About the 2026 Equal Measures Gender Equality Index

What is the 2026 Equal Measures Gender Equality Index?

The 2026 Equal Measures Gender Equality Index is a global tool for measuring how close countries are to key gender equality targets. It covers 130 countries, representing approximately 90 per cent of the world’s women and girls, and compares performance in 2020 and 2025. The Index brings together 27 indicators across five dimensions: Health and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights; Safety and Security; Economic Opportunity and Power; Civic Space and Leadership; and the Enabling Environment for Gender Equality.

Each indicator is converted to a 0–100 score, where 100 means the relevant target has been met. The Index therefore measures distance to agreed aspirations, rather than simply rewarding the best-performing country. It combines outcomes, laws and policies, women’s views and experiences, and wider institutional conditions. Its purpose is to help advocates, policymakers, researchers and the media see where progress is happening, where it is stalling or reversing, and which areas need greater attention.

What dimensions of gender equality does the Index measure?

The Index measures five connected dimensions of gender equality. Health and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights covers maternal mortality, adolescent births, family planning, abortion laws and women’s satisfaction with healthcare and water quality. Safety and Security covers child marriage, female homicide, women’s safety at night, access to justice and climate vulnerability. Economic Opportunity and Power covers girls’ schooling, vulnerable work, parenting and care laws, financial inclusion and internet use. Civic Space and Leadership covers women in parliament, ministerial positions and climate decision-making, as well as freedom of expression, personal freedom and rights, and sexual orientation and gender identity rights. The Enabling Environment for Gender Equality covers public transport, statistical data coverage, risk of debt crisis, government social spending and equal access to public services.

Together, the five dimensions examine both what women and girls experience and the systems that shape those experiences. They are intended to show that progress in one area cannot fully compensate for serious gaps in another.

How is the Index calculated?

The Index is calculated in two main stages. First, each of the 27 indicators are normalised, or placed on the same scale of 0–100 where 0 is the lowest score and 100 is the highest. A set of targets are used to define the top score. Some indicators are already percentages, some require us to reverse the direction of the indicator, some use fixed lower and upper bounds, and three leadership indicators use a target where parity falls within a range of 45–55 per cent. Extreme values are treated through winsorisation following JRC guidance for identifying problematic levels of skewness and kurtosis.

Second, the indicator scores are aggregated. This means they are averaged arithmetically within each of the five dimensions. The five dimension scores are then combined using a geometric mean, with each dimension weighted equally. The geometric mean reduces the extent to which very strong performance in one dimension can compensate for weak performance in another. The same framework is applied to 2020 and 2025, allowing direct comparison across the two reference years.

What makes the 2026 Equal Measures Gender Equality Index different?

The 2026 Equal Measures Gender Equality Index was designed with and for gender equality advocates, as a practical tool for accountability and influencing. It complements existing global gender equality indices by asking a particular set of questions: how close are countries to key gender equality targets? Are laws, institutions and public systems enabling progress? And are women and girls gaining power and voice as well as opportunities and access to services?

The Index scores countries against fixed gender equality targets, rather than focusing only on gaps between women and men or comparing countries with the current best performer. It also brings together different kinds of evidence, including outcomes, laws and policies, women’s views and experiences, and wider institutional and fiscal conditions.

This gives greater visibility to issues that can be less prominent in other global measures, including civic space, political voice, access to justice, public services, debt vulnerability, climate vulnerability, gender data systems, and sexual orientation and gender identity rights.

The Index is also designed to make progress and setbacks visible. Using the same framework for 2020 and 2025, it tracks changes in every country, dimension and indicator, helping users see not only where countries stand, but the direction in which they are moving.

No single index can capture every aspect of gender equality, and existing measures often focus on gaps between women and men, a small set of human-development outcomes, or a specific area such as peace and security. The Equal Measures Index aims to add a complementary, advocate-informed perspective to the wider evidence base.

How is the 2026 Index different from previous Equal Measures indices?

Earlier editions assessed gender equality across 14 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 2026 Index uses many of the same indicators, but with a reorganised framework: 27 indicators grouped into five policy-oriented dimensions. The redesign retains the commitment to the vision of the SDGs and other international rights frameworks but organises the evidence around issues that advocates can more readily use, including health and SRHR, safety and security, economic power, civic space and leadership, and the enabling environment for gender equality.

