The Global Gender Gap: Could gender equality be the key factor to economic wealth?

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Economics - Job market economics, grade: 1.3, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, course: International Economics, language: English, abstract: One of the highest goals to achieve in an economy nowadays is something described by the term 'sustainable development'. This term takes more factors into account than just the measurement of the gross national product (GNP) to describe the well-being of a particular country. Simply defined, one could say that 'sustainable development' means that "the rate of change of development over time is generally positive over some selected time horizon". The actual development in this case can be seen as a vector of desirable social objectives. These could include amongst others: "increases in real income per capita, improvements in health and nutritional status, educational achievement, access to resources, a 'fairer' distribution of income and increases in basic freedoms."
Many believe that the only way to really be able to achieve a sustainable development is through long-term investments in economic, human and environmental capital. A common shortcoming throughout the world is the fact, that the female half of its human capital is far from exhausted. Too often, women as human capital are undervalued and underutilized. For global economics this can be seen as an excessive deficit, which, if rectified, could result in many benefits for the world economy. In this manner studies have found, that if the world's female capital were used more efficiently, many positive outcomes could be achieved. The economic growth in all the countries of the world would increase lowering the number of people living in poverty. Also, "business performances and innovation would be enhanced." Even problems such as the fertility rates in the world could be counteracted, as the "fertility rates would rise in OECD countries and decline in non-OECD countries".
However, this all still depends on engendered government policies, which in many cases are still up for discussion. This piece of work shall focus on the Global Gender Gap in particular, discussing the matter of encouraging economic wealth my means of gender equality. Notably the current discussion in Germany on the topic of a quota for the representation of female board members shall be examined more carefully.