Q.What is the Gender Development Index (GDI)? How does it differ from the HDI?

GDI is the female-to-male HDI ratio — it exposes a gender gap that a single national HDI cannot show.

The Gender Development Index (GDI) uses the same three dimensions as the HDI — health, education, and standard of living — but computes a separate HDI for females and a separate HDI for males, then expresses GDI as:

The key difference from HDI is that HDI is a single, aggregate, gender-blind number for a country as a whole, whereas GDI is specifically designed to reveal the gap between how well women and men, respectively, are doing on the same three dimensions. A country's overall HDI can look respectable even while a considerable gender gap exists underneath it — GDI is the tool built specifically to surface that gap. …

Confusing GDI with the Gender Inequality Index (a separate, differently constructed UNDP measure not on this syllabus) — for this cha …