How does a society view gender and the role of women? There is a close connection between national economic performance and the degree to which societies have succeeded in integrating women into the economy and have allowed them to increasingly participate in decision making, particularly in the case of representation in parliaments, cabinets and other executive bodies, and have made it possible for them to avail herself of opportunities for education and the building up of her human capital.

Within the limits allowed by availability of data of this nature, the economic literature has shown that women’s participation in economic activities is affected by culture: for example, cultural heritage affects living arrangements (Giuliano 2007), and women's labor force participation and fertility rates are affected by those prevailing in the country of origin of their ancestors (Fernandez, Fogli and Olivetti 2004; Fernandez and Fogli 2009). The World Bank’s _Women, Business and the Law_ data and report, on the other hand, show the close connection between the law and restrictions embedded in the law imposing various limitations on women’s agency in 143 countries and labor force participation, ownership of firms and access to the financial system.

International competitiveness and productivity have much to do with the efficient allocation of resources, including, of course, human resources. The efficient operation of our increasingly knowledge-based economy is not only a function of adequate levels of available finance, a reasonably open trade regime for goods and services, but, more and more, is also dependent on our ability to tap into a society’s reservoir of talents and skills.

When, because of tradition, a misunderstanding of the purpose of religion, social taboos or plain prejudices, half of the world’s population is prevented from making its contribution to the life of a nation, the economy will suffer. The skills which the private sector can tap will be necessarily narrower and shallower and productivity, the engine of sustainable growth, will be impaired. It is, indeed, no surprise that the most competitive countries in the world, those that have better been able to operate on the boundaries of the technology frontier, are also those where women have been given the greatest opportunities to be equal partners with men.<sup>40</sup> The authors’ own experience suggests that, for instance, when corporate boards or other groups of people appointed to formulate policies, design programs or undertake some other specific task are all male-dominated, the decisions arrived at will tend to be suboptimal. They will inevitably reflect the priorities and biases of men, who have a particular way of looking at the world and analyzing its problems. However, when the group is diverse, the consultation that precedes the decisions will have benefited from the distinct insights of women, who bring to the discussion a different, sometimes complementary, set of perspectives. To the extent that gender diversity contributes to better decision-making, the company will benefit and one will see it grow and evolve in more imaginative ways. Thus, gender equality does not

> 40 The relationship between an economy’s level of development and women’s labor market participation is however not a linear one: Mammen and Paxson (2000) use cross-country data from 1970 to 1985 to show that the percentage of women in the labor force first decreases and then increases as the GDP per capita increases,

23