WUNRN
World Economic Forum
The Global Gender Gap Report 2011
The Global Gender Gap Report 2011
The Global Gender Gap Report 2011: Rankings
and Scores
The
Global Gender Gap Index introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006, is a
framework for capturing the magnitude and scope of gender-based disparities and
tracking their progress. The Index benchmarks national gender gaps on economic,
political, education- and health-based criteria, and provides country rankings
that allow for effective comparisons across regions and income groups, and over
time. The rankings are designed to create greater awareness among a global
audience of the challenges posed by gender gaps and the opportunities created
by reducing them. The methodology and quantitative analysis behind the rankings
are intended to serve as a basis for designing effective measures for reducing
gender gaps.
The
Index is designed to measure gender-based gaps in access to resources and
opportunities in individual countries rather than the actual levels of the
available resources and opportunities in those countries. We do this in order
to make the Global Gender Gap Index independent from countries’ the levels of
development. In other words, the Index is constructed to rank countries on
their gender gaps not on their development level. For example, rich countries
have more education and health opportunities for all members of society and
measures of education levels thus mainly reflect this well-known fact, although
it is quite independent of the gender-related issues faced by each country at
its own level of income. The Global Gender Gap Index, however, rewards
countries for smaller gaps in access to these resources, regardless of the
overall level of resources. Thus the Index penalizes or rewards countries based
on the size of the gap between male and female enrolment rates, but not for the
overall levels of education in the country.