Gender parity to boost GDP by 60% by 2025: McKinsey
A report released on Monday says around 68 million women will need to join the workforce in the next decade to ensure that kind of growth
India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could be boosted by as much as $700 billion by 2025 through eliminating gender inequality in organisations, according to a McKinsey report released in Mumbai on Monday.
The report, titled ‘The Power of Parity: Advancing Women Equality in India’ was unveiled by Ms Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank, at the 2015 HR summit of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). It is a country-specific study, further to the global study on gender parity launched by McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) in September this year.
Addressing the media at the event, Kochhar said, “Education is a very important factor in gender diversity,” and stressed on the need to “educate young girls” owing to the “tremendous multiplier effect it creates”.
Anu Madgavkar, senior fellow at MGI, says, “By achieving gender parity, India is likely to witness the highest potential boost at 60 percent.”
Madgavkar, who is also one of the authors of the report, says around 68 million women will need to join the workforce by 2025 to boost the GDP by $700 billion. Around 70 percent of the job opportunity will come from the top nine states. The report adds that currently, women in India contribute only 17 percent to the GDP, lower than the global average of 37 percent.
Further, the report identifies key areas like education, job creation, skills, entrepreneurship, among others, which need to be worked upon to achieve gender parity. Madgavkar calls ‘gender equality’ not just the right thing to do, but also the smart thing to do, owing to its obvious impact on economy.
Kochhar had an optimistic tone and stated examples of sectors where the issue of gender diversity is being addressed. In India, 35 percent of the leaders in the banking sector are women and for the first time, 10 percent of the parliamentarians are women. “But”, she adds, “While a lot has been done, there is a lot which stills needs to be done to achieve gender parity.”
India's GDP is estimated to be $2.1 Trillion in 2014-15.
