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1. Gender equality, equity and equal opportunities: the object of measurement
International jurisprudence clearly recognizes the difference between formal equality (that stated, for example, in the constitutions) and substantive equality, the condition of actual equality achieved between individuals. The fact of having to establish in fundamental documents for single countries and international organizations the need for equality is, in fact, a declaration of the absence of this equality in reality. This chapter discusses the difference between equality, equity and equal opportunities. The three concepts are often mistakenly equated, yet they are extremely different and their measurement requires very different statistical approaches. After a brief introduction to feminist theories and the history of feminism, this chapter will present Amartya Sen’s capability approach from a gender perspective, the related theories of Nussbaum, the road towards gender mainstreaming and the Beijing platform of action. Finally, gender inequality will be presented as a transversal element of social science, justifying the use of composite indicators to describe it. This chapter is therefore the general and necessary introduction to the topic of measuring gender equality.
2. Complexity of social phenomena and the construction of indicators
The first concept to deal with while studying social phenomena is complexity. Nowadays, complexity is a concept that characterizes all the natural and social sciences and defines our relationship with knowledge. This chapter examines precisely the theme of complexity, presenting different approaches and definitions to this issue. The way in which complexity becomes central in the relationship with knowledge, together with its qualifying concepts such as subjectivity, the concept of system and circular causality is discussed. The second guiding concept of this chapter is measurement. Understanding the world requires a sort of translation, a shift from the plane of reality in which we observe phenomena to the plane of numbers in which we try to encode them. This translation must be meaningful, it must reproduce as faithfully as possible in the world of numbers the phenomenon observed in the plane of reality. Measurement is a need for the knowledge of reality, which speaks to us with the language of numbers. Subsequently, the measurement is contextualized within sociology, presenting the essential contribution on this theme offered by Paul Felix Lazarsfeld with the operationalization. Finally, the concept of indicator is explored, by analyzing their crucial importance in the measurement of social phenomena. The Chapter presents all the main aspects through which it is possible to obtain a system of indicators, a tool for measuring complex social phenomena.
The chapter is aimed at scholars and students who, in approaching the theme of measuring gender inequality, are not fully trained in the theory of indicators and serves to bridge the statistical gap necessary for understanding the following chapters.
3. The main indicators of gender inequality
The third chapter presents the main indicators that have been proposed in the international literature: the Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum, the Gender Development Index of the United Nations, the Gender Equality Index of the United Nations and, primarily because of its relevance to the second part of the book, the Gender Equality Index of the European Institute for Gender Equality. This is a fairly descriptive and informative chapter in which the following are provided for each indicator: reference theories; databases used; domains, variables and indices; trends in recent years; pros and cons. Particular attention will be given to the Gender Equality Index of the European Union’s European Institute for Gender Equality. This is the most comprehensive indicator of gender equality to date and will be used in the second part of the book to analyze inequality at regional level.
4. The need for sub-national level analysis to measure gender inequality: opportunities and limitations
Over the past decades, the detail used to describe the socio-economic context through statistical indicators has evolved in several directions, one of which is the increasing territorial detail that has gone down to the sub-national level. Ongoing trends in gender equality measurement confirm the interest in a more geographically detailed analysis. Recent studies presented by the JRC or commissioned by the European Union’s DG-REGIO have gone precisely in this direction. The use of national indicators may in fact result in a ‘compensation’ effect that may hide very important differences within a single national territory. this is more true in those realities where historical/cultural events have led to known internal differences. Italy, for example, has always been characterized by a socio-economic difference between the southern and the other regions of the country; Germany still shows differences between its former eastern and western parts. gender inequality is known to be a mainly cultural fact. Therefore, it is not surprising that cultural differences within a country also translate into differences in gender equality. This chapter discusses the importance of developing sub-national level analyses for gender equality and at the same time assesses the availability of regional-level data within the Eurostat system.
