A small women's share, assuming properly designed surveys, indicates non access to education and inequality of opportunity and treatment, from, for examples, national laws or general social practices. Such situations are usually accepted as unsustainable. This indicator is linked to others reflecting the role and participation of women as a major societal group. Some particular groups, such as the armed forces or other populations living in institutions, nomadic people, etc. may be excluded. In countries where compulsory schooling and legislation on the minimum age for admission to employment have broad coverage and are widely respected, the age specified in these regulations may be used as a basis for determining an appropriate minimum age limit for measuring the economically active population.
Some countries use a maximum age limit as well, often linked to the most common age for pensions.
For example, one week or one day. The labour force is distributed by gender. The total number of women in the labour force is then divided by the total number of men in the labour force and the result compared to 100. The remaining indicator, GDP spent on education, is a Response indicator. This would make more sense for participation rates than for this ratio, though various factors can affect both indicators, which shows only the relative share of both genders in the labour force at a given moment.