MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 28 of 100

Correct — option (4), All of the above. This question prints only three statements, labelled (a), (b) and (c), and every one of them is true of the Gender Inequality Index, so the collective option is the answer. Begin with what the index is. The Gender Inequality Index was introduced by the United Nations Development Programme in the Human Development Report of 2010 and measures the loss in achievement within a country that is due to inequality between women and men. It is built on three dimensions. The first is reproductive health, measured by the maternal mortality ratio and the adolescent birth rate. The second is empowerment, measured by the share of parliamentary seats held by each sex and by the proportion of adult women and men with at least some secondary education. The third is the labour market, measured by the labour force participation rate of women and of men. Statement (a) describes exactly those three areas — health, empowerment and the labour market — and is therefore correct. Statement (c) names one of the two empowerment indicators, the share of parliamentary seats held by each gender, and correctly says that the dimension is partly measured by it; the qualification partly is precise, since secondary education attainment is the other half of that dimension. Statement (b) is the one worth dwelling on, because it concerns the direction in which the index runs and that is where most candidates go wrong. The Gender Inequality Index is a measure of inequality, not of achievement, so its value rises as the gap between women and men widens: zero would mean that women and men fare equally on every indicator, and one would mean that women fare as badly as possible on all of them. A higher value therefore does indicate worse achievements, exactly as statement (b) says. This is the opposite of the convention followed by the Human Development Index, which is published in the same report and in which a higher value is better, and the reversal is deliberate rather than careless: the two indices are answering different questions, one asking how well a country does and the other asking how much of that performance is lost to inequality between the sexes. With all three printed statements correct, no option that excludes any of them can stand, and option (4) is the answer.

• (1)Only (a) and (b) — This option accepts (a) and (b) but rejects (c), the statement that the empowerment dimension is partly measured by the share of parliamentary seats held by each gender. The rejection is unsustainable, because parliamentary representation is one of the two indicators that make up the empowerment dimension of the index, the other being the share of adult women and men with at least some secondary education. A candidate may hesitate over this statement for a reasonable-sounding reason — that political representation feels like a separate matter from health or employment and might belong to a different index — and the hesitation is a memory of the Gender Empowerment Measure, an earlier and separate UNDP index which the Gender Inequality Index replaced in 2010 and which also used parliamentary seats. The indicator survived the replacement; it is inside the current index, and statement (c) is correct.
• (2)Only (b) — This option accepts only statement (b), that higher values indicate worse achievements, and rejects both the description of the three dimensions and the reference to parliamentary seats. It is an odd combination to arrive at deliberately, and in practice it is chosen by a candidate who is confident about the direction of the index and confident about nothing else, so it functions as a test of how far partial knowledge is allowed to shrink an answer. The reasoning to resist is that a statement one cannot personally confirm should be treated as false. Statement (a) simply names the index's three dimensions, and statement (c) names one of its indicators; neither contains a distortion, an incorrect number or an overstatement of scope, and both would have to be false for this option to be right.
• (3)None of the above — This option asserts that none of the three printed statements applies to the Gender Inequality Index, which cannot be reconciled with the index as it is actually constructed: statement (a) names its three dimensions, statement (b) states the direction in which it runs, and statement (c) names one of its two empowerment indicators. An option of this shape exists to catch two kinds of reader — one who cannot recall the index at all and prefers a blanket rejection to a guess, and one who has spotted a real difficulty elsewhere and over-generalises from it. There is a printing point worth noting alongside it. This paper does not place its escape options where a reader expects them: here none of the above is printed at (3) and all of the above at (4), while in the question immediately before this one the order is reversed. Position carries no information; only the statements do.

The Gender Inequality Index was introduced in the Human Development Report of 2010 to replace two earlier and widely criticised measures, the Gender-related Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure. Its purpose is different from that of the Human Development Index and the difference explains almost everything about how it behaves. The Human Development Index asks how far a country has come on health, education and income, and a higher score is a better score. The Gender Inequality Index asks how much of a country's potential achievement is lost because women and men fare unequally, and a higher score is a worse score, with zero representing complete equality across its indicators and one representing the worst possible position for women on all of them. Its three dimensions are reproductive health, measured by the maternal mortality ratio and the adolescent birth rate; empowerment, measured by the share of parliamentary seats held by each sex and by the share of adults of each sex with at least some secondary education; and the labour market, measured by the labour force participation rate of women and of men. Two features of the construction are worth knowing because questions are built on them. The reproductive health dimension has no male counterpart — there is no male maternal mortality — so the index cannot be read as a simple ratio of female to male outcomes across all six indicators, and a country cannot score zero unless maternal mortality and adolescent births are themselves at their best possible values. And the index deliberately omits income, unlike the Human Development Index, partly because the earned income data required for a reliable gendered comparison is weak in many countries. India's position on the index is regularly reported in the Human Development Report and is a standard current affairs item, but candidates should distinguish it carefully from the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index, which is a different measure produced by a different body on a different scale and in which a higher score is better.