The smaller indicator set (27 indicators in the 2026 Index, as compared with 56 indicators in the 2024 Index) prioritises relevance, statistical quality, timeliness, regular updating and broad country coverage. It also makes each of the five dimensions more prominent (compared to 14 SDG domains) in the overall score. The 2026 Index combines outcomes with laws, women’s perceptions and institutional conditions, and gives greater visibility to areas that are often absent from global indices, particularly civic freedoms, access to justice and the systems that resource and sustain equality. The underlying construction remains familiar: indicators are normalised to a 0–100 scale, averaged within dimensions, and the five dimensions are combined using a geometric mean.

Is the 2026 Equal Measures Index comparable with previous indices?

The 2026 scores cannot be compared directly with the published scores or rankings from the 2019, 2022 or 2024 Index editions. The 2026 Index has a substantially different structure, with 27 indicators across five dimensions rather than 56 indicators across 14 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-aligned goals. Changes in indicator selection, grouping and weighting mean that differences in scores between Index editions could reflect changes in methodology rather than real-world change.

However, the 2026 Index is designed to directly compare scores across a baseline (2020) and most recent year available (2025). The same indicator framework and scoring approach are applied to both years, allowing users to assess whether a country’s score improved, stagnated or declined over the period.

How should Index scores be interpreted (i.e. what do the scores mean)?

Scores range from 0 to 100. A higher score means a country is closer to meeting the gender equality target for a particular indicator. A score of 100 means the target has been achieved. It does not simply mean that a country is the highest performer in the dataset.

For example, the indicator for girls’ expected years of schooling scores 100 when girls can expect, on average, 17 years or more of schooling. For representation in parliament and among government ministers, a score of 100 reflects gender parity, defined as women holding between 45 and 55 per cent of seats or positions.

At the Dimension level, a higher score indicates that a country is closer to meeting the targets across the five or six indicators within that dimension. At the overall Index level, a higher score indicates that a country is closer to achieving gender equality when averaged across the five Dimensions in the Index.

Overall scores are grouped into a performance scale:

Very Good, 85 or more points; Good, 75–84.9; Fair, 65–74.9; Poor, 55–64.9; and Very Poor, less than 55 points. The Index also classifies change from 2020 to 2025: Fast progress, an increase of at least 5 points; Some progress, more than 1 but less than 5 points; Stagnation, between -1 and +1 points; and decline, where a score has fallen by 1 point or more.

What can the Index tell us, and what can’t it tell us?

The Index can show how countries compare on a systematic set of gender equality measures, how far they are from defined targets, which dimensions drive their overall results, and whether scores improved, stagnated or declined between 2020 and 2025. It can identify broad patterns, warning signs and areas that merit closer investigation. Because it combines outcomes, laws, women’s views and institutional conditions, it can also reveal diverse perspectives that a single statistic might miss.

The Index cannot explain every cause of change, capture every aspect of gender equality, or represent all experiences within a country. National averages can conceal differences by income, race, ethnicity, disability, age, location, migration status, sexuality and other characteristics. Some indicators are modelled, expert-coded or perception-based, while missing data may introduce uncertainty. The Index should therefore be used as a way to surface persistent and emerging issues, not as a tool for thorough diagnosis. It is most powerful when combined with national and subnational data, qualitative evidence and on-the-ground knowledge of affected communities.

What countries are included in the Index?

The Index includes 130 countries with sufficient comparable data across all five dimensions for the 2020 and 2025 reference years. Together, they represent approximately 90 per cent of the world’s women and girls. The full country list is presented in the report’s country score and ranking table and through the Explore the Data visualisations.

Country inclusion is determined by the regular reporting of comparable and timely data that underlies the Index. A country must have enough data to calculate every dimension, with at least four of five indicators or five of six indicators available within the relevant dimension. Publishing a score based on too few observations, or relying too heavily on estimates, could make a country appear stronger or weaker than the available evidence supports.

To balance reliability with country inclusion, the Index uses minimum coverage thresholds and limited imputation. All five dimension scores must be available. Within a dimension, a country needs data for at least four of five indicators or five of six indicators. Where appropriate, a missing value may be filled using the most recent available year, a comparable alternative source, information from similar countries or a regional average.

For more information, please see our Methodology Paper

Methodology Paper >

How much of the world’s women and girls’ does the Index cover?

