A fabulous and ground-breaking book on the direct relationship between a woman’s amount of freedom and the economic prosperity of her country
EQUALITY FOR WOMEN = PROSPERITY FOR ALL
The Disastrous Global Crisis of Gender Inequality
by Augusto Lopez-Claros and Bahiyyih Nakhjavani
Thomas Dunne Books, October 2018
The enormous global project entitled Women, Business and the Law that was conducted by the World Bank is the basis for many of the amazing findings presented in this startling volume. A systematic explanation of 173 economies around the world was undertaken, and each economy was evaluated in terms of the answers to forty-seven questions concerning the rights of women in that locale. Typical examples of the questions include: Can a woman, whether married or single, apply for a passport in the same way as a man? Can she travel outside the country? Are married women required by law to obey their husbands? Can she sign a contract? Are there criminal sanctions for sexual harassment?
Astonishingly, the survey revealed an almost direct correlation between how many freedoms women enjoyed and how much prosperity was enjoyed by that particular economy.
It is to be hoped that if gender equality has not yet been freely offered to women by any certain society, that the fascinating information contained in these pages will persuade the members of that society that it is in their own best economic interests to remedy the situation immediately. This groundbreaking book proves irrefutably, once and for all, that freedom for women equals prosperity for all.
Augusto Lopez-Claros is currently a Senior Fellow at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. From 2011 to 2017 he was the Director of the Global Indicators Group at the World Bank Group. He is a brilliant public speaker and a leading world authority on gender inequality and economics.
Bahiyyih Nakhjavani is an Iranian writer who grew up in Uganda. Her novel The Saddlebag was an international bestseller. She has taught European and American literature, and now lives in France.