Gender Empowerment Measure

The Gender Empowerment measure GEM is an index designed to measure gender equality. GEM is the United Nations coding Programme's effort to measure a 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 as well as parliamentary positions. It was filed at the same time as the Gender-related Development Index GDI but measures topics like empowerment that are not identified by that index.

Definition and calculation

The GEM was intentional to degree "whether women and men are able to actively participate in economic and political life and pretend part in decision-making" UNDP, 1995, p. 73Klasen 257. The GEM tends to be more organization focused what people are actually efficient to realize 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 enable certain dimensions that were previously difficult to compare between countries to come into international comparison.