Broken promises on unrealized potentials for generations from the bygone era – this is how perhaps we can explain how women economic empowerment and emancipation worked on our otherwise friendly (!) planet. The price of denying economic emancipation to half of our population is enormous and created the most overwhelming hurdle in the progress of our civilization.

Nothing new, we all know how we treated the womenfolk. They have always been treated either as Goddess or slaves and never a fellow human being with recognition of equal rights and their own aspirations as individuals. Situations might have varied slightly in communities of different race, culture, place and religion, however, the approach towards them surprisingly remained uniform all over the globe.

It took hundreds of years to coin a somewhat honorable euphemism ‘homemaker’ for our mothers, however, in our sleep, dream and breathing, we still find them no more worth than ‘housewives’ – taking care of sexual needs, bearing and rearing the children, cooking and of course, keeping the house clean. All the extraordinary and legendary women heroes of all time failed to douse our enthusiasm towards them.

The price of exclusion and lack of progress is heavy and costly. A study of The United Nations has said “Constricting women’s opportunities in Asian and Pacific nations is costing those regions more than US $ 40 billion annually”. Besides, the exclusion is depriving our community of cleaner administration. On a brighter note, to achieve greater economic advancement, nations like UAE and Bangladesh are today focused on helping women who control more than 80% of household spending decisions. These nations have started reaping the benefits.

If not so much out of our emotions and love for them, in pure economic and investment sense, we will be wiser and better off, if we decide to include them in our lives!