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 2020 Gender Index includes new indicators in the domains of education, power, labor market, gender segregation of professions, violence against women, media & culture, and Arab society. All the indicators comprising the Gender Index are available for further use via the digital platform of She Knows—the largest gender-sensitive database in Israel.

A special spotlight in the 2020 Gender Index illuminates the social and economic implications of COVID-19 on women and men in Israel. The trends of inequality found in the Index only intensified and deepened in the wake of the pandemic, as can be seen from the indicators included in the spotlight. COVID-19 has led to an increase in gender inequality and could have a severe impact on gender equality achievements of recent decades in education, employment, the division of invisible work between women and men, and the fight against gender-based violence.

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.