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One of the factors a country's economy depends on is human capital. If you don't provide women with adequate access to healthcare, education and employment, you lose at least half of your potential. So, gender equality and women's empowerment bring huge economic benefits.

Countries with higher levels of gender equality have higher economic growth. Companies with more women on their boards have higher returns. Peace agreements that include women are more successful. Parliaments with more women take up a wider range of issues - including health, education, anti-discrimination, and child support.

The When Women Succeed, America Succeeds economic agenda will enable women to achieve greater economic security, raise wages for women and their families, and better allow working parents to support and care for their families.

Investing in women and girls may once have been considered a radical notion or even a waste of resources, but in most places in the world today, women and girls are increasingly recognized as a critical link to greater prosperity, political stability, better health and public policy.

From China and India to Turkey and Brazil, when women have gotten access to education, to family planning and to a vital place in the economy, greater prosperity has followed. And when women are free to speak and learn, they temper the extremes of ideology and fanaticism and raise sons who are less likely to become human bombs.

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.

Investments in women are positively correlated to growth, prosperity, stability, democracy, health - and vital to our national security. We cannot write off the talent of half the world and expect to confront our challenges.

Giving women education, work, the ability to control their own income, inherit and own property, benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper, the village prospers, and eventually so does the whole country.

I want to tell women in developing countries that they are as powerful as their male counterparts, and they can play an equal role in their respective societies.

Research shows that when women are empowered as political leaders, countries often experience higher standards of living with positive developments in education, infrastructure, and health care.