The 130 countries included in the 2026 Index represent approximately 90 per cent of the world’s women and girls. This gives the Index broad global reach across regions and national income groups, while still applying minimum data-quality and coverage rules.

The remaining population is not absent because their experiences matter less. In many excluded countries, globally comparable data are incomplete, outdated or unavailable for one or more dimensions. This limitation is itself important: gaps in gender data can make women’s and girls’ lives less visible in global monitoring and accountability.

The population coverage figure refers to women and girls living in the included countries, not to a claim that every group or experience within those countries is fully represented by the 27 indicators. National averages do not capture intersectional or subnational differences, so the Index should be used alongside evidence that captures the situation of various population groups.

Can I compare countries, regions, and dimensions of the Index?

Yes, with care.

Comparisons are most meaningful when users look at the size of score differences, not only rank order, and consider countries’ different contexts and starting points. A lower-income country making rapid progress may still have a much lower absolute score than a high-income country that has stagnated. Similarly, dimensions contain different indicators and should be compared as broad policy areas rather than as perfectly equivalent constructs.

The Index allows benchmarking across countries and over time. Small score gaps may be affected by measurement uncertainty, modelling, expert coding or missing-data treatment. However, it does not establish causation or explain every difference. Country comparisons should therefore be paired with indicator-level and national evidence.

Can countries have similar scores but very different rankings?

Countries with very similar scores can receive different ranks because rankings impose an order even when the underlying differences are small. The country table ranks countries using unrounded 2025 scores, while published scores may be displayed to one decimal place. Two countries can therefore appear to have the same score after rounding but occupy different positions.

Ranks are also sensitive to clustering. Where many countries have scores within a narrow range, a small score change may move a country several places without representing a large substantive change. Conversely, a meaningful score improvement may produce little movement if neighbouring countries improve at a similar pace.

For these reasons, users should prioritise scores, score categories, changes over time and indicator profiles over small differences in rank. Ranking is a useful communication tool, but it should not be interpreted as a precise measure of distance between neighbouring countries.

Rankings are included because many users seek a clear entry point into communicating the data, but they are only one part of the Index results. Rankings show a country’s relative position among the 130 countries included in the Index and can help attract attention, encourage public debate, and make broad comparisons accessible.

Where does the data come from?

The Index draws on established international, public-interest and research sources selected for relevance, rigour, timeliness, quality and country coverage. Sources include WHO, UN Population Division, UNODC, UNDP and UNESCO UIS, the International Labour Organisation, International Telecommunication Union, Inter-Parliamentary Union, the World Bank and Women, Business and the Law, V-Dem, Freedom House, ILGA World, WEDO’s Gender Climate Tracker, the Gallup World Poll, Open Data Watch, Debt Justice, Oxfam and Development Finance International, OECD databases and the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative.

The source differs by indicator because no single organisation produces all the evidence needed. The Index uses administrative data, survey data, modelled estimates, legal coding, expert assessments, and composite measures. Indicator definitions, sources,and normalisation rules are listed in the methodology and report annex. This diversity broadens the picture, but each source has limitations, which users should consider when interpreting small differences or trends.

Does the Index include data beyond the gender binary?

Only partially. Most globally comparable gender statistics are collected using binary sex categories and are designed to measure the status, outcomes and rights of women and girls. To remain consistent with the underlying data sources, the Index primarily reflects the situation of women and girls and presents results at the national level, capturing average outcomes rather than the full diversity of lived experiences.

One indicator, within Civic Space and Leadership, explicitly covers Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Rights using ILGA World data. It assesses the extent to which laws criminalise, protect or recognise sexual orientation, gender identity and same-sex relationships. This helps capture rights that are often absent from global gender equality measures, but one legal indicator cannot represent the full lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ people.

The Index does not provide comprehensive, separately disaggregated measures of trans, non-binary and other gender-diverse people’s experiences. Comparable global data on health, violence, education, work, political participation and public services remain limited. This is an important data gap, not evidence that these experiences are less relevant. The Index should be used alongside evidence produced by LGBTQIA+ organisations, national surveys, and qualitative research.

Why does the Index combine laws, policies, perceptions and other types of data?

