Save the Girls!

By Anya Kamanetz:

Fact is, the desire and the data don’t match up. In the 21st century, there’s a compelling case for girls as the equal–and in some cases, optimal–gender for roles in leadership, innovation, and economic growth. Women excel in education, the most crucial factor in tomorrow’s workforce; we are 56% of undergraduates in the U.S. and approaching parity in China and India. Our socialization is geared toward the right stuff for the changing requirements of success in the 21st century: Women are likely to have a more balanced, empathetic leadership style, better communication skills, a knack for fostering innovation through collaboration. Consider the results of a recent study by psychologists at MIT and Carnegie Mellon, who divided people into teams and asked them to complete intelligence tasks together. The IQ scores of the groups’ members barely affected collective performance. The number of women on a team, however, affected it a lot–the more women, the better.

The evidence is mounting that baby girls are a strong investment. “An important future indicator for a developing economy is its treatment of women,” says Sheryl WuDunn, coauthor with husband Nicholas Kristof of Half the Sky, a best seller turned PBS series turned online game that dubs girl power “the best way to fight poverty and extremism.” A country that gives girls equal opportunity has twice as much talent and brainpower to draw on and is likely to be more open and flexible in ways that promote international trade. World Bank numbers also show that development dollars invested in projects that target girls and women show a 90% return; the figure for projects focused on men and boys hovers between 30% and 40%. The Grameen Bank, the best-known microfinancier, makes 97% of its loans to women, whose repayment rates are much higher….