The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the effects of gender inequality on GDP and GDP per capita. A cross sectional analysis of 177 countries over the time period 1998 to 2008 is undertaken with the use of linear regressions. There are several different factors that contribute to the gender inequality within a country and several ways to measure that disparity. The most well known measurement is the Gender-related Development Index and the components within this composite index have been studied thoroughly, although the index as a whole has not. This thesis then contributes with an overall view of how the gender inequality is important for the GDP and GDP per capita.

The findings illustrate how significant equality between the genders is for the economy, irrespective of the human development level within the countries. The implication of this is that gender equality is important for the GDP and GDP per capita, which is in accordance with the theories. One large issue is that there is no way of confirming the way of causality between gender equality and GDP or GDP per capita.