A correspondence between the equivariant degree introduced by Ize, Massabó, and Vignoli and an unstable version of the equivariant fixed point index defined by Prieto and Ulrich is shown. With the help of conormal maps and properties of the unstable index, a sum decomposition formula is proved for the index and consequently also for the degree. As an application, equivariant homotopy groups are decomposed as direct sums of smaller groups of fixed orbit types, and a geometric interpretation of each summand is given in terms of conormal maps.
