A larger pie through a fair share? Gender equality and economic performance

Is gender equality of influence on economic development? Based on insights from feminist macroeconomics, the paper develops a framework that suggests that the gendered distribution of the pie does matter for its size. However, in order to assess the relationship, we need a good measure of gender equality that is not influenced by absolute levels of development. The often-used composite indices developed by UNDP, GDI and GEM, suffer from conceptual and methodological weaknesses which are analysed in this paper. The paper then goes on to develop an alternative composite measure of gender equality. Finally, some first attempts are made to examine the relationship with economic development.