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The TARGET approach aims at establishing a reflexive gender equality policy in research performing and research funding organisations. Monitoring has enormous potential to support reflexivity at both the institutional and the individual levels in the gender equality plan (GEP) development and implementation context. To exploit this potential, the monitoring system has to consist of meaningful indicators, which adequately represent the complex construct of gender equality and refer to the concrete objectives and policies of the GEP. To achieve this, we propose an approach to indicator development that refers to a theory of change for the GEP and its policies. Indicator development thus becomes a reflexive endeavour and monitoring a living tool. This requires constant reflection on data gaps, validity of indicators and the further development of indicators. Furthermore, we recommend the creation of space for reflexivity to discuss monitoring results with the community of practice.

The measurement and comparison across countries of female conditions in labour market and gender gap in employment is a very complex task, given both its multidimensional nature and the different scenarios in terms of economic, social and cultural characteristics. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

At this aim, different information about presence and engagement of women in labour market, gender pay gap, segregation, discrimination and human capital characteristics was combined and a ranking of 26 European countries is proposed through the composite indicator methodology. It satisfies the need to benchmark national gender gaps, grouping together economic, political and educational dimensions.

The results show that female conditions in labour market are the best in Scandinavian countries and Ireland while many Eastern and Southern European countries result at the bottom of classification.

In order to take into account the subjectivity of some choices in composite indicator construction and to test robustness of results, different aggregation techniques were applied.

The authors hope that this new index will stimulate the release of a sort of best practices useful to close labour market gaps, starting from best countries’ scenarios, and the launching of pilot gender parity task forces, as it happened with the Global Gender Gap Index in some countries. Finally, relating gender gap indexes with country policies frameworks for gender inequalities and the connected policy outcomes, it is possible to evaluate their effectiveness and to identify the most adequate initiatives to undertake because policies reducing gender gaps can significantly improve economic growth and standard of living.

The analysis gives a contribution in the evaluation of the policies and regulations effectiveness at national level considering the existing welfare regimes and the associated gaps in labour market. It can help policy makers to understand the ramifications of gaps between women and men. The Gender Gap Labour Market Index is constrained by the need for international comparability, but limiting its analysis to European countries; it has been based on ad hoc indicators concerning developed economies and could be readily adapted for use at the national and local levels.

In this paper the authors propose a new composite indicator index specifically focused on gender gap in labour market. Several papers analysed gender differences in wages, employment or segregation, but few of them consider them together, allowing to get a satisfactory informative picture on gender inequalities in labour market and studying in deep its multiple aspects, including discrimination indicators ad hoc calculated, giving to policy makers an useful tool to evaluate female employees conditions and put them in relation with the different input factors existing within each country.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current situation of the European Union in terms of gender equality, researching the possible existence of models differentiated by groups of countries or conglomerates. For this, the indicator offered by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) has been used, which includes six dimensions: work, money, knowledge, time, power and health.

The Gender Equality Index is compared with an alternative indicator that has been developed using the same dimensions but with a different methodology. Specifically, the DP2 distance measure has been applied, the use of which is common in studies focusing on well-being and quality of life. In addition, a cluster analysis has been carried out that allows classifying the EU member states and obtaining groupings of countries according to the proximity between them in terms of equality between men and women.

The results show that the most egalitarian countries are those of northern Europe, but without finding the typical north–south classification. Thus, in the group of the least equal are many eastern countries that have recently joined the EU, along with other southern countries that have been part of the EU since its creation, such as Italy. The classification of the countries resulting from applying one or the other methodology is not identical although there are hardly any significant changes. The groups obtained in the years for which information is available are also not altered, which reflects the structural nature of gender equality.

This paper shows a division into four groups of countries according to gender equality, using different indicators and methodologies. The typology of countries has hardly altered during the last decade.

Countries across the world have committed to the attainment of Agenda 2030 by implementing policies to achieve all the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Development experience during the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) suggests that ensuring equity is one of the basic pillars required to achieve SDGs. Unfortunately, gender is a major fault line across which development gets unequally distributed. While SDG 5 enshrines the need for achieving gender equality, its global progress has been staggered and saw a further decline during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gender equality is poorly integrated with all the SDGs as only 104 out of 246 SDG indicators identify gender-based issues. There continues to remain a widespread data gap even for the goals which have gender-related indicators as merely 35 out of the 104 gender-related indicators (9 of the 17 SDGs) had robust data systems and methodologies in place until recently. Consequently, countries with entrenched patriarchal and unequal societies have consistently lagged in the attainment of gender related SDGs and have struggled to mainstream gender.

