Proof that with proper facilities, women study further, find jobs: WB

CHENNAI: World Bank is focusing on providing housing solutions for women to address women-empowerment and challenges in equal opportunity, a senior official has said.

If India increases its female labour force participation to 50%, it would help boost GDP growth by 1%, which is huge for a country like India, said Anna Bjerde, MD (Operations) – World Bank.

“What we found around the world is that women make up 50% of population and yet their participation in an economy is extremely low. Around the world, some countries are doing much better than others,” she stated.

During a visit to the city recently, Bjerde visited Thozhi, the working women’s hostel in Tambaram, which has been jointly developed by the State government, World Bank and the private sector, and inaugurated in January. “What we see by solutions like Thozhi is that some women study further or some work interesting jobs in IT or manufacturing. That’s proof that the number of hostels has been growing over the last few years, and that there is demand for it,” pointed out Bjerde.

Stating that any country with similar demographics and social dimensions as India and trying to grow from lower-middle income to upper-income can learn a lot from India, she added: “Such a model would be feasible in African countries and also in South Asia and South East Asia. What’s interesting about this model is that it involves public private partnership. There are a lot of things that the public sector has to do and the private sector brings in a lot of innovation and efficiency.”