Female empowerment can bring dramatic economic gains, says Lagarde

EMPOWERING women is an "economic no-brainer", International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Christine Lagarde declared on Sunday in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

She quoted IMF estimates that showed that if the number of female workers were to be raised to the same level as the number of men, the gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States would expand by 5 per cent, in Japan by 9 per cent, and in India, by 27 per cent.

She was speaking at the launch of the W20, an offshoot of the G20 group of emerging and advanced economies.