Bosnia and Herzegovina on the way to the Gender Equality Index

For the first time this year, Bosnia and Herzegovina has partially calculated the Gender Equality Index which is in accordance with the methodology developed by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). The Partial Index of Gender Equality for Bosnia and Herzegovina for 2022 was prepared by the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina in cooperation with the Agency for Gender Equality of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) within the framework of the IPA project "EU Support for Gender Equality", that is financed by the European Union and implemented by UN Women in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The index is a composite indicator consisting of six domains - Knowledge, Power, Work, Health, Time and Money and serves as a tool for measuring the state of gender equality in various spheres of public and private life in the EU member countries, as well as candidate countries and potential candidate countries.

The Partial Index for Bosnia and Herzegovina provides complete information for two domains - Knowledge and Power and data for three subdomains - Participation in the Work domain, Health status and Access to health care. The gender equality index shows points on a scale from 1 (complete inequality) to 100 (complete equality).

The Gender Equality Index for Bosnia and Herzegovina in the domain of Knowledge is 58.7, which is 4 points lower than the EU average, while in the domain Power BiH has 51.2 points, which is 3.8 points lower than the EU average. In the subdomain of participation within the domain of Work, BiH achieves 62.8 points compared to the EU average of 81.3. BiH achieves 89.8 points in the subdomain Health status, which is compared with 92.1 points in the EU, and 97.7 points in the subdomain Access to health care, which is compared with 98.2 in the EU.

"Due to the lack of relevant sources of data, primarily research and data classified by gender, it was not possible to calculate data for all six areas, so it was not possible to present the overall Gender Equality Index for Bosnia and Herzegovina. This represents a limitation in terms of comparing the Index for BiH with the EU average, individual EU member states and Western Balkan countries. However, this is the first, but big step on the way to the creation of a full Gender Equality Index that will enable Bosnia and Herzegovina to position itself on the European list of gender equality", said Vesna Ćužić, director of the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ćužić emphasized that the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina already produces, in all statistical areas, data from Gender Statistics to enable the competent legislative and executive bodies of administration of all levels of government in Bosnia and Herzegovina to fulfil their legal obligation in the coordination of the realization of program goals from Gender Action plan of Bosnia and Herzegovina and to ensure the implementation of international standards in the field of gender equality.

To create the partial Index for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the latest available data from relevant research were used, such as the Labor Force Survey in BiH, the Household Consumption Survey in BiH, data from regular demographic and education statistics, as well as data from the EIGE database on decision-makers. The data refer to 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2015 for the Health domain, depending on the availability of individual research.

Moving towards the Gender Equality Index - Bosnia and Herzegovina 2022