5. Sociological analysis of Regional Gender Disparities in the study regions
This book contains the main results of a Jean Monnet research project to measure gender equality at the regional level in four European countries: Italy, France, Spain and Germany. In the first part of the chapter the regional level data obtained from Eurostat in the form of micro-data will be used to construct the regional indicator of gender equality as close as possible to the national level indicator produced by EIGE. In the second part of the chapter, a sociological interpretation of regional inequalities in the four study areas will be proposed to emphasize how regional detail is also an extremely important key to understanding the gender equality phenomenon. The analysis will provide relevant insights also on the role of national boundaries for gender equality when physical separators determine them (in particular, Spain/France and Italy/France) or when the boundaries are historically less tight (e.g. Rhur basin). Internal disparities are also relevant, for instance, in Spain (North-East/South-West), France (North/South), Italy (North/South) and Germany (Former Western/Eastern Germany).
6. Data driven policy making: indicators and benchmarking
In this chapter, two relevant aspects concerning the use of indicators for policy making are discussed. Having a large battery of indicators available poses the problem of their synthesis. If policies are defined or resources distributed according to the ranking that regions obtain based on the synthesis of these indicators, the criterion used to obtain the synthetic indicator should not significantly influence the result of this sorting. However, the methods and techniques that can be used to construct synthetic indicators are numerous. Although they may agree in many cases to produce rankings of statistical units (e.g., to define priorities for policy action), they sometimes produce inconsistent results. Comparing the rankings of the regions using the most relevant techniques for building composite indicators, it will be possible to evaluate how the methods and techniques we use to build indicators affect regions’ rankings. If, as preliminary results show, these effects are significant, policy evaluation may be subject to a subjectivity element (the choice of the formula we use) and not only to the performance of the regions measured through the indicators. Those who approach the study of social indicators must understand that choosing one method or technique over another can lead to the setting of different priorities.
In the second part of the chapter, the concept of “closest neighbour” is presented, i.e. the most similar region according to the available indicators. very often in policy making it is necessary to identify a credible benchmark. for each of the regions of the study area, the most similar regions will be proposed.
Similar regions may result from having different gender parity achievement levels. This could be very useful for policy makers to identify the regions that, having similar characteristics to the ones the administrate, may have put in place good practices that can be repeated in their territories. Cluster analysis will be used using various statistical methods: k-means clustering, hierarchical clustering, multidimensional scaling, factor analysis, self-organizing neural networks, etc. The quality of the clustering will be evaluated by comparing the results of different approaches.
7. Gender responsive regional fiscal policies: a european perspective
Since the mid-1980s, many countries have adopted fiscal policy measures to promote gender equality. Fiscal policy is one of the “simplest” tools that policymakers can control to implement policy actions. Countries use tax and expenditure policies to address gender inequality and the advancement of women in areas such as education and economic empowerment. One of the interesting aspects of taxation as a policy to reduce gender inequality is its cogency. While cultural actions require extremely long processes to be accepted within communities that might be reluctant to recognize gender equality, taxation must be applied as set out in legislation. For example, one of the solutions that has been proposed and that will be discussed in the chapter, is the shift from a family vision to an individual vision of partners’ incomes in such a way as to offer a significant reduction in the taxation of the second income, which is typical of women. this would make women’s participation in the labour market particularly advantageous and would diminish the advantage induced by the ‘reserve wage’, all those forms of economic assistance that delay women’s reintegration into the labour market after maternity leave. Understanding the effects of gender-responsive fiscal policies is essential for policymakers in designing effective and sustainable gender-responsive fiscal policy measures.
8. Regional Analysis of Gender Equality for policymaking in the EU and the European Actions of Cohesion Policy
In this final chapter, a picture will be presented of how a regional analysis can direct the action of national and European policies more effectively. In detail, the study considers how gender equality has been mainstreamed in ESF and ERDF in the programming, implementation, and monitoring phases with focus on eight selected country case studies. It also provides an assessment of the present and future challenges together with policy indications from relevant stakeholders at both European and national levels.