G7 Dashboard on Gender Gaps – a Guide

Gender equality is fundamental for the fulfilment of human rights and a top priority for G7 countries. Following the invitation from G7 Leaders at the Carbis Bay Summit in June 2021, the Gender Equality Advisory Council (GEAC), with support from the GEAC Secretariat in the UK Cabinet Office, has proposed a monitoring and accountability mechanism to monitor G7 commitments to achieve gender equality. The OECD was asked by G7 countries to develop a detailed proposal for the mechanism, this work was completed under the stewardship of the German G7 presidency in 2022.

The main objectives of the monitoring and accountability mechanism are to collate, analyse and provide existing robust, internationally comparable and transparent data on gender equality within the G7 and on the implementation of G7 Leaders’ commitments in the field of gender equality. The mechanism aims to inform and support G7 decision-making and action in the field of gender equality, including by Leaders, Sherpas and the GEAC. It also aims to promote mutual accountability across the G7 by clearly and, where appropriate, publicly communicating progress made by the G7 and its partners in promoting gender equality.

The G7 Dashboard on Gender Gaps was proposed as an annual mechanism to monitor gender equality and progress made in G7 countries. It aims to monitor progress on gender equality in G7 countries using a framework based on agreed gender equality indicators drawn from existing data sets. The dashboard is designed to offer an accessible visual picture of the country’s relative performance compared to G7 or OECD average outcomes over selected indicators of relevance for gender equality. The first 2022 Dashboard on Gender Gaps was delivered to the G7 prior to the G7 Elmau Summit in 2022 and included 12 indicators, one of which was split into two highly related sub-indicators. This 2025 G7 Dashboard on Gender Gaps adds 3 additional (sub)-indicators, “Share of women in STEM jobs (3c)”, “Share of Women CEOs (8b)” and “Knowledge of Menopause (11b)” to enrich information in the areas of Employment, Leadership and Health and Well-being.

Gender gaps persist in all areas of social and economic life. It is impossible to be comprehensive and capture the relevance of all gender issues in detail across areas with a small set of indicators. Instead, this dashboard of indicators aims to provide a summary view of gender gaps across a range of social-economic areas of foremost policy relevance across G7 countries, including education, employment and social security, entrepreneurship, leadership, intimate partner violence and health and well-being areas. In addition, the dashboard considers gender equality commitments in development finance.

To grasp the current gender disparities and underlying developments, this dashboard presents indicators on current gender gaps and/or the gender distribution of a specific outcome (such as the share of women in parliaments) for each G7 country and the EU-average and places these in the context of results for G7 countries and the OECD overall. Indicators are not supposed to rank, or directly compare country scores, but to provide international context to the indicators presented for any G7 country. To that end, for each indicator the country score is visualised together with the G7- and OECD-averages. In addition, where available, the presentation also includes a visual on recent change in the relevant outcomes for men and women, where possible and relevant.

The dashboard presents outcome levels and gender gaps, and where available it provides information on time trends, to highlight underlying dynamics and potential progress.

The indicators in the G7 Gender dashboard were chosen to provide an easily accessible “birds-eye view” of key indicators on gender gaps covering a range of social-economic areas of foremost policy relevance across G7 countries, including education, employment and social security, entrepreneurship, leadership, intimate partner violence, health and well-being and funds for development cooperation.

The selection of indicators was made on basis of policy priorities, data considerations and their illustrative power. For example, with regard to the area of Education, various indicators on educational attainment could have been added to illustrate the advantage young women have in OECD countries in this regard, such as the OECD PISA reading literacy scores. However, in addition to tertiary education attainment rates for men and women, the dashboard presents two indicators that cast light on the gender gap in favour of young men in terms of PISA mathematics scores and towards choosing more lucrative areas of study, such as in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). However, one of these indicators does not meet all “ideal” dashboard indicator data-quality aspects, as for example, with respect the availability of annual updates (see below).

The desire to include policy relevant indicators has to be regarded in view of various “quality aspects” across indicators, including:

• Indicators part of an existing international data set, as compiled on basis of directly comparable data collection methods. Good quality indicators adhere to the best practises of methodological and data development in the OECD, often in consultation and agreement with other international organisations and national statistical offices. In collecting and processing data, the OECD commits to the highest professional standards, and to adhere to international norms and standards, agreed by member countries.

• Data are available for all G7 countries. This is another important issue, which in practice affects the inclusion of many potential indicators as they may not be available for all G7 countries. For example, there may be directly comparable data available from the same source for EU-countries and/or the wider group of European G7 countries, but such information is not necessarily available for non-European countries. In some cases, a solution has been found by including broadly comparable data, which, while not from the same source, are deemed to sufficiently cover the same concepts and can serve to illustrate international differences (e.g. for women on boards).

• To illustrate past and future trends and change therein, in general data should be updated annually. This is another limitation as many indicators cannot be updated each year. For example, based on the cycle of OECD PISA evaluations, OECD PISA scores are only updated every 3 years, so that OECD PISA 2018 mathematics scores can be compared with OECD PISA 2015 mathematics scores. This indicator will therefore only be updated whenever new data become available.

• Where possible, linkages with other international indicator compilations are indicated in the specific indicator notes underneath the scoreboard (e.g. for SDG indicators).

