Despite Gains, Women Face Setbacks in Legal Rights Affecting Work

Globally, women are given only three-quarters of the legal rights that men enjoy constraining their ability to get jobs or start businesses and make economic decisions that are best for them and their families.

A new World Bank index dubbed ‘Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform’, that looks at milestones in a woman’s working life, from starting a job through to getting a pension, and legal protections associated with each of these reveals that achieving gender equality is not a short term process.

At 25 years old, many women are just starting their careers. The decisions they make affect their economic security, career growth, and work-life balance. This challenging period is only made more difficult in economies where legal environments do not support a woman’s decision to work.

For instance, a woman cannot effectively look for a job or go on an interview if she cannot leave her home without permission. Even if she can go on an interview, will an employer be willing to hire her? If she is hired, will she need to quit if she gets married or has children? If not, will she have to move to a lower paying job because she must balance work with caring for her family?

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And what if the law does not allow her to manage her own assets, affecting her ability to start a business? At the end of her career, she may have to retire earlier than a man, giving her a longer retirement but a smaller pension because she worked for fewer years with lower pay.

From the study, Sub-Saharan Africa had the most reforms promoting gender equality. Six of the top reforming economies are in Sub-Saharan Africa: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Malawi, Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe and Zambia. The remaining three top reformers are in East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and South Asia respectively: Samoa, Bolivia, and the Maldives.

The high number of top reformers from Sub-Saharan Africa is in part due to a large number of economies in the region, but also demonstrates the significant room for improvement these economies had from their baseline. In fact, Sub-Saharan Africa had the third highest increase in the index’s average regional score, moving from 64.04 to 69.63 over ten years, an increase of 5.59 points.

According to the index, in order to achieve gender equality, legal and regulatory reforms play a foundational role as an important first step followed by strong political will and a concerted effort by governments, civil society, international organizations among others.

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The data spans a ten-year period where 187 countries are scored according to eight indicators.

World Bank Group Interim President Kristalina Georgieva noted that if women have equal opportunities to reach their full potential then the world would not only be fairer, but more prosperous as well.

“Change is happening, but not fast enough, and 2.7 billion women are still legally barred from having the same choice of jobs as men. It is paramount that we remove the barriers that hold women back, and with this report, we aim to demonstrate that reforms are possible and to accelerate change,” said Kristalina Georgieva.

The global average has risen from 70 to 75. 131 economies have made 274 reforms to laws and regulations that improve women’s economic inclusion. 35 countries implemented legal protections against sexual harassment at work, protecting nearly two billion more women than a decade ago. 22 economies removed restrictions on women’s work, reducing the likelihood that women are kept out of working in certain sectors of the economy. And 13 economies introduced laws mandating equal remuneration for work of equal value.

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Six economies; Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg, and Sweden now hold perfect scores of 100, meaning they give women and men equal legal rights in the measured areas. A decade ago, no economy could make that claim. Under this index, economies that conducted reforms experienced bigger increases in the percentage of women working overall, leading to women’s economic empowerment.

Despite these efforts, women in many parts of the world still face discriminatory laws and regulations at every point in their working life. Fifty-six countries spanning all regions and income levels enacted no reforms at all to improve women’s equality of opportunity over the ten-year period.  The pace of reform was the slowest in the category of managing assets – examining gender differences in property rights.

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The study develops new insight into how women’s employment and entrepreneurship are affected by legal discrimination, and in turn how this affects economic outcomes such as women’s participation in the labor market. The new index aims to lay a roadmap for progress over time and identify potential areas where more work is needed, to inspire reforms that benefit gender equality.