This article offers a brief overview of the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) aimed at addressing gender inequality.
In many developing nations, women face various kinds of inequality, which traps them in what is known as the ‘inequality trap.’ This situation is undesirable and requires urgent attention to eliminate gender disparities.
To achieve this, empowering women is essential. Women must play an active role in this process, meaning that their empowerment is connected to their own agency. The economist Amartya Sen highlights that while women's agencies are crucial for achieving gender justice and social advancement, simply having economic growth does not automatically reduce gender inequality.
In this regard, the efforts of women’s organizations and other agencies that advocate for women's literacy, workforce participation, and demographic shifts are vital for empowering women. Empowerment must originate from the grassroots level, not be imposed from above. When women are empowered, it positively impacts not only their lives but also those of men and children, leading to overall development and social progress.
The five key components of women’s empowerment include:
(i) education,
(ii) ownership rights over property and assets,
(iii) women’s roles and status in the labor market,
(iv) job opportunities, and
(v) societal and family attitudes towards women’s work. For a society to develop comprehensively, women's empowerment is essential.
The Human Development Report of 1995, which prioritizes women’s opportunities over mere capabilities, introduced the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM).
This measure focuses on three main areas:
(i) political participation and decision-making power, indicated by the percentage of parliamentary seats held by women and men,
(ii) economic participation and decision-making ability, represented by the percentage of women and men in roles as legislators, senior managers, and in professional positions, and
(iii) authority over economic resources, shown through the earnings of both genders. GEM is calculated as the average of these three measures. The core concept of GEM can be visualized in Figure 5.3.
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