The recent report by WEF about the Gender gaps has shown that there is huge gender bias existing in the economic participation of women all across the world. These trends are not only applicable to developing countries but even in the developed one too pointing towards the discrimination in the opportunities available to women.
Women’s in the economic participation are mainly differentiated in following areas
- Workforce participation
- Wage disparity
- Advancement opportunities
A study by OECD notes that the around $13 trillion dollar increase in world's GDP is lost due to non-participation of the women in the workforce.
This loss of business competitiveness due to the gender gap in participation is due to:
- Loss of talent/skill: Women comprise around half of the world population and so they should also comprise half of the talent and skills of the total workforce. But this talent is lost due to the gender gap.
- Another perspective: Women also comprise half of the consumers whose needs can be better understood by women employees. But gender gaps lead to lack of such perspective in business strategies.
- High-level leadership: Due to gender gap the corporate miss out on the women leaders at the higher positions and in many cases; they are filled with incompetent male counterparts by overlooking more suitable female employee.
- The successful female entrepreneurs have shown capabilities of the women in the business environment.
Women like Indira Nuyi, Arundhati Bhattacharya have shown that women do equally well if not better in the corporate sector. There is the need for more enabling provisions for participation women. The GES focused on Women entrepreneurs and Stand up India is good step in promoting women entrepreneurs
