<<<<I only posted a news item from Reuters wire service, however, I haverequested the Gender Index from friends at the UN. But maybe Yusuf andothers might also help get it. I was appalled but not surprised at thisstory, because only recently, I learnt that still in the law books in SierraLeone, a woman cannot post bond for one in police custody>>>>.
Etta
------------------------
Etta, the UNDP has two gender indicators that it developed just recently for its annual *Human Development Report*. These are the Gender Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Index (GDI). The two are meant to compliment the main HDR composite index -- the Human Development Index (HDI), which departs from the conventional economistic way of ranking countries on the basis their wealth or GNP, to one which takes social or human development issues into account. For the HDI three indicators are used: average per capita income measured in international dollars (PPPs), adult literacy rates combined with school enrolments, and life expectancy. In addition to these innovative indicators in social development, the 1997 HDR report has developed a controversial poverty index, Human Poverty Index (HPI).
The Gender Development Index ( GDI) uses the same indicators as the HDI, but adjust these to take gender differences in incomes, literacy and life expectancy in each country into account. The Gender Empowerment Index (GEM) is based on women's share of parliamentary representation, administrative and managerial positions, and professional positions occupied in economic and political fields.
These indices have helped throw light on a number of development problems. However, the data that are used to construct the individual indicators are not always reliable, especially for developing countries, which do not have good administrative record systems or capacities to produce good data that are based on regular national
surveys. Although most of the real data come from national statistics offices, they tend to change remarkably as agencies introduce different screening techniques in processing the data for their own purposes. As UNDP relies on several multilateral agency sources in constructing its indicators and indices, there are bound to be
problems of internal consistency. Often the UNDP data are based on interpolations, or estimates made on the basis of the experiences of a country with reliable statistics that is assumed to be comparable.
Don't get carried away by the rankings. I tend to see them more as beauty contests than as a scientific exercise. There are all kinds of theoretical and conceptual problems in the allotment of weights for combining different indicators to produce a composite index. And the real data for each country are not robust or reliable enough to rank countries with a high degree of confidence.
When I see Sierra Leone at the bottom of any human development league table, I always do two things. First, I assume that all the countries that are listed with us in the low human development bracket are not that different from us since they tend to correspond to my common sense understanding of the status of those countries ( that I think is the most one can make of these league ables). Second, I tell myself that we are really backward and need to do more.
With best wishes,
Yusuf