Gender Parity Index and more

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Hi class! This time our data team focuses on Gender Parity Index across countries.
Gender Parity Index (GPI) is a socioeconomic index usually designed to measure the relative access to education of males and females. It is calculated as the quotient of the number of females by the number of males enrolled in a given stage of education. (If the value is less than 1, then it means that the number of males enrolled is greater than that of females enrolled)
Here is the source from UNStats.
https://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=614

And this is my summary!
U.S.A.: 1.37 (in 2013)
China: 1.15 (in 2013)
Peru : 1.09 (in 2010)
Pakistan: 0.98 (in 2013)
Mexico: 0.96 (in 2013)
India: 0.92 (in 2013)
Japan: 0.90 (in 2012)
Viet Nam: 0.90 (in 2013)
Korea: 0.75 (in 2014)
Singapore: – (no data found)
To be honest, I’m very surprised by the fact there is less differences across Asian countries than I thought and there is almost no correlation with gross enrollment ratio that I posted last time (http://edblogs.columbia.edu/inafu6653-001-2017-1/2017/02/08/international-comparison-gross-enrollment-ratio/). Another striking fact is Korea and Japan is lagging behind even within Asian countries.
And rather than just showing this alone, we also wanna share World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Rankings in 2016. This index is composed mainly of four factors (economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment)
U.S.A.: 45th
Singapore: 55th
Viet Nam: 65th
Mexico: 66th
Peru : 80th
India: 87th
China: 99th
Japan: 111th
Korea: 116th
Pakistan: 143rd
Anything strikes you? Please share and discuss it!

6 thoughts on “Gender Parity Index and more”

  1. Thanks for this post Gayoung!
    One thing that surprise me a lot is that there are more than 8 countries from Latin America that are better ranked than the U.S. Being Latin America a region with still a lot of gender inequality I am amazed that the U.S is behind that many Latin American countries.

  4. Hi, it probably isn’t the same methodology but based on the statistics provided by Singapore’s Ministry of Education (https://www.moe.gov.sg/docs/default-source/document/publications/education-statistics-digest/esd-2015.pdf, pg. 21), I calculated the ratio of total number of males to total females enrolled in Singapore’s main universities (2014) to be arond 1.04. The biggest gender disparity in terms of course (%) was in Engineering Sciences (~70% males) followed by Humanities and Social Sciences (~33% males). Could gendered enrollment in courses play a part in contributing to the subsequent occupational segregation (though of course this is closing) and gender wage gap?

    Thanks for sharing the stats!

    • Thanks Alicia for your extra effot! Singapore’s GPI is high as everyone assumes.
      I would answer yes to your question – lower enrollment for women is said to result in gender wage gap in Japan. Just some stats about Japan – 27% wage gap, women account for only 11% of manegerial positions (U.S. more than 40%), women spend five times as much time on unpaid work (OECD average twice).
      Now the Abe administration is focusing on women’s active participation in the labor force, new legislation obliging companies with more than 300 employees to make action plan about women’s active participation in the labor force (e.g. set the target about women’s ratio to manegerial positions), report these plans to the government and promulgate relevant information is now enforced (below). But it’s still a long way to go… partly because the traditional culture (still half of Japanese people (both men and women) support the outdated belief that husbands earn money and wives should stay at home and take care of children).
      http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/04/08/editorials/still-a-struggle-for-working-women/#.WLj4QuQm7mI

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