Measurement of women’s empowerment

The Gender Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure serve as tools to analyze and compare women’s empowerment worldwide. The compositions of those gender-related indexes are often derived from previously available indexes, such as the Human Development Index (HDI) and consist of different variables, such as income, political power, education and life expectancy. As Wieringa argued, those measurements of women’s empowerment are more suitable for highly developed countries but cannot always be considered a valid measure for less developed countries. For example, the Gender Development Index depends strongly on the monetary income of women – therefore, higher income will result in higher Gender Development Index scores. Due to that mechanism, less developed countries score relatively low on the Gender Development Index, especially when being compared to developed countries. Wieringa explained that this approach is very narrowly conceptualized and misses out on various additional and important socio-cultural, legal or economic aspects. Moreover, those measurement tools are based on complex formula and embedded within long production cycles, which means that women’s empowerment can only be calculated by experts and over long periods of time using those tools.

Alternative measurement tools

Based on the described criticism of the predominating indexes, Wieringa and colleagues developed the African Gender and Development Index (AGDI), launched in 2004, to provide an alternative tool for measuring women’s empowerment and gender relations in African countries. While indexes such as the Gender Development Index are exclusively based on quantitative measures, the AGDI takes qualitative as well as quantitative aspects into account. Therefore, the AGDI consists of two parts that complement each other: The quantitative Gender Status Index and the qualitative African Women’s Progress Scoreboard. In addition, the data used for the calculations of the AGDI is derived from national data and can be gathered as well as used by local institutions and agents themselves.

Measurement tools as democratizing tools

While previous indexes focused primarily on the economic resources of women, a variety of different formal and informal indicators are brought together in the African Gender and Development Index. In addition, the index requires shorter time frames compared to common measurement tools and is less costly. Each country that adapts the AGDI receives a preliminary training. After this training, a country team composed of politicians, NGOs and academics carries out the measurement of the AGDI on their own. Wieringa argued that the new measurement tool goes along with a democratizing effect as each country team scores the countries’ performance by themselves and, moreover, receives information regarding the necessity of policy development in specific sectors. While at the time of the initial launch of the new index about ten countries adapted the new measurement tool, in the meantime currently over 40 country teams are using the AGDI to evaluate women’s empowerment and gender relations in their countries.

Flexibility and adaptation of alternative measurement tools

Measurement tools such as the Gender Development Index cannot be easily adapted to the specific characteristics of each country. Contrary to this, country teams using the AGDI can decide on their own what parts of the tool they want to include in the index, and they are able to define certain variables by themselves, such as harmful behavior against women. While this flexibility can make it more difficult to compare countries with each other, it is possible for the country teams to adapt the index by taking country-relevant aspects into account, resulting in a more tailor-made measurement for each country.

After the successful implementation of the AGDI in Africa, a new measurement tool for Indonesia in the form of a Gender Justice Index was developed by Wieringa. That index carries similar benefits as the AGDI, such as accounting for regional variations and differences within countries which might otherwise not have been noticed. Regarding the Gender Justice Index, Wieringa focused on the democratizing effect of the alternative measurement tool by emphasizing that it enables people located in the respective country to be involved in the process and collect and calculate data on their own.