This chapter argues that gender data is the foundation for ensuring gender equality and promoting evidence-based policymaking. It therefore makes a case for mainstreaming gender-related indicators in SDGs 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15, and 17 along with expanding the gendered understanding of people-related goals in the areas of education, health, and employment. Moreover, it reiterates the need for gender data collection to move beyond the binary construct of male and female to integrate an intersectional lens.

The relationship between gender and governance is often neglected in both conceptual and empirical work. However, gender equality in the decision-making fora is vital, for enabling far-reaching social change and for empowering people excluded from decision making. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the participation of women in governance institutions in a small island economy like Mauritius. Though, there has been some progress in Mauritius in redressing the gender imbalance in national and local governance processes, more is still to be achieved. This paper analyses women participation in governance by using gender-sensitive governance indicators.

Data were collected from different sources namely from the Mauritian Electoral Commissioner's Office, Statistics Mauritius, Mauritius Household Budget Surveys and the Ministry of Education and Human Resources. Data were also made available from the Global Gender Gap Report, 2012; the Global Parliamentary Report, 2012 and the SADC Gender Protocol Barometer, 2012. These data were used in the computation of gender-sensitive governance indicators used by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 2006). The indicators are the Global Gender Gap Index, the percentage of seats reserved in parliament for women, voter turnout among registered females and prevalence of women in poor districts.

The paper argues that the overall gender gap index for Mauritius has increased over the years but the scores for economic participation and political attainment remain very low. In the economic sphere, the author note a rising female unemployment rate, though girls perform better than boys at all educational levels. Mauritius has been adept at the politics of recognition of different ethnic groups but this approach has not addressed the issue of women. The findings reveal that women are often excluded from decision making, from the household up to the highest levels of policymaking. The “invisibility” of women in parliament, is a concern and is “a grave democratic deficit” for the country (Sachs, 2001).

No study has taken a gender perspective of governance issues in Mauritius. The author assess the importance of gender in a democratic country like Mauritius which has performed well on the economic front but gender is still too often ignored in governance and other spheres. There is thus a growing need for greater gender equality and participation of women in governance institutions and processes.

This paper investigates the causes of the gender gap in the labour market that cannot be explained by classical human capital theory.

To this end, the authors integrate the Gender Gap in the Labour Market Index (GGLMI), a composite index developed in previous research, with further information on some social aspects that could affect the female work commitment, directly or indirectly. In particular, the authors want to verify if family care and home duties, still strongly unbalanced against women, and the welfare system play a significant role in the gender gap.

Results highlight a very complex scenario, characterized by the persistence of gender inequalities everywhere, even if at different degrees, with very strong imbalances in the time spent at work in response to the family commitments.

The actual determinants of gender disparities in the labour market are very difficult to identify because of the lack of adequate data and the difficulties in measuring some factors determining female behaviour. The additional information used in this research can only partially accomplish this task.

However, for the first time, this paper uses information on different aspects and causes of the gender gap, including proxies of mainly unobservable aspects, in order to achieve at least partial measurement of this phenomenon.

Given the importance of legal parity between women and men in today's world and lack of research in this domain, the purpose of this paper is to identify gender‐based distinctions in formal laws and institutions that may directly or indirectly affect women's prospects as entrepreneurs and employees.

Covering 128 economies, it establishes six indicators of gender differences in formal laws and institutions: accessing institutions; using property; getting a job; dealing with taxes; building credit; and going to court. The first three indicators capture laws that have direct gender dimensions and are based on a reading of such laws from the perspective of individual women. The fourth indicator examines the direct and indirect gender implications of tax policy from the perspective of four standardised families with varying tax liabilities. The last two indicators examine the ease of access to credit bureaus and courts to examine the indirect effects that microfinance institutions and dispute resolution have on women, who are more likely to rely on non‐traditional financial services. The questions used to construct each indicator were chosen based on data availability, economic relevance and variation of regulation across economies.

The findings of the study pointed out that every region contains economies with unequal rules for men and women, with the extent of inequality varying by region.

This research does not test or analyse outcome variables of gender inequality; it simply identifies whether the law is equal for women and men, which can be a potential source of inequitable gender outcomes.

This research offers valuable practical insights for employees and entrepreneurs to improve understanding of how legal and regulatory environments shape opportunities for women and contribute to more informed policy discussions.

The paper provides interesting insights into research on linkages between legal differentiation and outcomes for women, and helps inform policy dialogue on things governments can do to expand women's opportunities. It is the first attempt to measure the gender gap in policy variables using quantitative and objective data.

