Gender Empowerment Measure
The Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) is a UNDP composite introduced in the 1995 Human Development Report to capture gender inequality in agency and opportunity rather than in basic capabilities. It combines women's and men's shares of parliamentary seats, of senior administrative and managerial as well as professional and technical positions, and their relative earned income, aggregating them into an index that emphasises participation in economic and political decision-making.
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Sources
- United Nations Development Programme (1995). Human Development Report 1995 — Gender and Human Development. Oxford University Press / UNDP. link ↗
- Klugman, J., Rodríguez, F., & Choi, H.-J. (2011). The HDI 2010: New controversies, old critiques. The Journal of Economic Inequality, 9(2), 249–288. DOI: 10.1007/s10888-011-9178-z ↗
- Klasen, S. (2006). UNDP's gender-related measures: Some conceptual problems and possible solutions. Journal of Human Development, 7(2), 243–274. DOI: 10.1080/14649880600768595 ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/gender-studies/gender-empowerment-measure
Which method?
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- Global Gender Gap IndexGender Studies↔ compare
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