International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, Vol. 24, Issue 06, 2020 ISSN: 1475-7192 Received: 05 Feb 2020 | Revised: 21 Mar 2020 | Accepted: 05 Apr 2020 14187 Gender Inequality Index –Conceptual Analysis 1 Salini Remani ABSTRACT: Gender inequality remains a major barrier to human development. Girls and women have made major strides since 1990, but they have not yet gained gender equity. The disadvantages facing women and girls are a major source of inequality. All too often, women and girls are discriminated against in health, education, political representation, labour market, etc.—with negative consequences for development of their capabilities and their freedom of choice. Keywords: Gender inequality, negative consequences, capabilities I. Introduction Gender inequality remains a major barrier to human development. Girls and women have made major strides since 1990, but they have not yet gained gender equity. The disadvantages facing women and girls are a major source of inequality. All too often, women and girls are discriminated against in health, education, political representation, labour market, etc. — with negative consequences for development of their capabilities and their freedom of choice. The GII sheds new light on the position of women in 160 countries; it yields insights in gender gaps in major areas of human development. The component indicators highlight areas in need of critical policy intervention and it stimulates proactive thinking and public policy to overcome systematic disadvantages of women. II. Steps to calculating GII It shows the loss in potential human development due to inequality between female and male achievements in these dimensions. It ranges from 0, where women and men fare equally, to 1, where one gender fares as poorly as possible in all measured dimensions. The GII is computed using the association-sensitive inequality measure suggested by Seth (2009), which implies that the index is based on the general mean of general means of different orders—the first aggregation is by a geometric mean 1 Part time Reseach Scholar, Department of Sociology, Annamalai University