Social Institutions & Gender Index

Which laws, social norms and practices limit girls’ and women’s rights and opportunities?

The OECD Development Centre’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) measures discrimination against women in social institutions across 179 countries. By taking into account laws, social norms and practices that restrict women’s and girls’ rights and access to empowerment opportunities and resources, the SIGI captures the underlying drivers of gender inequality.

The SIGI aims to support policymaking by providing the necessary data to policy- and decision-makers, experts and researchers, international and philanthropic organisations, as well as the public at large. It is one of the official data sources for monitoring SDG Indicator 5.1.1 on “Whether or not legal frameworks are in place to promote, enforce and monitor gender equality and women’s empowerment”, together with UN Women and the World Bank Group’s Women Business and the Law.

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Australia
Overview
Discrimination in the family
Restricted physical integrity
Restricted access to productive and financial resources
Restricted civil liberties
Discrimination in the family

Do women and men have equal decision-making power at home? Do they benefit from equal inheritance and divorce rights? Can women and men marry at the same age?

The “Discrimination in the family” dimension captures these power dynamics within the household and evaluates the extent to which girls and women are undervalued.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

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Variables

Restricted physical integrity

Are women protected from all forms of violence, including intimate partner violence, rape and sexual harassment, and female genital mutilation? To what extent are new-born girls being discriminated against? Are women’s reproductive health and rights adequately protected?

The “Restricted physical integrity” dimension captures social institutions that make women and girls vulnerable in these areas and limit their control over their bodies and reproductive autonomy.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

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Variables

Restricted access to productive and financial resources

Do women and men have equal legal rights to access land and non-land assets? Do they have equal legal rights to open a bank account and obtain credit from a formal financial institution? Do women and men benefit from the same rights and opportunities in the workplace, whether in terms of maternity/paternity and parental leave or in terms of choosing their profession or registering a business? 

The “Restricted access to productive and financial resources” dimension captures women’s restricted access to and control over such critical productive and economic resources and assets.

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Variables

Restricted civil liberties

Do women and men have the same citizenship/nationality rights? Are they able to travel freely within and outside their country on equal terms? Do they have the same legal rights to vote and hold public and political office? Do they have the same rights to access justice?

The “Restricted civil liberties” dimension captures social institutions that restrict women’s access to and participation and voice in the public and social spheres.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

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Variables

Methodology

What is the SIGI?

The Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) measures discriminatory social institutions in key areas that affect women’s and girls’ lives. Produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Centre since 2009, the SIGI has been instrumental in documenting the persistence and prevalence of gender discrimination across countries at different stages of development. The SIGI aims to support policymaking by providing quality data to policy- and decision-makers, experts and researchers, international and philanthropic organisations, as well as the public at large.

SIGI scores range from 0 to 100, with 0 indicating no discrimination and 100 indicating absolute discrimination. Scores in dimensions and indicators are also scaled similarly.

How is the SIGI built?

The SIGI is a composite index that builds on a framework of 4 dimensions, 16 indicators and 25 underlying variables (for the fifth edition). Data collected for the SIGI cover 179 countries. Because of data gaps, SIGI scores were calculated, in 2023, for 140 countries.

The statistical methodology of the SIGI consists in aggregating the levels of discrimination as measured by the variables into 16 indicators, which are in turn aggregated into 4 dimensions. These 4 dimensions are then aggregated into the SIGI score. At each stage of the aggregation process, the same aggregation formula is used. The current methodology was developed in 2017 following an extensive process of consultation with gender and statistical experts and was first applied for the fourth edition of the SIGI published in 2019. In 2020, the methodology was assessed again during an Expert Group Meeting and an internal quality review was undertaken in 2021 with the support of OECD’s Statistics and Data Directorate. The fifth edition of the SIGI in 2023 applies this methodology for the second time.

For more information on how the SIGI methodology was developed and works, please read the SIGI Methodological Paper.

What are the underlying variables?

The SIGI 2023 builds on 26 variables that span across the 16 indicators of the framework. The index uses three types of variables:

  • Legal variables that describe the level of discrimination in legal frameworks. These variables are based on a legal questionnaire (the SIGI 2023 Legal Survey) of 173 questions. Questionnaires were first filled by legal experts and professional lawyers from national and international law firms, before being reviewed by the Gender team of the OECD Development Centre and sent to governments for validation. The cut-off date for the legal information collected was 31 August 2022.

  • Attitudinal variables that describe the level of discrimination in social norms. The cut-off date for the attitudinal data was 31 December 2022.

  • Practice variables that describe the level of discrimination in terms of prevalence and parity. The cut-off date for the practice data was 31 December 2022.

How are variables selected?

Attitudinal and practice variables of the SIGI 2023 were selected based on the following criteria:

  • Conceptual relevance: The variable should be closely related to the conceptual framework of discriminatory social institutions and measure what it is intended to capture.

  • Underlying factor of gender inequality: The variable should capture an underlying factor that leads to unequal outcomes for women and men.

  • Data quality, reliability, and coverage: The variable should be based on high-quality, reliable data. Ideally, the data should be standardised across countries/territories and have extensive coverage across countries/territories.

  • Distinction: Each variable should measure a distinct discriminatory institution and should add new information not measured by other variables.

  • Statistical association: Variables included in the same dimension should be statistically associated, and thereby capture similar areas of social institutions without being redundant.

How is legal information encoded into the legal variables?

The information captured by the SIGI 2023 Legal Survey was encoded to create 15 legal variables across each indicator of the SIGI conceptual framework – the only indicator that does not have a legal variable is the Missing women indicator as there are no laws that can be measured for this type of discrimination against girls.

A coding manual was developed to ensure consistency across variables, and guarantee objectivity in the selection criteria for scoring. A five-level classification (0, 25, 50, 75 and 100) serves as the basis to encode the legal information and reflects the level of discrimination in formal and informal laws: 0 denotes equal legal protections between women and men, without legal or customary exceptions, and 100 denotes a legal framework that fully discriminates against women’s and girls’ rights.

The scores of the legal variables take into account all applicable legal frameworks in the country whether formal or informal, including those that may only apply to part of the population. In many countries across the world, dual, plural, federal or informal legal frameworks may exist or co-exist. The SIGI methodology which takes this into account by assessing whether the law applies to all groups of women may affect the individual performance of countries.

 

To learn more, read the SIGI Methodological Paper.

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Resources and tools for policymakers

Acknowledgment

The OECD Development Centre is immensely grateful to all the legal experts and lawyers that participated in the SIGI 2023 Legal Survey and answered the 173 questions of the survey between March 2022 and February 2023. Their work and dedication were crucial to build the SIGI 2023 legal database that looks at discrimination in formal and informal laws across 15 of the 16 key areas of the SIGI conceptual framework.

The full list of legal experts and lawyers who participated and who authorised the OECD Development Centre to publicly disclose their participation can be found here.

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