Developed by the United Nations system in 1995, Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) measures inequalities between men’s and women’s opportunities in a country. It is used in formulating and applying gender equality indicators in programmes. It provides a trends-tracking mechanism for comparison between countries, as well as for one country over time. GEM uses a three-step calculation process: 1)Percentages for females and males are calculated in each of three areas: Area 1 –number of parliamentary seats; Area 2A –legislators, senior officials and managers; Area 2B –professional and technical positions; Area 3 –estimated earned income (at purchasing power parity US$).2)For each area, the pair of percentages is combined into an “Equally Distributed Equivalent Percentage (EDEP),” the mean of the two components, as a means to “reward gender equality and penalize inequality.” 3)The GEM is the unweighted average of the three EDEPS.