WUNRN
World Economic Forum
The Global Gender
Gap Report 2012
Download full report (PDF)
Country Highlights (PDF)
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.