A latent markov model approach for measuring national gender inequality

Gender inequality - both in space and time - is a latent trait, namely only indirectly measurable through a collection of observable variables and indicators purposively selected. Even if composite indicators are normally used by social scientists, when measuring gender-gap they are known to have case-specific technical limitations. In this paper we propose an innovative approach based on a multivariate Latent Markov model (LMM) for the analysis of gender inequalities as measured by the aforementioned indicators