Sustainable development goals for gender equality: Extracting associations among the indicators of SDG 5 using numerical association rule mining

Abstract

The United Nations prescribed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to various nations to provide enduring answers to widespread problems and to give long-lasting solutions to common issues being faced across the globe. SDG 5 in particular was aimed at minimizing gender inequality by employing 9 targets and 14 indicators. The indicators serve as a yardstick to measure the progress of each of the 9 targets. This research takes an in-depth look at the perspectives of SDG 5 –Gender Inequalities, its targets, and indicators. Furthermore, explanatory data analysis and numerical association rule mining alongside QuantMiner are applied to the generated Indian datasets on SDG 5 to extract patterns and associations among the fourteen indicators of SDG 5. The association rule mining carried out on the indicators reveals the pattern of association among these indicators. Legal provision for women and the rate of crimes against women have a perfect association of 100% while the association between legal provision for women and women who have experienced physical violence stands at 80%. The full relationships of all the 14 indicators are discussed extensively in the result and discussion section. Overall, it is established that these indicators are interdependent. This will make it easier for academics, the general public, and governmental and non-governmental organizations to understand the trends and form informed opinions on issues relating to gender inequality and SDG 5.