Looking twice at the gender equity index for public health impact

BMC Public Health

Carlos Álvarez-Dardet⁵  Elisa Chilet-Rosell³  Victoria Roca-Pérez⁴  Mercedes Carrasco-Portiño¹  Marta Guijarro-Garví²  Maria Teresa Ruiz-Cantero⁵  José Fernández-Sáez⁶ 

[1] Department of Obstetrics and Puericulture, Faculty of Medicine, University of Concepcion, Concepcion, Chile;Department of Economics, University of Cantabria, Cantabria, Spain;Public Health Research Group, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain;Department of Philosophy of Law and Private International Law, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain;CIBER Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), Catalonia, Spain;Grupo de Investigación de Salud Pública. Universidad de Alicante, Edificio Ciencias Sociales, Crta. San Vicente-Alicante s/n. Campus San Vicente del Raspeig. Apartado, Alicante Postal 99. 03080, Spain

关键词: Income;    Empowerment;    Education;    Index;    Gender equity;   

Others  :  1162023
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-13-659

 received in 2012-11-30, accepted in 2013-07-11,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Background

It has been shown that gender equity has a positive impact on the everyday activities of people (decision making, income allocation, application and observance of norms/rules) which affect their health. Gender equity is also a crucial determinant of health inequalities at national level; thus, monitoring is important for surveillance of women’s and men’s health as well as for future health policy initiatives. The Gender Equity Index (GEI) was designed to show inequity solely towards women. Given that the value under scrutiny is equity, in this paper a modified version of the GEI is proposed, the MGEI, which highlights the inequities affecting both sexes.

Methods

Rather than calculating gender gaps by means of a quotient of proportions, gaps in the MGEI are expressed in absolute terms (differences in proportions). The Spearman’s rank coefficient, calculated from country rankings obtained according to both indexes, was used to evaluate the level of concordance between both classifications. To compare the degree of sensitivity and obtain the inequity by the two methods, the variation coefficient of the GEI and MGEI values was calculated.

Results

Country rankings according to GEI and MGEI values showed a high correlation (rank coef. = 0.95). The MGEI presented greater dispersion (43.8%) than the GEI (19.27%). Inequity towards men was identified in the education gap (rank coef. = 0.36) when using the MGEI. According to this method, many countries shared the same absolute value for education but with opposite signs, for example Azerbaijan (−0.022) and Belgium (0.022), reflecting inequity towards women and men, respectively. This also occurred in the empowerment gap with the technical and professional job component (Brunei:-0.120 vs. Australia, Canada Iceland and the U.S.A.: 0.120).

Conclusion

The MGEI identifies and highlights the different areas of inequities between gender groups. It thus overcomes the shortcomings of the GEI related to the aim for which this latter was created, namely measuring gender equity, and is therefore of great use to policy makers who wish to understand and monitor the results of specific equity policies and to determine the length of time for which these policies should be maintained in order to correct long-standing structural discrimination against women.

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Fernández-Sáez et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

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