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KATHMANDU, MARCH 7
Despite a near consensus among policymakers that closing gender employment gaps will boost economic growth, missing data often prevents the estimation of the size of these gains for many developing countries.
Research over the past decade captures a variety of mechanisms through which higher female employment might boost growth, but greater methodological sophistication in many of these papers requires more data to calculate the size of the gains (and also makes it more difficult to understand how the measures are constructed). These data are not available for many developing countries. For almost all Pacific Islands countries, for example, there are no estimates of the effect of closing gender employment gaps on GDP, which makes it more difficult for policymakers to make the case for reforms in those countries.
Anew working paper develops a Gender Employment Gap Index designed to be a simple and transparent measure of the long-run effects on GDP of closing gender employment gaps that can be calculated for all countries.
A version of this article appears in the print on March 8, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
