People in Latin America would be 16 percent better off if their workplaces were less sexist, according to a study by two economists.
David Cuberes and Marc Teignier came up with a formula to quantify the gender gap, with some surprising results.
According to their study, among the 34 democratic, free market nations in the Organisation of Economically Developed Countries, there is still a huge gender gap, with only 3 percent of women making it to CEO level.
The authors said this is a problem, because by excluding so many women, the average talent of entrepreneurs also declines, which also brings down success in the economy and the amount people earn per head.
They worked out a formula to show how much more money per-head a country could earn if the there was more female participation in the workforce. The average for OECD countries was 15.4 percent.
The US and UK both fared slightly better than this average, but could still be 13 percent richer with less of a gap. While Chile, Italy, Mexico and Turkey could all be 20 percent richer, suggesting that these countries have fewer opportunities for women in the workplace.
Globally, the Middle East and Africa perform much worse than other countries, losing an average of 40 percent of their possible income per person to gender inequality. Yemen especially could almost double their per capita income if they welcomed more women into the workplace.
But just because a country has little or no gender gap in the workplace, doesn’t mean it necessarily has a high GDP. That’s certainly true of African nations Ghana, Liberia and Rwanda, who lose one per cent or less of their per capital income because of sexism. These countries have agricultural economies, in which men and women both work. the authors said.
By Hazel Sheffield
