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Countries that promote women's rights and increase their access to resources and schooling have lower poverty rates, faster economic growth and less corruption than countries that do not, says a recently published World Bank report, EnGendering Development - Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice.

Countries with smaller gaps between women and men in areas such as
education, employment, and property rights not only have lower child
malnutrition and mortality, they also have more transparent business and
government and faster economic growth which in turn helps to further narrow
the gender gap.

"Increasing gender equality is central to the idea of development as
freedom, of expanding the choices and control that people have over their
lives," says Nicholas Stern, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice
President for Development Economics. "The evidence in this report shows that
education, health, productivity, credit and governance work better when
women are involved."

Released to coincide with International Women's Day, Thursday, March 8,
EnGendering Development is the most extensive study yet of the links between
gender and economic progress in developing countries. The report's
recommendations reflect extensive research and engagement with women's
groups, as well as a comprehensive on-line consultation of the draft, and a
discussion of the research findings at last year's UN Special Session of the
General Assembly on Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the 21st
Century.

"Gender disparities are very closely associated with poverty," says
Elizabeth King, co-author of the report. "The gap between men and women in
such things as health and education is greater in poor countries than in
rich countries, and within countries it is greatest among the poor.
Experiences from cross-country analysis and case studies show that economic
development and institutional change are both necessary to improve the
status of women."

Gender inequality hurts all members of society, not just girls and women.
The report recommends that societies with high levels of gender inequality
adopt specific measures to improve the status of girls and women. Examples
include ensuring equal rights to land and other property, and designing
infrastructure and services, such as water, transportation, education,
health, and credit, to better meet women's needs. Other steps include
eliminating gender bias in the workplace and increasing women's
participation in politics.

"Societies that discriminate on the basis of gender pay a significant
price - in greater poverty, slower economic growth, weaker governance, and a
lower quality of life," says Andrew Mason, co-author of the report.
"Although income growth and economic development are good for gender
equality in the long run, growth alone cannot deliver the desired results.
Societies progress more rapidly if they also adopt specific measures to
narrow gender gaps."

According to the report, countries that reduce the gender gap in access to
resources and opportunities achieve more rapid economic growth. In Africa,
for example, improving rural women's access to productive resources
including education, land, and fertilizer could increase agricultural
productivity by as much as one-fifth.

Cross-country studies suggest that if the Middle East and North Africa,
South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa had been as successful as East Asia in
narrowing the gender gap in education during 1960-1990, GNP per capita in
those regions would have grown by 0.5 and 0.9 percentage points higher per
year, substantial increases over actual growth rates.

The report also confirms that girls and women have made significant progress
in recent decades. For example, over the past 25 years girls' primary school
enrollment rates doubled in the Middle East, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan
Africa. In the past half century, women's life expectancy has increased by
15-20 years in developing countries, to the point that in the 1990s, for the
first time, women in South Asia began living longer than men.

Despite this progress, women continue to have less control than men over
important resources. In South Asia, women have only about half as many years
of education as men, and female secondary school enrollment rates are only
two-thirds of male rates. Control of land and of other forms of capital is
also highly unequal. In Latin America most female household heads in rural
areas are either landless or own very small, fragmented holdings. The same
is true in Sub-Saharan Africa, where women are the major producers of food
crops. Throughout the developing world, female-managed enterprises are often
undercapitalized, having less access to credit and using fewer inputs and
machinery than male-managed enterprises.

Beyond the direct effects on women's welfare and their ability to generate
income, these factors reduce women's power to allocate family resources and
to shape such basic family decisions as how many children to have. This lack
of power to influence family resource allocations has a negative impact on
children's well being. Lack of control of resources also means that women
are made more vulnerable in the face of personal or family crises.

In politics, women continue to be vastly underrepresented in national and
sub-national assemblies, accounting for less than 10 percent of the seats in
parliament in all but a handful of countries. In Eastern Europe, female
representation has fallen from 25 to 7 percent since the beginning of the
economic and political transition.

Countries that reduce gender inequality can reap significant rewards. Some
benefits, such as falling infant and child mortality, improved nutrition,
and lower fertility rates, are already well known. The report demonstrates
how the positive impacts of reducing gender gaps also include lower AIDS
prevalence, less corruption, higher economic productivity, and faster
growth, outcomes that have not been traditionally linked to gender equality.
Countries where women have greater rights and participate more in public
life tend to have cleaner business and government. The report notes that
several studies have found that as the influence of women in public life
grows, the level of corruption declines. This is true even when comparing
countries with the same civil liberties, education, legal institutions, and
income levels.