Historical Gender Equality Index

As part of the Agency project, Sarah Carmichael, Selin Dilli and Auke Rijpma have created a composite indicator to measure gender inequality in the world over time. The result of this exercise has been published in a report that was jointly written by the OECD and researchers of the Clio Infra project about well-being in the world since 1820, and in a working paper. The underlying datasets were published on the Clio Infra website.

Data:

A discussion of data sources of each indicator is included in the datasets available through the Clio Infra website and in Carmichael et al. (2014). 

A) The Historical Gender Equality Index:

• Composite Gender Equality Index (the composite index is based on data on life expectancy, sex ratio, education, labor force participation, marriage ages and parliament seats)

B) Related datasets created within the Agency project:

• Sex ratio
• Gender equality: years of education
• Gender-equal inheritance

Publications:

• The chapter in the OECD/CLIO INFRA report: Carmichael, Sarah, Dilli, Selin & Rijpma, Auke (02.10.2014). Gender Inequality since 1820. In Auke Rijpma, Jan Luiten van Zanden, Marcel Timmer, Joerg Baten, Marco Mira d'Ercole & Conal Smith (Eds.), How Was Life? Global Well-being since 1820 (pp. 217-248). OECD Publishing.
• The working paper: Dilli, S., A. Rijpma and S. Carmichael (to be published), “Gender Equality in a Historical Perspective: Introducing  the Historical Gender Equality Index”, CGEH Working Paper Series.