The GII is an inequality index. It shows the loss in potential human development due to disparity between female and male achievements in three dimensions: reproductive health, empowerment and the labour market. Overall, the GII reflects how women are disadvantaged in these dimensions.

The GII ranges between 0 and 1. Higher GII values indicate higher inequalities between women and men and thus higher loss to human development. There is no country with perfect gender equality. All countries suffer some loss in achievements in key aspects of human development when gender inequality is taken into account. The GII is similar in method to the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI)—see Technical Note 4 for details. It can be interpreted as a combined loss to achievements in reproductive health, empowerment and labour market participation due to gender inequalities. Since the GII includes different dimensions than the HDI, it cannot be interpreted as a loss in HDI itself. For more details, please refer to the discussions in this paper http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/measuring-key-disparities-human-development and Technical Note 4 for the current methodology.