The OECD Development Centre’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) is a cross-country measure of discrimination against women in social institutions (formal and informal laws, social norms, and practices) across 179 countries.
The fifth edition of the SIGI
The SIGI was first launched in 2009, and then updated in 2012, 2014 and 2019. The fifth edition of the SIGI was launched on 16 March 2023 and the data is available here.
What are discriminatory social institutions?
Formal and informal laws, attitudes and practices that restrict women’s and girls’ access to rights, justice and empowerment opportunities. These are captured in a multi-faceted approach by SIGI’s variables that combine qualitative and quantitative data, taking into account both the de jure and de facto discrimination of social institutions, through information on laws, attitudes and practices. The variables span all stages of a woman’s life in order to show how discriminatory social institutions can interlock and bind them into cycles of poverty and disempowerment.
Discriminatory social institutions intersect across all stages of girls’ and women’s life, restricting their access to justice, rights and empowerment opportunities and undermining their agency and decision-making authority over their life choices. As underlying drivers of gender inequalities, discriminatory social institutions perpetuate gender gaps in development areas, such as education, employment and health, and hinder progress towards rights-based social transformation that benefits both women and men.
The four dimensions included in the SIGI
The SIGI covers four dimensions of discriminatory social institutions, spanning major socio-economic areas that affect women’s lives:
- Discrimination in the family;
- Restricted physical integrity;
- Restricted access to productive and financial resources; and
- Restricted civil liberties.
The SIGI’s variables quantify discriminatory social institutions such as unequal inheritance rights, child marriage, violence against women, and unequal land and property rights. Through its 179 country profiles, country classifications, unique database and its innovative simulator, the SIGI provides a strong evidence base to effectively address the discriminatory social institutions that hold back progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment and allows policy makers to scope out reform options and assess their likely effects on gender equality in social institutions.
Discrimination in the family
This sub-index captures social institutions that limit women’s decision-making power and undervalues their status in the household and the family. These formal and informal laws, social norms and practices co-exist in different types of legal systems including civil or common law, customary law, and religious laws and cover areas such as marriage, parental authority, household responsibilities, divorce and inheritance rights. Women’s decision-making power and status in the family determine both their ability to choose their own development pathways and the well-being of their families.
Restricted physical integrity
This sub-index captures social institutions that limit women’s and girls’ control over their bodies, that increase women’s vulnerability, and that normalise attitudes toward gender-based violence. This includes formal and informal laws, norms and practices that fail to protect women’s physical integrity and reproductive autonomy and that allow violence and female genital mutilation. Restricted physical integrity due to gender-based violence and to a lack of reproductive autonomy has serious impacts on health outcomes for women and their children and on economic and social development indicators by increasing women’s vulnerability to poverty.
Restricted access to productive and financial resources
This sub-index captures women’s restricted access to and control over critical productive and economic resources and assets. This includes discriminatory laws, which deny women’s rights to own, control or use land and non-land assets, to decent work and financial services; discriminatory customary practices in ownership or decision-making over land, household property and other assets; discriminatory practices or attitudes towards women’s formal work; and social norms dictating that women’s property ownership or access to credit should be mediated by men. Insecure or weak rights to land, non-land assets and financial services reduce income-generating opportunities for women, lower decision-making power for women within the household, increase food insecurity for women and their families, and make women and families more vulnerable to poverty.
Restricted civil liberties
This sub-index captures discriminatory laws and practices that restrict women’s access to public space, their political voice and their participation in all aspects of public life. This includes a lack of freedom of movement, the inability to vote or run for election, and negative attitudes toward women as public figures or as leaders. This sub-index highlights the importance of women’s participation in community actions and public decision making for a range of development outcomes such as governance, health and education.
