Interval-Based Gender Diversity Composite Indicators in Gender Studies

This study aims to construct an original interval-based composite indicator of the gender diversity considering different assumptions on the development of the composite indicator. In this way the composite indicator built can be considered more robust than a classical version of the same indicator. Composite indicators are a very important tool to analyse and evaluate policies and sectors. The problem in using composite indicators is that the results which can be obtained can be dependent to the assumptions given on their construction. In this sense we have already considered an initial approach in the construction of composite indicator (Paoloni et al. (2016) Towards a new architecture of knowledge: Big data, culture and creativity. Proceedings, 15–17 June 2016 Dresden Germany (pp. 1944–1958)). We take into account different assumptions, and we are able to construct an interval-based composite indicator. In this way we can consider a value which is useful for the comparison (the chosen assumption), a centre of the composite indicator, and the range which is related to the variability due to the different assumptions. Our work contributes to the existing literature on composite indicators in gender studies. In particular our work is addressed on providing a composite indicator of gender diversity for the listed European companies. This study is useful to policy purposes because it helps the process of decision-making which can be based on the different rankings which are derived from the interval-based composite indicators.