The use of entropy index for gender inequality analysis

Abstract

In the Millennium Declaration, the proportion (or ratio) of females to males in a given sector is used as the indicator for gender inequality. A critical limitation in the proportion (or ratio) statistic is that it does not include randomness in gender disparity over a period of time. It is well-known that randomness, which is a key ingredient in studying the behaviour of a system, is measured using entropy. This paper presents the use of entropy as an alternative measure for gender inequality in a sector of an economy.

KEYWORDS: Entropy; gender inequality; Millennium Declaration; randomness.