the Human Development Report Office, established several principles for the newly emerging measure including provisions that it had to be simple, had to be represented as a single number, had to be easily calculated, had to yield numbers that were internationally comparable, had to use numbers available on a yearly basis and had to use numbers that were easily interpretable. The resulting measures that were created were the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). The GEM, the more specialized of the two, is focused on indicating the relative empowerment of women in a given country.
Definition and calculation
The GEM was designed to measure "whether women and men are able to actively participate in economic and political life and take part in decision-making" (UNDP, 1995, p. 73)(Klasen 257). The GEM tends to be more agency focused (what people are actually able to do) than well-being focused (how people feel or fare in the grand scheme of things). The GEM is determined using three basic indicators: Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments, percentage of women in economic decision making positions (incl. administrative, managerial, professional and technical occupations) and female share of income (earned incomes of males vs. females). The GEM is thought to be a valuable policy instrument because it allows certain dimensions that were previously difficult to compare between countries to come into international comparison.
Applications of calculations
One way the GEM has been employed is as a metric in academic research on comparative gender politics. For example, a study by Dr. Michael M.O. Seipel used the GEM to test the hypothesis that countries with less female representation in government will have spending rates that reflect more traditionally masculine values than do countries with more equal gender representation. Seiple took higher GEM to indicate more female representation in government. The study found that Seipel's hypothesis was correct: the higher a country's GEM score, the higher their rate of spending on domestic programs like education and health care, which are correlated with traditionally feminine values. Inversely, countries with low GEM scores had higher rates of military spending, which correlate with traditionally masculine values.
Professor Leah E. Ruppanner used the 2004 GEM in to study the relationship between women's empowerment and women's share of housework in countries around the world. "Cross-national reports of housework: An investigation of the gender empowerment measure" concludes that the GEM and the elements that comprise it are key to understanding the proportional breakdown of housework between men and women. However, the total GEM and its compositional elements, Ruppanner warns, are not to be used interchangeably.