Gender indices are among the most frequently confused topics in the whole economy and social development syllabus, because several bodies publish similar-sounding measures on incompatible scales. The Gender Inequality Index and the Gender Development Index come from the United Nations Development Programme, the Global Gender Gap Index comes from the World Economic Forum, and each has its own indicators, its own direction and its own ranking of countries. An examiner who wants a hard question needs only to attach one index's feature to another index's name. The defence is a table with one row per index and columns for the publishing body, the year of introduction, the dimensions, the indicators and, most importantly, the direction in which the value runs. That last column is the one this question turns on, and it is the one most candidates never write down. There is also a structural point specific to this paper. Statement lists here are frequently shorter than four items — seventeen questions in the 2022 paper print fewer than four, and this one prints three — so a candidate who has trained on four-statement questions must read the labels rather than assume them. Arguing about a statement (d) that was never printed is a certain way to waste time and, worse, to talk oneself out of a correct collective option.

• The Gender Inequality Index was introduced by the United Nations Development Programme in the Human Development Report of 2010, replacing the earlier Gender-related Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure.
• It has three dimensions: reproductive health, measured by the maternal mortality ratio and the adolescent birth rate; empowerment, measured by the share of parliamentary seats held by each sex and by the share of adults of each sex with at least some secondary education; and the labour market, measured by labour force participation rates.
• The index runs from zero to one and a higher value means greater inequality and therefore worse achievement, which is the reverse of the Human Development Index published in the same report, where a higher value is better.
• The reproductive health dimension has no male counterpart, since there is no male equivalent of maternal mortality, so the index cannot be read as a simple female to male ratio across all its indicators.
• The Gender Inequality Index is distinct from the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index, which is produced by a different body on a different scale and in which a higher score indicates a better position.

• Assuming that a higher value on any development index is better, when the Gender Inequality Index runs the other way and a rise in it signals a widening gap between women and men
• Confusing the Gender Inequality Index with the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index, which is a different measure on a different scale from a different publisher
• Reasoning about a statement (d) in a question that prints only three statements, which this paper does on eighteen of its questions
• Treating a statement one cannot personally verify as false, which is how a candidate talks himself down from a correct collective option to a partial one

Gender indices reach MPSC papers in three shapes: identify the publishing body, identify the components, and interpret the direction or a rank. The component question is the most common and is usually set as a list of statements, sometimes with one indicator borrowed from a neighbouring index to see whether the candidate can tell them apart. The direction question, which is what statement (b) here amounts to, is less common but far more discriminating, because it cannot be answered by recognition and requires the candidate to know what the index is actually measuring. Rank and current-affairs questions attach to whichever report was published shortly before the examination, so they are worth revising from the most recent Human Development Report available on the exam date rather than from a general textbook. As with all index questions, the highest return comes from a single table covering publisher, year, dimensions, indicators and direction.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Gender Inequality Index published by the UNDP, what does a value closer to one signify, and how does this compare with the Human Development Index ?

  • (a)Greater equality between women and men, as in the HDI where a higher value is better
  • (b)Greater inequality and therefore worse achievement, unlike the HDI where a higher value is better
  • (c)A larger population covered by the index, with no bearing on performance
  • (d)A higher level of women's income, measured in purchasing power parity terms

  Answer(b) Greater inequality and therefore worse achievement, unlike the HDI where a higher value is better. The Gender Inequality Index measures the achievement a country loses because women and men fare unequally, so zero would mean complete equality across its indicators and one would mean the worst possible position for women on all of them. The reversal relative to the Human Development Index, which appears in the same report, is deliberate: the two indices answer different questions and are not on a common scale.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which pair of indicators constitutes the empowerment dimension of the Gender Inequality Index ?

  • (a)The maternal mortality ratio and the adolescent birth rate
  • (b)The labour force participation rates of women and of men
  • (c)The share of parliamentary seats held by each sex, and the share of adults of each sex with at least some secondary education
  • (d)Female literacy and the share of women in managerial and technical positions

  Answer(c) The share of parliamentary seats held by each sex, and the share of adults of each sex with at least some secondary education. The first option gives the two indicators of the reproductive health dimension and the second gives the labour market dimension, so all three dimensions of the index appear among the choices. The fourth option is drawn from the earlier Gender Empowerment Measure, which the Gender Inequality Index replaced in 2010, and its inclusion is the sort of borrowing an examiner uses to test whether the two are being kept apart.