Decomposing international gender test score differences

Table 3 Structure of the global gender gap index, 2012.

Subindex	Variable	Standard deviation	Weights
Economic participation and opportunity	Ratio of female to male labour force participation rate Wage equality ratio between women and men for similar work Estimated female to male earned income Female to male value for legislators, senior officials and managers Female to male value for professionals and technical workers	0.160 0.103 0.144 0.214 0.262	0.199 0.310 0.221 0.149 0.121
Educational attainment	Ratio of female to male literacy rate Ratio of female to male net primary level enrolment Ratio of female to male net secondary level enrolment Ratio of female to male net tertiary level enrolment	0.145 0.060 0.120 0.228	0.191 0.459 0.230 0.121
Health and survival	Female to male sex ratio at birth Female to male health life expectancy ratio	0.023 0.010	0.307 0.693
Political empowerment	Female to male seats in parliament ratio Female to male ministerial level ratio value Female to male ratio for number of years of a female head of state or government	0.166 0.208 0.116	0.310 0.247 0.443

The Global Gender Gap Index examines the gap between male and female in four fundamental categories (subindexes). The four subindexes are divided into 14 different variables to compose them. Weights are assigned for each variable according to the rule of same relative impact on the subindex. A variable with a small variability (or standard deviation) gets a larger weight within that subindex. All variables within each sub-index adds to one. GGI, 2012 is the average of the four subindices, ranging from 0 to 1 with a max value of 0.86 for Iceland and minimum value of 0.50 for Yemen