World Bank’s ‘Women, Business and the Law Index’ says that women just entering the workforce will retire before they enjoy the same rights as men
Most countries have adopted laws that aim at concurring equal treatment to women. It seemed as if the legal rights and provisions were bridging the gap between men and women. But the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law Index, released March 2 2023, has a shocking revelation.
Also read: It will take 3 centuries to close gender gap completely, warns UN
“The global pace of reforms toward equal treatment of women under the law has slumped to a 20-year low,” the report noted.
The index rates laws and regulations related to women in 190 countries. The assessment covers eight areas related to women’s economic participation — mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets and pensions.
“Today, just 14 countries — all high-income economies — have laws that give women the same rights as men,” it added. In 2022, the global average score on the index was 77.1 — just one point higher than the year before.
Read more: Gender gaps in food: 150 million more women went hungry than men in 2021
The report said this “indicates women, on average, enjoy barely 77 per cent of the legal rights that men do.” At the current pace of reform, in many countries, a woman entering the workforce today will retire before she will be able to gain the same rights as men, the document read.
Tracking the progress on gender-related legal reforms, the index said only 34 such reforms were recorded across 18 countries in 2022. This was the lowest number since 2001.
“It will take another 1,549 reforms to reach substantial legal gender equality everywhere in the areas measured by the report. At the current pace, it would take at least 50 years on average to reach that target,” said the World Bank in a press statement on the index.
In absolute numbers, the score on the index means that nearly 2.4 billion women of working age still do not have the same rights as men.
High-income countries account for the nations with the highest equality of economic opportunities.
Sub-Saharan Africa made significant progress last year, said the report. “The region accounted for over half of all reforms worldwide in 2022, with seven economies — Benin, the Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Malawi, Senegal and Uganda — enacting 18 positive legal changes,” noted the document.
Though in the first nine years of the 2000s, gender parity reforms reached a peak, it has slowed down since 2009. The index particularly identifies the reforms related to women’s rights to inherit and own property have slowed down significantly.
“The first decade of this century saw strong gains towards legal gender equality. Between 2000 and 2009, over 600 reforms were introduced, with a peak of 73 annual reforms in 2002 and 2008. Since then, reform fatigue seems to have set in,” it added.
Bringing in gender parity will result in a significant economic gain. “Closing the gender employment gap could raise long-term GDP per capita by nearly 20 per cent on average across countries. Studies estimate global economic gains of $5-6 trillion if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men do,” the World Bank stated.
At a time when global economic growth is slowing, all countries need to mobilise their full productive capacity to confront the confluence of crises besetting them, said Indermit Gill, chief economist of the World Bank Group and senior vice president for Development Economics.
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Nearly 2.4 billion women of working age still do not have the same rights as men. Representative image: iStock..png)
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