This paper aims to suggest that gender inequality plays a significant role in explaining the prevailing magnitudes of food insecurity in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. It provides empirical evidence for the underlying hypothesis that removing discrimination against women, particularly, with respect to their reproductive health and rights, depicted in high adolescent fertility rates and maternal deaths, will be an important pre-condition for addressing the hunger and undernourishment challenge in the region. A theoretical linkage has been conceptualised and supported through findings from panel data analysis of a set of 20 countries in the region, over a period of 16 years (from 1999 to 2015). The key result is that the relative impact of health inequality on food insecurity is higher and significant, in comparison to disparities in education and economic participation of women. A unit increase in adolescent fertility rate leads to an increase in undernourishment by 19.4 per cent, depth of food deficit by 1.15 per cent and a decline in average dietary energy adequacy by 0.21 per cent.

In the paper, time series data set for 20 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa is generated by using world development indicators (World Bank) of gender inequality and food security statistics of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Data set involves trends in variables over a period of 16 years (1999 to 2015). A panel regression analysis with fixed effects is undertaken for testing the underlying hypothesis. To capture the linkage in a detailed manner, the author has fitted four models for each of the three measures of food security. First model captures the specific impact of gender differences in secondary school enrolment on food security in the region. Second model assesses the impact of gender inequality in labour force participation, and the third model explores the impact of health inequality in terms of adolescent fertility and maternal mortality on food security indicators. In the final model, the relative impact of all the four gender inequality indicators on magnitude of food insecurity in the study region is assessed.

The findings from panel data analysis provide empirical support to our hypothesis that gender disparities prevailing in Sub-Saharan Africa have an adverse impact on the level of food security in the region. Individually, increase in both, gender parity in secondary education and ratio of female to male labour force participation rate, has a negative influence on prevalence of undernourishment and depth of food deficit in the region. But, when the relative impact of gender inequality in education, economic participation and health are considered together in a single model, adolescent fertility rate, followed by maternal mortality ratio became the two most important indicators negatively influencing the magnitude of food security in SSA. A unit increase in adolescent fertility rate, leads to an increase in undernourishment by 19.4 per cent, depth of food deficit by 1.15 per cent and a decline in average dietary energy adequacy by 0.21 per cent.

Scarcity of continuous time series data for the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa limits the scope of analysis.

Government policies and programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa must focus on successful implementation of sexual and reproductive health and rights of women, as underlined in Goal 3 of sustainable development goals (SDGs). This would require deeper levels of interventions aimed at transforming gender roles and relations through involvement of men and boys as partners. Elimination of sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls, and ensuring easy and affordable access to sexual and reproductive health services, particularly in fragile and conflict affected areas, are some of the important measures which may facilitate movement of the countries in the region, towards the target set by SDG 3.

Indisputably, women play a key role in a nation’s food economy, not only as food producers and income earners but also as food distributors and consumers. Nevertheless, they face discrimination in every dimension and phase of life, which hampers their ability to successfully fulfill this responsibility. The paper provides a theoretical linkage and empirical evidence on the underlying hypothesis that targeting various forms of gender disparities in the African sub-continent, particularly those relating to reproductive health and rights of women will pave the way for reducing the magnitude of hunger and food insecurity in the region of Sub-Saharan Africa. Few papers in my knowledge have explored the linkage between gender inequality and food insecurity, but none have empirically emphasised the reproductive health dimension of this association.

Women’s empowerment is a multidimensional concept that encompasses different aspects such as access to education, freedom to make vital decisions, labor market access, wages, and political participation, among others. In this research, the authors construct a multidimensional index of women’s empowerment that takes into account individual resources and achievements and analyze its evolution across countries using data from the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations for 17 gender indicators across 96 countries over the period 1995–2015. By means of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the authors identify three dimensions of women’s empowerment: reproductive health, economic participation, and basic education. In addition, the authors use cluster techniques to classify countries into four groups with similar behavior patterns in the different domains of women’s empowerment: a group of countries with high levels in the domains of reproductive health and basic education but with low levels in economic participation; a group of countries with high levels in the domains of reproductive health and economic participation that should pay attention to education; a group of countries with medium levels across the three dimensions of women’s empowerment, especially in reproductive health and economic participation; and a group of countries with low levels in all the dimensions of women’s empowerment, especially in reproductive health and basic education. The comparison of these different patterns serves to highlight the aspects in which improvements have been made or, on the contrary, to highlight the obstacles that are hindering the improvement of gender equality. Finally, the results suggest that advancements in women’s empowerment improve the countries’ level of development.