Is there evidence of significant economic returns to investing in women?
Evidence shows that when women and men are relatively equal, economies tend to grow faster, more of the poor move more quickly out of poverty, and the well-being of men, women and children is enhanced. In Burkina Faso, evidence suggests that both the output of women’s plots and total household output could be increased by between 10 and 20 percent by reallocating existing resources from men’s plots to women’s plots. In Tanzania, reducing the time burden of rural women could increase cash income among smallholder coffee and banana growers by 10 percent. In Kenya, if women farmers had the same access to farm inputs, education, and experience as their male counterparts, their maize, beans, and cowpea yields could increase as much as 22 percent. This would have resulted in a one-time doubling of Kenya’s GDP growth rate in 2004 from 4.3 percent to 8.3.
