By Richard V. Reeves and Allen Dwoney, (AIBM)

Full Report here

Some abstracts below

Context

Measuring gender gaps is challenging. For one thing, distributions overlap even when there is a gap at the average. In the U.S., median female earnings are 18 percentage points lower than male earnings, but 40% of women earn more than the median man. Women live five years longer than men on average, but 36% of men live longer than the median woman. Analyzing gender gaps across different subgroups also complicates the picture: white women now earn considerably more than Black men, for example (at the average, of course).

Another potential difficulty is whether to focus only on gender gaps in one direction. The term “gender gap” is typically used to show inequalities where women are worse off than men. Many institutions and scholars focus on these gender gaps. But of course many gender gaps run the other way; these gaps are highlighted by our own work at the American Institute for Boys and Men. This is appropriate in either case; different institutions have different focuses.

A question arises, however, when it comes to indices of gender gaps, especially when these are used for comparative purposes. The most comprehensive existing indices do not measure gender gaps in both directions, instead reporting only the gaps where girls and women are behind boys and men. One example is the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report (GGGR) produced by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The GGGR is the most commonly cited measure of gender gaps across countries. It captures and synthesizes a vast amount of data, measuring gender gaps in 146 countries across four dimensions: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.

But it is asymmetric. The GGGR explicitly discounts gender gaps disfavoring boys and men. This is by design, since the goal of the report is to focus on the position of women, rather than on gender gaps as such. As the authors of the 2025 report state, the purpose is to track “women’s empowerment”, not to measure “gender equality”. Again, this choice makes sense from an advocacy standpoint. If the goal is to focus attention on the gender inequalities faced by women and girls, there is no need to consider the gender inequalities faced by men and boys; indeed that might even be considered a distraction.

But there are large gender gaps where boys and men lag behind women and girls, particularly in education and health, and especially in advanced economies. Indeed, the biggest gender gap in Iceland, a country which consistently ranks at the top of the GGGR table, is in higher education, where men lag women.

Way Forward: Measuring the Gender Gaps Better

There is a case for reports focused on gender gaps as they impact women and girls, and for ones concerned with boys and men. However, it is important to be clear about the purpose. If a report is about women’s empowerment, it would be more effective to make that clear than to label it as a “gender gap” report, which might give the impression that it takes account of gender gaps in both directions.

There is also a case for gender gap reports and indices that provide a more comprehensive overview of areas where men are behind women, as well as those where women are behind men. This would help policymakers who are concerned to address gender inequalities in both directions. We have made a partial attempt at such an approach here by revising the GGGR methodology, but there is scope for a much more robust approach.

“There is now wide consensus that gender inequalities are unfair, and lead to wasted human potential,” writes Francisco Ferreira, writing as Director for Development Policy in the World Bank’s Development Research Group and now Amartya Sen Chair in Inequality Studies at the London School of Economics, commenting on education gaps. “That remains true when the disadvantaged are boys, as well as girls.”

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