ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights that gender itself is highly complex and that simple solutions or simple theories are rarely able to capture its truth appropriately. It explores two measures that attempt to compare gender equality across countries. The index was developed in part to address the need for a consistent and comprehensive measure for gender equality that can track a country’s progress over time. The Gender Empowerment Measure was designed by the United Nations in 1995 to measure whether women and men are able to actively participate in economic and political life and take part in decision-making. The gender paradox is that countries that score higher on measures of gender equality, counterintuitively, also have higher rates of gender segregation by occupation. The gender paradox is a significant, counterintuitive, finding. It suggests that progressive, liberatory gender politics are not as straightforward as they seem.
