Looking twice at the gender equity index for public health impact

José Fernández-Sáez,Marta Guijarro-Garví,Carlos Álvarez-Dardet,Elisa Chilet-Rosell,Victoria Roca-Pérez,Mercedes Carrasco-Portiño,Maria Teresa Ruiz-Cantero

doi:10.1186/1471-2458-13-659

Abstract

BackgroundIt has been shown that gender equity has a positive impact on the everyday activities of people (decision making, income allocation, application and observance of norms/rules) which affect their health. Gender equity is also a crucial determinant of health inequalities at national level; thus, monitoring is important for surveillance of women’s and men’s health as well as for future health policy initiatives. The Gender Equity Index (GEI) was designed to show inequity solely towards women. Given that the value under scrutiny is equity, in this paper a modified version of the GEI is proposed, the MGEI, which highlights the inequities affecting both sexes.MethodsRather than calculating gender gaps by means of a quotient of proportions, gaps in the MGEI are expressed in absolute terms (differences in proportions). The Spearman’s rank coefficient, calculated from country rankings obtained according to both indexes, was used to evaluate the level of concordance between both classifications. To compare the degree of sensitivity and obtain the inequity by the two methods, the variation coefficient of the GEI and MGEI values was calculated.ResultsCountry rankings according to GEI and MGEI values showed a high correlation (rank coef. = 0.95). The MGEI presented greater dispersion (43.8%) than the GEI (19.27%). Inequity towards men was identified in the education gap (rank coef. = 0.36) when using the MGEI. According to this method, many countries shared the same absolute value for education but with opposite signs, for example Azerbaijan (−0.022) and Belgium (0.022), reflecting inequity towards women and men, respectively. This also occurred in the empowerment gap with the technical and professional job component (Brunei:-0.120 vs. Australia, Canada Iceland and the U.S.A.: 0.120).ConclusionThe MGEI identifies and highlights the different areas of inequities between gender groups. It thus overcomes the shortcomings of the GEI related to the aim for which this latter was created, namely measuring gender equity, and is therefore of great use to policy makers who wish to understand and monitor the results of specific equity policies and to determine the length of time for which these policies should be maintained in order to correct long-standing structural discrimination against women.

Highlights

It has been shown that gender equity has a positive impact on the everyday activities of people which affect their health
Just as Social Watch developed the GEI to render gender inequities in different countries more visible, in this paper we propose a refined version of the Gender Equity Index that highlights the inequities affecting both women and men, generating a more comprehensive measurement of inequity useful in monitoring gender equity for public health surveillance purposes
Based on considerations related to social justice, upon which public health rests, and the measurement and data analysis instruments used for the design and application of said policies, we strongly suggest that the GEI should be reformulated

Summary

Introduction

It has been shown that gender equity has a positive impact on the everyday activities of people (decision making, income allocation, application and observance of norms/rules) which affect their health. A gender equity measurement tool is important for health policies and public health surveillance at the national level, since gender equity does not constitute a policy area in its own right and its exists via the achievement of the education-focused goal [11,12,13,14]. The GEI has been used both in research [17] and in grey literature [18,19], and has attracted much attention from the media [20]. Institutions such as the World Bank or the Global Development Network have used this new index extensively. The GEI ranks the situation of 157 nations with regard to gender equity in education, economic activity (employment) and empowerment (political participation, representation in government positions, law-making)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion