A fabulous and ground-breaking book on the direct relationship between a woman’s amount of freedom and the economic prosperity of her country

The enormous global project entitled Women, Business and the Law that was conducted by the World Bank is the basis for many of the amazing findings presented in this startling volume. A systematic explanation of 173 economies around the world was undertaken, and each economy was evaluated in terms of the answers to forty-seven questions concerning the rights of women in that locale. Typical examples of the questions include: Can a woman, whether married or single, apply for a passport in the same way as a man? Can she travel outside the country? Are married women required by law to obey their husbands? Can she sign a contract? Are there criminal sanctions for sexual harassment?

Astonishingly, the survey revealed an almost direct correlation between how many freedoms women enjoyed and how much prosperity was enjoyed by that particular economy.

It is to be hoped that if gender equality has not yet been freely offered to women by any certain society, that the fascinating information contained in these pages will persuade the members of that society that it is in their own best economic interests to remedy the situation immediately. This groundbreaking book proves irrefutably, once and for all, that freedom for women equals prosperity for all.

Augusto Lopez-Claros is currently a Senior Fellow at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University and was previously the Director of Global Indicators at the World Bank and Chief Economist at the World Economic Forum in Geneva. He has lectured in recent years at some of the world’s leading universities and think-tanks.

Bahiyyih Nakhjavani is an Iranian writer with a multicultural background. An award-winning author of Us & Them, a novel about the Iranian diaspora, The Woman Who Read Too Much and The Saddlebag, an international bestseller, she now lives and works in France.