Women, Business and the Law
Ensuring Equal Opportunity for Women
Countries have made enormous progress in recent decades dismantling laws and policies that discriminate against women based on gender, but to this day, no country has achieved true equality of opportunity for women. Legal and policy reforms have removed many of the barriers that women face at different stages of their lives, especially in the workplace and in parenthood. Yet Women, Business and the Law 2024, the tenth annual report in a flagship series, finds that women today enjoy less than two-thirds of the legal rights available to men.
By embracing legal gender equality, countries can unlock the full potential of their population, leading to economic growth. Closing the gender gap in employment and entrepreneurship could raise the global gross domestic product by more than 20 percent.
This topic page synthesizes policy messages from Women, Business and the Law, along with key findings emerging from World Bank’s robust stream of policy-oriented analytical work on women, labor force participation, and economic empowerment.
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Key Policy Messages
These are major themes and messages emerging from the latest World Bank research on the enabling environment for economic opportunity for women. Click on each card to learn more and access related publications.
Reforming discriminatory laws is essential to economic development
Reforming discriminatory laws is essential to economic development
Gender inequality harms everyone. Countries should:
- Address gender-based violence against women
- Mandate equal remuneration for work of equal value, equal retirement benefits for women, and gender equality on inheritance law and land rights
- Require gender-sensitive criteria for public procurement, remove obstacles to women related to participating in international trade, and lift restrictions to the jobs that a woman can perform
- Invest in childcare laws to bring more women into the labor force
Countries should invest in closing implementation gaps
Countries should invest in closing implementation gaps
Economies have, on average, established less than 40% of the policy mechanisms needed for implementing laws on the books related to gender equality. Yet passing a law without implementing it is like writing a letter but never mailing it. Effective legal implementation depends on many factors, e.g.:
- Pay transparency measures and enforcement mechanisms to address the gender pay gap, and guidelines on flexible work arrangements
- Specialized bodies to receive complaints on gender-based workplace discrimination
- A national strategy with a focus on women’s access to financial services
A legal and policy environment that supports women’s economic empowerment after having children is needed
A legal and policy environment that supports women’s economic empowerment after having children is needed
Nearly all economies performed poorly on childcare, according to a new Women, Business and the Law indicator tracking the provision of affordable and quality childcare services.
To strengthen the enabling factors for women’s workforce participation, countries should:
- Expand access to childcare
- Establish childcare quality standards
- Expand maternity and paternity leave provisions
- Prohibit the dismissal of pregnant women
Robust legal and supportive frameworks are needed to address violence against women
Robust legal and supportive frameworks are needed to address violence against women
One hundred and eighty-three economies have room to improve their legal frameworks addressing violence against women. To improve women’s safety, governments should:
- Prohibit child marriage (139 economies lack adequate legislation) and prohibit all forms of domestic violence
- Prohibit sexual harassment in the workplace, and in public spaces including on transport, in education, and online
- Prioritize legal and policy reform in countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV) where women face higher risks of multiple forms of violence
- Provide health care services for women who survive violence
Countries can take steps to improve multiple aspects of women’s economic inclusion
Countries can take steps to improve multiple aspects of women’s economic inclusion
To promote equality of opportunity, governments can:
- Enact policies that support the financial inclusion of women
- Establish gender equality under the law to increase the likelihood that women-owned businesses will formalize
- Protect the rights and labor market inclusion of women with disabilities
- Establish quotas for women on public corporate boards
- Consider interventions that aim to shift gender norms, such as public information campaigns
Development stakeholders should address the gender data gap
Development stakeholders should address the gender data gap
What can be measured can be changed. Governments and development institutions must work toward filling data and knowledge gaps:
- Countries lack sufficient sex-disaggregated data on employment and entrepreneurship, property ownership, and unpaid care work, making it difficult to design appropriate policies to address gender disparities
- More research is needed on the most effective package of interventions (such as traditional business training programs and savings instruments) to support women-led enterprises
- Closing the gender data gap is critical to effective SDG monitoring
Multimedia
Policy Research Working Papers
Empowering Change : Assessing the Role of Democracy, Civil Society, and Women’s Rights Groups in Advancing Legal Gender Equality
This paper explores the role that a country’s political economy, civil society organizations, and women’s rights groups play in advancing legal gender equality. The paper draws on the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law time-series data, which assesses women’s legal rights across eight domains of their lives, five decades, and 190 economies. The results reveal that higher levels of democracy and a more active civil society are positively associated with advances in legal equality between men and women.
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Policy Research Working Papers
What Works in Supporting Women-Led Businesses?
This paper reviews the literature on strategies to support women entrepreneurs in improving their business outcomes. It focuses on interventions designed to address four areas of constraints that influence their decisions and can impact their business performance: gaps in human capital; access to finance; access to technology and markets; and contextual factors such as legal and regulatory constraints, social norms, access to care, and gender-based violence.
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Events
Engaging Women as Leaders to End Poverty on a Livable Planet
Watch the replay of this event, which was broadcast live from the 68th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women. It features two panel discussions, the first a discussion among national policymakers who are working to increase the number of women in leadership and peacemaking roles, and to promote legal reform and progress against gender-based violence. The second panel features speakers from international organizations on the role of civil society and how partnerships can support female leadership.
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Policy Research Working Papers
Does Unequal Tax Burden Contribute to Women-Owned Businesses Leaving the Tax Net?
Using data from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this study’s findings suggest that gender disparities in tax compliance are not simply due to differences in firm characteristics but may also be due to biases in tax declaration and enforcement processes. The results show that women-owned businesses are more likely to report lower sales and tax liabilities than men-owned businesses, but they pay as much as men-owned businesses in taxes, suggesting that they are subject to a higher effective tax rate.
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Policy Research Working Papers
Breadwinners and Caregivers: Examining the Global Relationship between Gender Norms and Economic Behavior
Gender norms are often emphasized to help explain gender gaps in the labor market. This paper examines global patterns of gender attitudes and norms toward the stereotypical gender roles of the male breadwinner and female caregiver, and broad support for gender equality in opportunities, and studies their relationship with economic behavior. The findings suggest an underestimation of the support for gender equality globally, with implications for policy.
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