Author: Amber L. Iler, Research Scientist, ISCIENCES, L.L.C
International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated each year on March 8th and is a global day to celebrate the economic, political and social achievements of women.[1] In honor of IWD, we thought what better way to celebrate this at ISciences than to explore how the TerraViva! Global Data Viewer (GDV) can be used to examine the economic, political, and social status of women around the world?
Looking at gender issues in TerraViva can be done in several ways, but using the “Plot GeoData” tools gives us access to a number of geostatistical databases, including several that examine statistics geospatially by gender. For this chapter in our novice’s journey, and in honor of IWD, we have selected the Gender Empowerment Index (GEI) dataset as a baseline for the steps we will take below. Though there are numerous ways the Plot GeoData tools can be used to explore gender empowerment issues, this post will concentrate on the “Create a dynamic map,” “Create a data table,” “Create a scatter plot,” and “Create a histogram” tools.
The Gender Empowerment Index
The global GEI data available from the World Resources Institute (WRI) is a composite that measures women’s opportunities by country. From the metadata for this data set, “The index is calculated based on three main areas; political participation and decision-making power, economic participation and decision-making power, and power over economic resources.”[2] GEI values range from 0.000 (lowest) to 1.000 (highest, or where women feel most empowered). Using this dataset as a base, we can examine the empowerment of women around the world in several different ways, including the global map of GEI shown below.
Dynamic map showing the Gender Empowerment Index by country. Click on image to enlarge.
Creating a dynamic map
[Time from launch of GDV: Under 30 seconds. Click count: 5.]
After launching the Plot GeoData tool from the Tools dropdown menu, a secondary Plotting Tool window becomes available (see image at right), and you can select WRI’s EarthTrends 2005 database and the Gender Empowerment Index as your category. From here, it’s a snap to create a dynamic map of GEI: simply click on the “Create a dynamic map” button at the top of the Plotting Tool window (it looks like a tiny globe). A new window with the global map of GEI by country will appear. An example of this is shown in the image above, and you can see that the GEI measure is not available for all countries and is notably absent for much of Africa. Returning to the Plotting Tool window and looking in the lower left corner, you can see that for the GEI dataset, the GEI measure is provided for 78 countries and is missing for 171. For specific information on a particular country, the user can mouse over that country on the dynamic map and a small pop-up window will appear with the specific GEI value for that country. In the map image above, this mouse over feature shows the GEI value for Swaziland was 0.487.
Creating a data table
[Time from launch of GDV: Under 30 seconds. Click count: 5.]
| Rank | Country | GEI value |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Norway | 0.908 |
| 2 | Sweden | 0.854 |
| 3 | Denmark | 0.847 |
| 4 | Finland | 0.82 |
| 5 | Netherlands | 0.817 |
| 6 | Iceland | 0.816 |
| 7 | Belgium | 0.808 |
| 8 | Australia | 0.806 |
| 9 | Germany | 0.804 |
| 10 | Canada | 0.787 |
Now let’s take a look at some of the other GeoData tools. Right next to the Create a dynamic map button is the “Create a data table” button. Pressing this button opens a new window containing the raw GEI values by country. You can change how this table is sorted by clicking on the header at the top of any of the columns: in this case you can either sort by country name or by their rank/GEI ratio. It is also possible to copy the contents of this table and paste them into Excel or some other editor. To use this feature, you can select Edit >> Copy from the menu toolbar, or simply press Ctrl-C. The table at the right was created by taking advantage of this feature.
You can also use the table window to help you locate where a country in the list is in your map windows. To do this, click on one of the rows, which will highlight the country in red. At the same time, a blinking red crosshair will appear in the map window, showing where that country is located. In the GEI map picture shown above, you can see the red crosshair on the map over Australia.
Creating a scatter plot
[Time from launch of GDV: Under 1 minute. Click count: 8.]
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Continuing through the Plot GeoData tools from right to left, the next tool is “Create a scatter plot.” Using the scatter plot feature, two different data sets can be plotted against each other and help the user look for trends. To select a second dataset, you must return to the Plotting Tool window and click on the Y Variable tab. This brings up a fresh database and category selector where you can select a new dataset. From there, you can click on the Create a scatter plot button, and a new window plotting these two GeoData against each other will appear.
For this example, we chose the Corruption Perceptions Index from Transparency International as the secondary dataset, and you can see from the figure that a correlation appears to exist. From the metadata for this dataset: “The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) measures the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians. Ratings range in value from 10 (least corrupt) to 0 (most corrupt).” Therefore, the plot we created suggests that the more empowered the women in a particular country feel, the less corruption will be perceived as a problem in that country.
Creating a histogram
[Time from launch of GDV: Under 30 seconds. Click count: 7.]
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Another way to look at GeoData is to bin the values as a histogram. The next button to the left in the Plotting Tool window is “Create a histogram plot.” By returning to the X Variable tab and then selecting this button, a histogram is created showing that the most common GEI range is between 0 and 0.1816. If we then click on the “2D Pie” button, we get the plot on the right. From this window, we can also add (or remove) a legend to the plot, or we can change back to a traditional histogram bar plot by selecting one of the buttons at the bottom of this window. In this case, the pie diagram produced suggests that the women in ~70% of the countries rated do not feel very empowered.
Other tools
In addition to the Plot GeoData tools we examine above, three more tools also exist: “Create a column plot,” “Create a time-series plot,” and “Animate.” For the GEI dataset, these tools are not very meaningful, in the latter two cases because only one year of data is available. But we encourage you to explore these capabilities to see what kind of information may be revealed, and perhaps we’ll take another look at these tools in one of the next chapters of our journey.
Notes
[1] Wikipedia contributors, “International Women’s Day,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Day (accessed March 3, 2010).
[2] World Resources Institute, United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Program, The World Bank (2005). EarthTrends/World Resources Data CD 2005: Wealth of the Poor. (ISBN 1-56973-594-8). Washington DC: World Resources Institute.
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