Abstract
AbsractIn this paper, we contribute to a growing literature in the philosophy of social science cautioning social scientists against context-independent claims to objectivity, by analyzing the recent proposal of a new Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) by Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary. Despite the many internal problems with BIGI, Stoet and Geary have had some success in positioning the index as an important corrective to the way in which gender inequality is measured in mainstream metrics like the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI). We argue that this success is facilitated at least in part by the failure of GGGI’s proponents to adequately justify the methodological choices underpinning the index in relation to the context in which the index’s findings are intended to be used. In so doing, the authors of GGGI oversell the objectivity of the metric’s assessment of the state of global gender inequality—and it is this overselling that allows Stoet and Geary to present BIGI as a metric that corrects what they claim are systematic biases within GGGI. The case of BIGI and GGGI, we argue, suggests that the kind of epistemic modesty exhibited by recent operational approaches to objectivity is particularly important for social research on highly politically contested topics.
Highlights
Addressing the systematic inequalities faced by women around the world has become an important aim for policymakers and NGOs in the last few decades
The first was to expose the unwarranted nature of the assessment of the state of global gender inequality offered by Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI), which we achieved by a critical examination of Stoet and Geary’s methodological choices in constructing the index
We demonstrated that BIGI is no less vulnerable to the charges of inclusion and calculation bias that Stoet and Geary level at Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI), and is no better placed to claim that it produces a truer picture of gender inequality
Summary
BIGI is presented by Stoet and Geary as a necessary corrective to the inclusion and calculation biases of GGGI. The extent of the supposed skewing of common understandings of gender inequality caused by these biases is brought into sharp relief by one of BIGI’s most counterintuitive results. BIGI finds that, contrary to what many people believe, women are less disadvantaged than men in Saudi Arabia and that Saudi Arabia is the third most equal country for women and men in the world (after only Italy and Israel). The unexpectedness of this finding warrants scrutiny
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