The purpose of the present paper is to formulate a composite
index of the status of women and to rank both developed and developing
countries on the basis of that index. This index is presented as an
alternative or complement to the current status of women index,
published by the Population Crisis Committee (PCC) and used by the World
Bank and the United Nations, which focuses on indicators measuring
health, education, employment, marriage and childbearing, and social
equality. The paper argues that these indicators have a poverty-bias and
measure women's status in terms of structural change rather than in
terms of their welfare vis-ii-vis men. The PCC index is also based on
the implicit assumption that women's status in developing countries
ought to be defined in a similar way as in developed countries, thus
including primarily only those indicators which are more relevant for
developed countries. To remedy these defects, the paper presents an
alternative composite index, hereafter labelled the Alternative
Composite (AC) index, based on many more indicators reflecting women's
issues in both developed and developing countries. The results of the
statistical analysis show that the ranking of countries based on the AC
index is significantly different from the PCC index.
