History
In 1995 in the Human Development Report commissioned by the United Nations Development Program set-out to create two new measurement indices for measuring development. Their aim was to add to the Human Development Index by way of including a gender dimension in the measure. They were created in order to rival the traditional income-focused measures of development such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Gross National Product (GNP). Haq, the first director of the Human Development Report Office, established several principles for the newly emerging measure including provisions that it had to be simple, had to be represented as a single number, had to be easily calculated, had to yield numbers that were internationally comparable, had to use numbers available on a yearly basis and had to use numbers that were easily interpretable. The resulting measures that were created were the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). The GEM, the more specialized of the two, is focused on indicating the relative empowerment of women in a given country.
Read more about this topic: Gender Empowerment Measure
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)