The World Bank Group’s Women, Business and Law 2018 report, has disclosed that 65 nations, respectively, enacted 87 legal reforms in the past two years, to improve women’s economic inclusion.
According to the report, women continue to face widespread barriers, entrenched in laws that keep them out of jobs and prevent them from owning businesses, by restricting their access to credit or control over marital property.
It added that the global financial institution now monitored 189 economies. For example, it found that in 104 economies, women were barred from working at night or in certain jobs in many areas, including manufacturing, construction, energy, agriculture, water and transportation. This negatively affected the choices of more than 2.7 billion women.
The Chief Executive Officer, World Bank, Ms. Kristalina Georgieva, said, “No economy can grow to its full potential unless women and men participate fully. Yet in more than half the world, women are still prevented from working in certain jobs, simply because of their gender.
“The report finds that where there is gender equality in labour laws, more women work and earn more, relative to men. Women should have the same equality of opportunity as men, to provide for themselves, and to give their children the best start in life possible.”
The report introduced, for the first time, a scoring system of 0 to 100, to better inform the reform agenda. Scores were assigned to every monitored economy on each of the report’s seven indicators: accessing institutions, using property, getting a job, providing incentives to work, going to court, building credit, and protecting women from violence.
