Designing better indices of poverty & gender equity

IWDA is the industry partner in this Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant. The primary university partner is the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the ANU. Other partners involved in the project, contributing cash, in-kind or both, include:

• Oxfam Great Britain
• University of Colorado at Boulder
• Action Against Hunger UK
• Philippines Health Social Science Association
• Oxfam America (Southern Africa Regional Office)

The research will work towards two new indices, of gender equity and human poverty, that address the problems and limitations of current indicators, and that poor women and organisations working with them consider more meaningful in capturing information about their situation and how it is changing. Both indices will be applicable not only to nations, but also to larger populations and to smaller groups (e.g. those targeted or affected by a specific policy or development program). The aim is to develop indices that are widely usable at low cost of data collection, robust and that select and weight data inputs so as to generate credible summary judgments. The indices should enable better assessment of impact, more informed choices about where to focus scarce resources, and a sounder basis for poverty and gender-related policy development and service delivery.

The deficiencies in the current measures have been actively discussed in the literature. Among the most significant is that available gender equality measures focus on areas relevant mostly to the more privileged (e.g. representation in parliament, women in higher education). Movements in these components, that affect relatively few, can suggest reductions in gender inequality, even when the situation for the poorest women is unchanged. The indicators also focus on deprivations that anyone can suffer (e.g. income poverty), neglecting deprivations that affect males and females differently
This research has the potential to break new ground in relation to what we should monitor to better assess real progress in gender equity and how to best make difficult decision about allocating (often scarce) resources for gender equality work. It is not only looking at measuring different things, but aggregating this information differently, so that it better reflects the relationship between the various component indicators. IWDA is also interested in using the research project to explore ways to better utilises project and program-level statistical data collected for reporting purposes to help fill the statistical gaps that constrain gender-informed policy development.

-last updated 25/02/09