About the Project

Despite the progress made with regard to gender equality in recent decades, for many transition countries, including the three countries of  the South Caucasus, the economic position of women in the society remains highly vulnerable. High sectoral segregation of employment, prevalence of informal and vulnerable employment among women, unequal distribution of domestic unpaid work, high wage gap between men and women, barriers to political participation for women are among the main challenges facing regional economies, slowing down its potential economic development. These challenges underline the need for systematic and continuous monitoring of gender equality trends for countries in the region.

In response to the need for systemic research and trend monitoring, as well as data collection and consolidation, the ISET Policy Institute’s Gender Research Portal, and the Gender Equality Index for the South Caucasus (SCGEI) were created with the support of Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

The Gender Research Portal is a unique online platform which aims to consolidate the most important gender economics research on the South Caucasus, including ISET-PI original publications, as well as region-relevant gender research conducted by partner think-tanks and organizations.

The Gender Equality Index for the South Caucasus (SCGEI) is a tool to assess and monitor the gender equality progress in the South Caucasus region taken as a whole.  SCGEI is modeled after the Gender Equality Index developed by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) for the European Union. The SCGEI, however, strives to consider the regional context and set relevant performance benchmarks for the South Caucasus countries. SCGEI is a unique tool to provide stakeholders with relevant information and analysis to inform evidence-based policy actions, an objective way of measuring gender inequality, and a platform to help initiate dialogue and further analysis of the underlying issues and potential solutions.

Gender Research Portal is also home to Gender Equality Index for Region in Transition (RTGEI), which was created under the FROGEE initiative - the Forum for Research on Gender Economics - supported by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) and coordinated by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE). RTGEI was created by ISET researchers on the basis of the same EU methodology developed by EIGE, and it measures progress towards gender equality among 12 transition economies (all of which are former soviet countries) including the three countries of the South Caucasus: Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Two EU countries -Sweden and Greece – are also included as a comparator set in the Index.

Creating new, informative policy and research tools is a very important step for the region, because improving gender equity is not only a goal with an intrinsic value. More gender equity means more development. A substantial body of research highlights the linkages between gender equity and the achievement of other development goals, such as health, education, social and economic rights fulfillment, and even growth.