Measuring the status and tracking the progress of gender equality is an important undertaking, but a difficult one given the various dimensions along which discrimination against women occurs. The Social Institutions and Development Index (SIGI) focuses on an aspect of gender inequality that is usually neglected by other gender-related measures, which tend to focus on measuring gender inequalities in education, health, economic or political participation and other dimensions. By contrast, the SIGI measures social institutions – as mirrored by societal practices and legal norms – that produce inequalities between women and men in non-OECD countries. The added value of the SIGI is that it presents a wide range of new dimensions and variables that are not considered by other indices. It offers additional information, which complements – as apposed to substitutes – existing measures.