Social Institutions and Gender Index 2014 edition

The Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) measures gender-based discrimination in social norms, practices and laws across 160 countries. The SIGI comprises country profiles, a classification of countries and a database; it serves as a research, policy and advocacy tool for the development community and policy makers.

The SIGI covers five dimensions of discriminatory social institutions, spanning major socio-economic areas that affect women’s lives: discriminatory family code, restricted physical integrity, son bias, restricted resources and assets, and restricted civil liberties. The SIGI’s variables quantify discriminatory social institutions such as unequal inheritance rights, early marriage, violence against women, and unequal land and property rights.

What are social institutions?

Discriminatory Social Institutions: Transforming them to empower women are formal and informal laws, social norms and practices that restrict or exclude women and consequently curtail their access to opportunities, resources and power. Discriminatory social institutions intersect across all stages of girls’ and women’s life, restricting their access to justice, rights and empowerment opportunities and undermining their agency and decision-making authority over their life choices. As underlying drivers of gender inequalities, discriminatory social institutions perpetuate gender gaps in development areas, such as education, employment and health, and hinder progress towards rights-based social transformation that benefits both women and men.

What does the SIGI measure?

As a composite index made up of 14 indicators, SIGI and its sub-indices provide powerful and interpretable tools to compare the level of underlying discrimination against women, allowing cross-country, regional and sub-regional analyses.
The SIGI consists of five sub-indices:

1. Discriminatory family code– Social institutions that limit women’s decision-making power and undervalue their status in the household and the family. This sub-index covers areas such as marriage, parental authority and inheritance. Women’s decision-making power and status determine both their ability to choose their own development pathways and the well-being of their families.
2. Restricted physical integrity– Social institutions that limit women’s and girls’ control over their bodies, that increase women’s vulnerability, and that normalise attitudes toward gender-based violence. This includes formal and informal laws, norms and practices that fail to protect women’s physical integrity and reproductive autonomy and that allow violence and female genital mutilation. Restricted physical integrity due to gender-based violence and to a lack of reproductive autonomy has serious impacts on health outcomes
3. Son bias-Unequal intra-household investments in caring for, nurturing and allocating resources to sons and daughters reflecting the lower value given to girls. A family preference for sons over daughters can manifest itself in different ways, including higher mortality, worse health status or lower educational attainment among girls. Consequences of social norms and practices that devalue daughters are various: missing women, under-investment in the health and nutrition of girls leading to infant mortality, under-investment in girls’ education, etc.
4. Restricted resources and assets– Captures discrimination in women’s rights to access and make decisions over natural and economic resources. This includes discriminatory practices which undermine women’s rights to own, control or use land and non-land assets; discriminatory practices that restrict women’s access to financial services; and social norms imposing that women’s assets be mediated only by men. Insecure or weak rights to land, non-land assets and financial services reduce income-generating opportunities for women, lower decision-making power for women within the household, increase food insecurity for women and their families, and make women and families more vulnerable to poverty.
5. Restricted civil liberties– Captures discriminatory laws and practices that restrict women’s access to public space, their political voice and their participation in all aspects of public life. This includes a lack of freedom of movement, the inability to vote or run for election, and negative attitudes toward women as public figures or as leaders. This sub-index highlights the importance of women’s participation in community actions and public decision making for a range of development outcomes such as governance, health and education.

Changes for the 2014 edition

• Addition of new variables- six new variables mark an ambitious frontier of analysis for the SIGI looking at key issues in sexual reproductive health rights, decision-making authority within the family, and time use and unpaid care.
• Inclusion of OECD countries- for the first time the 2014 edition of the SIG includes all 34 OECD countries; this strengthens the SGI by creating a universal reference to study the drivers of gender inequality
• Classification of discrimination- The SIGI scores 108 countries according to their level of discrimination in social institutions. It classifies them into five groups, from very low levels of discrimination in social institutions to very high levels.

Results

See also

• 2009 Social Institutions and Gender Index
• 2009 Social Institutions and Gender Index 2012
• Gender, Institutions and Development
• OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Development Centre
• Family Code  (Child marriage; Polygamy; Parental authority; Inheritance)
• Physical Integrity (Female genital cutting; Violence against women)
• Son Preference  (Missing Women)
• Civil liberties  ( Freedom of movement ; Freedom of dress)
• Ownership rights (Access to land; Access to bank loans ; Access to property )

External links

• Social Institutions and Gender Index, official website