Gender equality is shaped by both lived outcomes and the laws, services, institutions, and social conditions that make those outcomes possible. Relying on one type of data can produce a partial or misleading picture. A country may have progressive laws but weak implementation, while women’s perceptions may reveal insecurity or poor services that administrative records miss.

The Index therefore combines different types of evidence. Laws and policies include abortion laws, parenting and care protections, and sexual orientation and gender identity rights. Outcomes include maternal mortality, adolescent birth rates, girls’ schooling, female homicide and women’s internet use. Women’s perceptions include satisfaction with healthcare, water and public transport, and whether women feel safe walking alone at night. Institutional and enabling conditions include access to justice, public services, government social spending, debt risk, and statistical data coverage.

These measures draw on administrative statistics, modelled estimates, surveys, legal coding, expert assessments, and institutional data. The diversity of sources is a strength because it reflects the multidimensional nature of gender equality, but it also requires careful interpretation.

How were advocates involved in designing the Index?

The redesign was informed by gender equality advocates and civil society partners. In 2025, Equal Measures surveyed more than 400 advocates worldwide and also engaged more than 100 policymakers and policy influencers through surveys and key informant interviews. Data collected from advocates highlighted their key priorities, including: violence against women, sexual and reproductive health and rights, economic empowerment, leadership and political participation, rights and justice, social protection, gender data and financing. These concerns helped shape the five-dimension structure and the selection of policy-relevant indicators.

Equal Measures partners and the organisation’s Advisory Body also provided strategic insight, challenge and feedback. The aim was to build an accountability tool that movements can use in campaigns, policy engagement and public communication. Statistical feasibility still constrained what could be included: some high-priority issues lack sufficiently comparable global data. The final framework therefore reflects both advocate priorities and the realities of data coverage and quality.

Why are some gender equality issues not included in the Index?

Some important issues are excluded because no measure currently offers sufficient global coverage, comparability, timeliness or consistency for both 2020 and 2025. Examples include unpaid care work, the gender pay gap, asset and land ownership, technology-facilitated violence, femicide, conflict-related sexual violence, violence and harassment in politics, feminist mobilisation, and many intersectional experiences. Their absence does not mean they are unimportant. In several cases, they are among the most important issues but the least measurable globally. Equal Measures also treats data gaps as a finding in themselves: what is not measured can reveal whose experiences and priorities remain invisible within global statistical systems.

Why are all dimensions weighted equally?

Each of the five dimensions contributes 20 per cent of the overall Index score. Equal weighting is transparent, easy to communicate and avoids imposing a contested hierarchy across 130 diverse national contexts.

Equal weights are a methodological choice, not a claim of perfect neutrality. Indicators in five-indicator dimensions have a slightly larger effective weight than those in six-indicator dimensions, and correlated indicators may exert more influence than their nominal weight suggests.

Alternative approaches, such as expert, participatory or statistical weighting, have advantages but also introduce subjectivity or make weights reflect data correlations rather than social importance. The methodology favours a simple, explainable structure and tests robustness to methodological choices.

Has the methodology been externally reviewed?

The methodology builds on the approach used by Equal Measures indices released in 2019, 2022 and 2024, that followed best practices in composite indicator construction. The approach was adjusted and improved using the recommendations from independent audits conducted by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre Competence Centre on Composite Indicators and Scoreboards. The audits made recommendations on indicator coverage, missing data, outliers, aggregation, and robustness. The 2026 redesign responds to this larger body of guidance, in addition to being the focus of a COIN day review in June 2026.

How can I provide feedback on the Index?

Feedback can be sent to Equal Measures at info@equalmeasures2030.org. Users can share comments on the framework, indicator choices, data quality, interpretation, accessibility and how the Index is being used in advocacy, policy, research or media work. Feedback from advocates and partners has shaped previous editions and was central to the 2026 redesign.

How often will the Index be updated?

Equal Measures published a global gender equality Index in 2019, 2022, 2024 and now in 2026 (it is important to note that these indices are not comparable with each other). It is our ambition to continue to publish a comprehensive tracker of rights and opportunities for women, girls and gender-diverse people as often as possible into the future. We have aimed to update the Index around every two years. The Index is not published annually because the underlying data sources are not updated regularly enough to support annual updates. Publishing the Index requires resources, and we would welcome support to ensure the Index can continue to be produced. If you can support our efforts, please donate to Equal Measures or contact us to discuss partnering

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