The Gender Index, an innovative and groundbreaking tool developed by WIPS – The Center for the Advancement of Women in the Public Sphere at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute – can provide broad-ranging evaluation of the inequality between men and women in Israel over time. The Index provides a detailed picture of the state of inequality in various areas of life – work, higher education, poverty, political and economic power, culture, violence, division of time, health, center-periphery relations, and Arab society – and makes it possible to assign an overall score to gender inequality in Israel on the basis of the aggregate of the factors that determine the status of women in society.

The new indicators added to the 2019 Index are: number of directors of government ministries, proportion of those involuntarily employed part-time, proportion of girls and boys receiving a high school diploma and having difficulty in math tests, number of those in need for social services, rate of participation in competitive sports, rate of women and men 20+ years of age who report experiencing sexual harassment, smoking behavior, and in the Arab society domain: involuntarily employed part-time, high school diploma, difficulty in math tests and smoking behavior.

Unlike other gender indexes, which compare the situation in Israel with that in other countries on the basis of a very small number of variables, the Gender Index is the first of its kind to examine gender inequality in a great variety of areas of life within the country itself. The Index makes it possible to examine directions of development in each area and in each component, while providing a comprehensive picture of the state of gender inequality in Israel. This is the Gender Index’s unique contribution and consequently it can serve as a guide for the country’s policy-makers and government and public bodies. The Gender Index also provides women’s organizations and other civil society groups with a platform for their activity toward changing gendered power relations and promoting gender justice in Israel.

The Gender Index in English can be downloaded in PDF form.