Human Development Research Paper 2010/46 Measuring Key Disparities in Human Development: The Gender Inequality Index Amie Gaye, Jeni Klugman, Milorad Kovacevic, Sarah Twigg and Eduardo Zambrano United Nations Development Programme Human Development Reports Research Paper December 2010 Human Development Research Paper 2010/46 Measuring Key Disparities in Human Development: The Gender Inequality Index Amie Gaye, Jeni Klugman, Milorad Kovacevic, Sarah Twigg and Eduardo Zambrano United Nations Development Programme Human Development Reports Research Paper 2010/46 December 2010 Measuring Key Disparities in Human Development: The Gender Inequality Index Amie Gaye, Jeni Klugman, Milorad Kovacevic, Sarah Twigg and Eduardo Zambrano Amie Gaye is Policy Specialist at the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme. E-mail:
[email protected] Jeni Klugman is Director of the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme. E-mail:
[email protected] Milorad Kovacevic is Head of Statistics at the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme. E-mail:
[email protected] Sarah Twigg is Research Consultant at the Human Development Report Office. E-mail:
[email protected] Eduardo Zambrano is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics at the Orfalea College of Business, Cal Poly. E-mail:
[email protected] Comments should be addressed by email to the author(s). Abstract Gender inequality remains a major barrier to human development. Girls and women have made major strides since 1990, but they have not yet gained gender equity. In this paper, we review ways to measure and monitor gender inequality, providing a critique of existing measures including the first global gender indices that were launched in the 1995 Human Development Report – the Gender-related Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure - and introduce a new index that is presented in the 2010 Human Development Report.