Massive health care, schooling and job discrimination against females are costing the Asia-Pacific region almost 80 billion dollars a year, a UN report said Wednesday.
Restrictions on female access to employment cost the region up to 47 billion dollars, while up to 30 billion dollars a year are lost because of lower female enrolment in schools, the report said.
"Appalling disparities remain" in women's treatment in the region, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) said in what officials called a ground-breaking analysis released here.
"The economic cost of gender inequality is humungous," Samika Sirimanne, the UN economist who headed the study into gender inequality, told AFP.
The document was the first by the UN to seek to quantify financially the cost of discrimination against females in the region, rather than looking at the issue in a social light, Sirimanne said.
"It's a wake-up call," she said.
India, which has the lowest female workforce participation, could add a full percentage point a year to its annual economic growth rate if its rate of women in work reached parity with the United States, the report said.
"India loses about 19 billion dollars a year just because it doesn't have more women in the workforce," said Sirimanne.
Malaysia and Indonesia could also gain significantly if they had more women working, but in China the effect would be less as it has a higher proportion of women workers.
Female primary school enrolment across the region was as much as 26 percent lower than for males, the report said, adding such disparities were also reflected in access to health.
"The things to fix these problems can be implemented without too much cost -- it requires vision and commitment at the top," said Sirimanne.
"We're not talking about big infrastructure projects, just a commitment that women can get to a hospital, girls can go to school. The region is growing economically very quickly -- these things should be happening," she said.
"Mobile clinics are not expensive," she added.
Economies in the region are seen growing by 7.4 percent in 2007, according to UNESCAP.
"In 2007, the shocking thing is that in a number of places maternal mortality numbers are going up rather than down," Sirimanne said.
The group also sounded the alarm over the shrinking female-to-male ratio in the population, particularly in North and Central Asia, South Asia and the Pacific island nations.
"In some countries one in every 10 girls dies before the age of one, and one in every 50 women dies during pregnancy and delivery," the report said.
"In any situation, the number of women should be higher than the number of men, but in some places we see it is the other way round -- the women are dying early," Sirimanne added.
Sirimanne said the study had not "even attempted to quantify the economic costs" of such practices as female foeticide which, while illegal, is widespread in India where sons are favoured over daughters.
The report also said violence against women continues unabated, indicating how "voiceless" women are in households and in countries.
In the region, only seven countries had parliaments in which more than 20 percent of representatives were women, with New Zealand boasting the highest rate at 28 percent.
The report offered a host of solutions including free basic schooling and adult education for women, as well as laws to guarantee equal access to health care services and jobs.
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