In all, 12 indicators – of which 4 are disaggregated into highly related sub-indicators - were selected and Table 1 shows how they are assessed in view of the data-quality criteria outlined above. Most Indicators meet the quality characteristics in at least three dimensions or did so with adjustments to enhance comparability. The information on the share of men and women graduating with tertiary degrees, labour force participation, the share of self-employed men and women, and Aid towards gender equality meet all criteria. The indicators on OECD PISA mathematics scores, the share of women in single and/or lower houses of parliamentary and maternal mortality rates are also of high quality, but annual updates are not (yet) available. The indicators on the share of women among STEM graduates, part-time employment, the share of women in STEM jobs, the gender wage gap, the gender gap in pension income and the share of women on boards of large companies are of good quality, but there are some cross-country differences in measurement (see the notes to the indicators). The Leadership indicators are enriched by including information on the Share of Women who are Chief Executive Officers even though time trends are not (yet) available. Net childcare costs data are generally of high quality, but where local authorities regulate childcare fees, there are differences in fees within the country. Calculations on net childcare costs seek to approximate typical settings in each country, and childcare settings for a specific sub-national jurisdiction have been used as follows: Ontario for Canada; Berlin for Germany; Rome for Italy; England for the United Kingdom; and, Michigan for the United States. For France and Japan, national rules apply. The indicator on knowledge of menopause is based on a one-time survey, but its inclusion is to emphasize the importance of a life-course approach in measuring women’s right to maintain health, dignity and well-being that extends beyond the reproductive capacity.

A rigid adherence to the data-quality criteria would, however, miss out on two issues that are considered as paramount in the gender equality discussion: Violence against women and Unpaid housework.

• Many OECD countries want to address issues around Violence against women as a matter of policy priority. However, there is no agreed OECD-wide methodological framework for the measurement of violence against women. Therefore, what is presented here, are not official statistics derived from a common framework and data collection methodology, as for example the labour force statistics, but data published by the WHO for six G7 countries in 2021, while for one country results as found in UN Women databases. The indicator records whether the female respondent has been subjected to gender-based violence over the past 12 months and in their lifetime, as reported in different surveys across (and within) countries. Surveys were held at different times and may not be held with the same interval. Results are also not available every year.

• The sharing of Unpaid housework, including care activities, is another key issue in gender equality policy. As women often bear the brunt of unpaid housework, they are often not in the position to fulfil their labour market aspirations in full. There is no harmonised time use data set across G7 countries. Across existing surveys, there are measurement issues (e.g. as related to primary and secondary activities undertaken at any time), questions can be different, and time use surveys are expensive to hold so that many countries do not organize such a survey annually, but once every 5 or 10 years.

These two indicators have been included in the G7 Gender Dashboard because of their policy priority. However, in their current form, they have to be considered as a “placeholder”, highlighting the lack of quality cross-nationally comparable data. In the 2023 version of the dashboard, the indicator on the gap in unpaid housework has been supplemented with a sub-indicator on net childcare costs, the level of which is an important determinant of mothers’ labour market participation.

The G7 Gender Dashboard makes use of a uniform colouring scheme to distinguish at first glance between OECD averages, G7 averages and the respective G7 country/EU. Dark shades and light shades are used to distinguish between men and women. For all indicators, green refers to the G7 average, yellow to the OECD average, and blue to the respective G7 country or the EU. If outcomes for men and women are shown, dark shades refer to women, while light shades refer to men. Two different points in time can also be visualized by dark and light shades, where needed.

As a general rule the G7 Gender Dashboard shows time trends wherever possible in order to convey information on the progress made in the relevant area – particularly since the last iteration of the dashboard, but also over a longer time span - while maintaining clear and intuitive visuals. Line graphs can be used for this purpose, as for example for the share of women in part-time employment (Indicator 3B).

Often the results are presented as bar-charts: the Share of women among tertiary graduates in STEM fields and the share of women graduating from tertiary degrees (Indicator 2a and 2), the Share of women in STEM Jobs, the Gender wage and pension income gaps (Indicators 3c, 4 and 6), Net childcare costs (Indicator 5B), Women on boards and Share of Women CEOs (Indicator 8a and 8b), Violence against women (indicator 10),Maternal mortality and Knowledge of Menopause (Indicator 11a and 11b). Stacked-bar charts were used for the indicators on Entrepreneurship and Aid targeted at gender equality (Indicators 7 and 12). The use of (stacked) bar charts was chosen to facilitate the comparison of results per country with G7 and OECD averages.

There are exceptions to the (stacked) bar-charts presentation. The visuals on OECD PISA mathematics scores and the labour force participation rate (Indicators 1 and 3a) present scores for boys and girls and men and women for three different years. The Share of women in part-time employment (indicator 3b) is a line chart with observations for 10 years. The visual for the indicator on the gender gap in unpaid housework (Indicator 5), does not only illustrate the gender gap but also gives an indication of the time men and women spend on unpaid housework on a daily basis. For the indicator parliamentary representation (Indicator 9), the visual is a half-circle which, in some countries, reflect the shape of the parliamentary chamber.

Throughout, the charts include the value of the country result and the G7 and OECD averages. For some years, data used to calculate the averages for the G7, the OECD and the EU are missing for some countries. In these cases, the presented averages include the most recent year for these countries to ensure that all averages represent as many countries as possible. Occasionally, this may therefore differ from averages presented in the OECD databases, which in most cases presents averages for all available countries in a given year.