The Uses and Misuses of the Gender‐related Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

The 1995 Human Development Report introduced two new measures of well‐being: the Gender‐Related Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). The two indexes were created with the intention of attracting more attention to gender inequality issues. This paper first of all reviews the attention the indexes received in the publications of the United Nations Development Programme itself, concentrating on their use in national and subnational Human Development Reports. It also reviews how the two indexes were used in academia and the press. The main result of the review is that the GDI in particular seems to be a measure that is not used appropriately. In most cases of misuse, the GDI was wrongly interpreted as a measure of gender inequality. Due to the many misinterpretations, the potential policy impact the GDI and GEM can have seems limited.