A Relational Well-Being (Maslaha) Index of Gender Development in Socio-Economic Development Sustainability

The inception of maqasid as-shari’ah al-Tawhid index of socio-economic development sustainability is presented in its generalized form. This involves a unified relational methodological formalism. The resulting model is that of wellbeing, which in Islamic context is referred to as maslaha. The maslaha function is formalized and applied to the specific case of socio-economic development sustainability. This term signifies the importance that moral and ethical values hold in a substantively participatory context of choices of the good things of life, while avoiding the harmful ones. The meaning is linked to and bears on moral, social and economic development perspectives. Sustainability of development as a participatory process yielding well-being is thereby a relational organic continuation in pervasive complementarities between endogenous and circular causation relations of critical variables under the impact of Tawhid as law inducing the variables by its ontology of unity of knowledge. A specific example of application is taken as the formulation and relational explanation of the Gender Development Index in terms of its various critical variables of wellbeing. Statistical analysis and policy conclusions are carried out.