Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM)

The Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) is a measure of inequalities between men’s and women’s opportunities in three major areas.
• Economic participation and decision making. This is measured by two indicators: the share of women and men in senior professional and technical positions and senior officials and managers.
• Power over economic resources, measured by the share of women and men in the earned income in a country.
• Political participation and decision making. This is calculated by the number of parliamentary seats held by men and women.

Calculations are made for each of these three areas resulting in an index that equals 1 when full equality is reached between women and men and that decreases as inequality increases. The GEM is calculated as the average of the three indices. For further details about the calculation method, see the Human Development Report 2007.