A Narrower Perspective? From a Global to a Developed-Countries Gender Gap Index: a Gender Statistics Excercise

Abstract

In this paper, we focus our attention on a particular composite index of gender equality, the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI), highlighting problematics and weaknesses and proposing a different approach structured in four steps. The starting point of our analysis is to narrow the research to a small group of OECD countries: in this way it is possible to lower the gender analysis in a homogeneous socio-cultural framework and introduce a fifth dimension related to the time use. Next, to explore which variables have a greater impact on the gender gap persistence among these countries, we propose a different weighting method, based on the structural equation modeling (SEM). Through the study of official data, the effects of these steps on the final ranking of countries were then analyzed, allowing reflections from both the methodological and socio-cultural point of view.