Ferretti Fabrizio, Mariani Michele
Department of Communication and Economics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Heliyon. 2017 Mar 14;3(3):e00263. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2017.e00263. eCollection 2017 Mar.
Measuring gender inequality and women's empowerment is essential to understand the determinants of gender gaps, evaluate policies and monitor countries' progress. With this aim, over the past two decades, research has mainly been directed towards the development of composite indices. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new and interdisciplinary perspective to the current debate on measuring gender inequality in human development. As a starting point, we develop a simple macroeconomic model of the interdependence between human development and gender inequality. We then introduce a biometric indicator, based on the ratio of female to male body mass index, to measure women's empowerment at the country level. Finally, by using the latest available data, we examine the ability of this biometric indicator to capture countries' performance in achieving gender equality. We obtain five main results: 1) we provide a theoretical framework to explain the joint determination of human development and gender inequality; 2) we show how to use this framework to simulate the impact of exogenous shocks or policy changes; 3) we demonstrate that exogenous changes have a direct and a multiplier effect on human development and gender inequality; 4) we find that the distribution of obesity between the female and male populations represents a useful proxy variable for measuring gender equality at the country level; 5) finally, we use these results to integrate and develop existing knowledge on the 'ecological' approach to the overweight and obesity pandemic.
衡量性别不平等和妇女赋权对于理解性别差距的决定因素、评估政策以及监测各国进展至关重要。出于这一目的，在过去二十年中，研究主要致力于综合指数的开发。本文的目的是为当前关于衡量人类发展中的性别不平等的辩论引入一种新的跨学科视角。作为起点，我们构建了一个关于人类发展与性别不平等之间相互依存关系的简单宏观经济模型。然后，我们引入一个基于女性与男性体重指数之比的生物特征指标，以衡量国家层面的妇女赋权情况。最后，通过使用最新可得数据，我们考察了这一生物特征指标捕捉各国在实现性别平等方面表现的能力。我们得到五个主要结果：1）我们提供了一个理论框架来解释人类发展与性别不平等的共同决定因素；2）我们展示了如何使用这一框架来模拟外部冲击或政策变化的影响；3）我们证明外部变化对人类发展和性别不平等具有直接和乘数效应；4）我们发现肥胖在女性和男性人口之间的分布是衡量国家层面性别平等的一个有用的代理变量；5）最后，我们利用这些结果来整合和发展关于超重和肥胖流行的“生态”方法的现有知识。
