Evidence-based Measures of Empowerment for Research on Gender Equality (EMERGE)

Situation or Background
EMERGE is led by researchers at the Newcomb Institute at Tulane University and housed by the Center on Gender Equity and Health (GEH) at the University of California San Diego. In 2017, the UN Women reported that there are few to no measures of 80% of indicators aimed at Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender Equality and Empowering all Women and Girls. That same year, the EMERGE project was funded to address the gap by compiling and reviewing gender equality and empowerment (GE/E) measures used in health and development research.

Approach or Methodology
GEH researchers categorize measures by GE/E dimension and psychometric properties. Information is also included in terms of measure items, scoring procedure, sampled populations, and citation use. There are over 900 measures of gender empowerment free to use at emerge.ucsd.edu.

Impact and What We’re Learning
EMERGE also promotes the development and piloting of novel GE/E measures through partnerships with multi-disciplinary scientists and survey researchers globally.

For additional details, please visit emerge.ucsd.edu.