Women's Economic Opportunity Index - Economist Intelligence Unit

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Women’s economic opportunityA new global index and rankingTo ensure the relevance of the choice of indicators and categories, Principal Components Analysis(PCA) was performed. Details of this process are given in Appendix III.Model validationTo validate the results of the Women’s Economic Opportunity Index, the Economist Intelligence Unitcorrelated the model’s overall score against several “output” (dependent) variables. The scatter plots(below) show the correlations between the Women’s Economic Opportunity Index and the followingvariables:1) Wage and salaried workers (employees); Female/male ratio: Employees are workers with “paidemployment jobs”, that is, those jobs where the workers hold an explicit (written or oral) or implicitemployment contract that provides a basic remuneration, which is not directly dependent upon therevenue of the unit for which they work.The results indicate a high degree of correlation (0.79 on a scale of 0 to 1) between wage and salariedemployees and the overall Women’s Economic Opportunity Index score.2) Employers; Female/male ratio: Employers are those individuals who, working on their own accountor with one or a few partners, hold the type of jobs defined as “self-employment jobs” (that is, jobswhere the remuneration is directly dependent upon the profits derived from the goods and servicesproduced) and, in this capacity, have engaged, on a continuous basis, one or more persons to work forthem as employees.The correlation between employers and the overall Women’s Economic Opportunity Index score is0.28. This is lower than for wage and salaried employees because the external factors that motivatewomen employees are somewhat different from those that influence a woman’s decision to becomean entrepreneur. Better business environments for women employees tend to result in higher levelsof female employment in the formal (wage-earning) sector. By comparison, the number of womenentrepreneurs in low- and high-income countries tends to be higher than in middle-income countries.This is because women in low-income countries often become entrepreneurs out of necessity (becausethey might face discrimination in wage employment), while women in high-income countries becomeentrepreneurs in search of opportunity. This influences the correlation results.3) Vulnerable employment: This indicator captures the share of vulnerable employment in totalemployment for women. Vulnerable employment is defined as people who are employed underrelatively precarious circumstances, as indicated by their status in employment. Because contributingfamily workers and own-account workers are less likely to have formal work arrangements, access tobenefits or social protection programmes, and are more “at risk” to economic cycles, these are thestatuses categorised as “vulnerable”.The results indicate a high correlation between the share of women in vulnerable employment andthe Women’s Economic Opportunity Index (-0.80). The correlation is negative, indicating that acountry with good legal and social protections for working women has fewer women in vulnerable41© Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2010
Women’s economic opportunityA new global index and rankingemployment.4) Gender-related Development Index (United Nations Development Programme gender measure):The Gender-related Development Index (GDI) measures achievement in the same basic areas as theUNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), but takes note of inequality between women and men. Themethodology imposes a penalty for inequality, such that the GDI falls when the achievement levelsof both women and men in a country go down or when the disparity between their achievementsincreases. The greater the gender disparity in basic capabilities, the lower a country’s GDI comparedwith its HDI. The GDI is simply the HDI discounted, or adjusted downwards, for gender inequality.The results indicate a high correlation between the GDI and the Women’s Economic Opportunity Index(0.85).Wage employees; Female/male ratioAll 113 countries in the modelEuropeOverall scoreRating 0=100 where 100 = most favourable10090807060504030Czech Republic201000.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2Wage employees; Female/male ratioFemale/male ratio. >1 means more female employees than male employees42© Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2010
Page 1 and 2: Women’s economic opportunityA new
Page 41: Women’s economic opportunityA new
Page 93 and 94:
Women’s economic opportunityA new
Page 95 and 96:
Page 97 and 98:
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
Page 105 and 106:
Appendix IWomen’s economic opport
Page 107 and 108:
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
Page 119 and 120:
Page 121 and 122:
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Appendix IISources and definitionsW
Page 131 and 132:
Page 133 and 134:
Page 135 and 136:
Page 137 and 138:
Page 139 and 140:
Appendix IIIPrincipal componentsana
Page 141 and 142:
Cover image: Russ StreetWhilst ever
show all

Women's Economic Opportunity Index - Economist Intelligence Unit

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?