Gender parity in labour can boost India’s GDP by 27%: World Economic Forum Chief

Raising women’s participation in the labour force to the same level as men can boost India’s GDP by 27 per cent, IMF Chief Christine Lagarde and Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg have said in a joint paper.

Pitching for 2018 to be made “the year for women to thrive”, the two leaders said “time is up for discrimination and abuse against women” in the paper published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) ahead of the Geneva-based organisation’s annual summit in Swiss ski resort town Davos.

Lagarde and Solberg are among the all-women co-chairs of the annual confab this year, beginning tomorrow. Indian social entrepreneur Chetna Sinha is also among the co-chairs for the annual summit that will be attended by 70 heads of government from across the world, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump.

Women would account for 21 per cent of the overall participation at the meeting to be attended by over 3,000 world leaders including from politics, business, art and culture, academia and civil society.

“The need for greater respect and opportunities for women is becoming an ever more prominent feature of the public conversation,” Lagarde and Solberg said while asserting that the challenge of female empowerment is …read more