In many countries, tradition and culture pose obstacles to women’s economic development, so understanding their impact is a key to effective development policies.
To increase awareness of these issues, the OECD’s Development Centre measures discrimination that restricts women’s ability to access resources in 102 developing countries.
Complementing existing indices on gender equality that focus on outcomes such as life expectancy or access to primary education, the Development Centre’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) introduces a new measure - social institutions - as the key determinant for women’s involvement in economic and social life.
The index draws on 12 institutional variables relating to household behaviour and social norms, including such practices as child marriage and genital mutilation but also factors like freedom of movement and restrictions on inheritance and access to property rights.
In countries with high SIGI values, such as Sudan, Afghanistan and Mali, building more schools or giving micro-credit to women risk being ineffective when traditions forbid girls to leave the house alone after puberty and they are deprived from access to land, technology and information. SIGI shows persistent discrimination and repression in southern Asia, sub-Saharan African and the Middle East (see map).
Alongside the index, country notes give a more detailed picture of the economic and social situation of women in developing countries, while a new version of the OECD Development Centre’s online platform for sharing information on gender issues, www.wikigender.org, allows users to debate and comment on the index and its rankings.
The SIGI shows the important influence of social institutions on the economic role of women. The more discriminatory social institutions are, the lower the rate of female participation in the labour force, for example. Women’s access to paid jobs is crucial not only for their personal well-being but also for economic development.
