Female Empowerment Good For The Economy?

A very interesting post on The Global Scoop explains how empowering women leads to economic development. According to the author, "the international community has acknowledged the fact that achieving gender equality and empowering women is not only a goal in itself. It is also a condition for advancing development, peace, and security. As set forth by the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), gender equality is one of the main objectives to be achieved by 2015. Nevertheless, as the Deputy Secretary-General claims, “Study after study has shown us that, when women are fully empowered and engaged, all of society benefits. Only in this way can we successfully take on the enormous challenges confronting our world -- from conflict resolution and peace building to fighting AIDS and reaching all the other Millennium Development Goals.” Therefore, it seems that there is much more to do in order accomplish these MDGs. Though the goals sound extraordinary on paper, making real world progress is complicated and complex; financial support as wells societal changes must be coordinated to achieve such goals."

Indeed, this idea is now widely recognized and of the utmost importance for the world's continued advancement. However, what made this post most interesting was that it set forth prerequisites for this development in the gender role of females to continue. Specifically, the following conditions must be met:

Ensuring that men take on a greater role in household and family care
Challenging traditions and customs, stereotypes and harmful practices, that stand in the way of women and girls
Ensuring that women have access to education and health care, property and land;
Investing in infrastructure to make it easier for women and girls to go about the daily business of obtaining safe drinking water and food
Integrating gender issues into the follow-up to United Nations resolutions and decisions including the work of recently established bodies such as the Peace Building Commission and the Human Rights Council.

Thus, governments, thinktanks, international organizations, and every individual should strive hard to enable these goals being met. This is of the upmost importance not just for female empowerment, but for economic development