We first present the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) as measure for social institutions (III.l) as well as our data and estimation model (III.2). We start our empirical analysis by estimating the impact of the SIGI (and its five sub-indices) on women's labour market participation (III.3) to see whether social institutions generally affect women's activity patterns. Then, to test our hypothesis that social discrimination against women leads to an overrepresentation of women in "bad jobs" and an underrepresentation of women in "good jobs", we estimate the impact of the SIGI and its sub-indices on the gender segregation by sectors (III.4) and on the gender segregation by working status (III.5). The five components of the SIGI — ownership rights, civil liberties, son preference, family code and physical integrity each measure one dimension of the underlying concept.