If women had the same role as men in the world’s job markets, the improvement to the world’s economy could be as much as $12 trillion, which is not much shy of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States. Since this equality does not exist, and may never, the number has little meaning at this point.

A leading consulting firm McKinsey & Co. researcher wrote in a McKinsey Global Institute report:

Gender inequality is not only a pressing moral and social issue but also a critical economic challenge. If women — who account for half the world’s working-age population — do not achieve their full economic potential, the global economy will suffer. While all types of inequality have economic consequences. The power of parity: How advancing women’s equality can add $12 trillion to global growth, we focus on the economic implications of lack of parity between men and women.

And, under certain circumstances, the advantages could be much better:

A “best in region” scenario in which all countries match the rate of improvement of the fastest-improving country in their region could add as much as $12 trillion, or 11 percent, in annual 2025 GDP. In a “full potential” scenario in which women play an identical role in labor markets to that of men, as much as $28 trillion, or 26 percent, could be added to global annual GDP by 2025.

This figure is as large as the GDP of China and the United States together.

The goal is far off, based on the World Economic Forum’s “The Global Gender Gap Report 2014.” While several Scandinavian countries, which include Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, have close to parity between men and women, large nations such as the United States and United Kingdom are not even close. Measured on a scale in which 1 is equality, the United States rates 0.75 and the United Kingdom is 0.74. In China, the figure is 0.68.

While the McKinsey report offers good economic reasons for parity, in the real world the figures will not be attained.

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