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.
Download Report Executive Summary
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
Courses
Geographic Considerations in Evaluating Women’s Employment Opportunities
The course provides a comprehensive understanding of how geographic factors influence women's access to employment and business opportunities. Through the lens of the novel Geospatial Women's Employment Analytical Framework (GeoWEAF), this course examines the intersection of geography and gender, highlighting how the characteristics of the environment where women live can either enable or hinder their empowerment.
Read more
Courses
Women, Business and the Law
This e-learning course presents the World Bank’s influential Women, Business, and the Law (WBL) index. The course provides an overview of how the law restricts women's economic opportunities in many countries, hindering economic growth. The course explores recent literature, internationally recognized standards, the WBL methodology, and legal frameworks in 190 economies, providing insights for policy design.
Read more
Events
Data on the Global State of Legal Gender Equality
During the 2024 IMF and World Bank Group Annual Meetings, members of the Women, Business and the Law team demonstrated how policymakers, civil society representatives and researchers may use data from the report to help them design ways to close global gender gaps and drive economic development. Click below to watch a video of the event.
Read more
Publications
Business Ready (B-READY) 2024
The Business Ready (B-READY) 2024 report assesses the regulatory framework and public services directed at firms, and the efficiency with which regulatory framework and public services are combined in practice.
Read more
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.
Read more
Other Links