Gender empowerment measure in political achievement in selected developed and developing countries

Gender empowerment measure (GEM) is an assessment about inequalities between men's and women's opportunities in a country. The concept of empowerment can be explored through three interrelated dimensions: agency, resources and achievements. Agency refers to processes by which choices and abilities are made, resources are the medium through which agency is exercised and achievements are the outcomes of agency. Specifically, this paper seeks to examine an indicator of GEM specifically in the achievements in politics based on data from selected developed and developing countries.

A GEM indicator based on percentage of female parliamentarian taken from secondary sources such as United Nations Development Programme was used in the analysis of empowerment. The developed countries were represented by Norway, Australia and Japan; while the developing countries are Malaysia, the Philippines and China.

There are variations in the achievement indicator in terms of percentage of female parliamentarians in the two groups of countries. Reasons for variations are explained.

Although the analysis was limited to the secondary data of the selected countries only, the results may have valuable implications to women's studies and human resource development practitioners particularly at institutional and policy‐making levels of the respective countries.

GEM is a concept which is lacking in terms of definition. Thus, the study could contribute to a fuller understanding of one of the GEM indicators, inevitably towards constructive solutions to improve the participation of women in public function.