Women's Economic Rights Only Half-Enforced: World Bank Report

• A World Bank report reveals that laws regarding women’s economic equality are enforced only to a certain extent
• Even with full enforcement of laws, women would enjoy only two-thirds of men’s legal rights

According to a new report by the World Bank Group, laws that promote equal economic opportunities for women are, on average, only enforced to a level of 50 percent around the world.

This is an indication that the gap between women’s contribution to growth and prosperity is more pronounced than expected. Even if the laws are enforced to the fullest, women would still have only two-thirds of the rights that men enjoy.

For the first time, the new Women, Business, and the Law report examines not only the equality of laws but also their enforcement. According to legal experts, laws that support the full economic contribution of women are only enforced to the level of 50 percent, an indication that governments have a lot of work to do.

Despite the enactment of new equal opportunity laws, most economies are yet to put in place necessary policies and services to ensure effective enforcement. Only 4 percent of women around the world live in economies that enjoy near-full equality.

“While most countries do relatively well on paper, with an average score of 67 out of 100 on the adequacy of laws supporting economic equality between women and men, the average score falls to 53 on the enforcement of these laws,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics.

“The systems needed to enforce these rights score even lower, at 47. This is where there are huge missed opportunities, and these results can help policymakers address the lost growth potential in developing economies.”

The Women, Business, and the Law report examines women’s economic empowerment in 10 critical areas: safety from violence, childcare, business operations, employment, asset ownership, and retirement.

It points out that safety from violence is a critical area where the world is falling short, which impacts women’s ability to go to work every day.

“Equality starts with safety,” said Norman Loayza, Director of the World Bank’s Policy Indicators Group. “We are failing the world. Only one-third of the necessary laws for safety are in place, and enforcement rates are 80 percent worse.”

Entrepreneurship is another area that scores low. Although women can conduct business on an equal footing with men in almost all economies, still half of them do not have equal access to credit, which is essential for women entrepreneurs.

But in the report, it was revealed that fewer than half of the 190 economies covered in the report have laws in place that offer financial or tax benefits to families. Of these, only 30 percent have policies in place to support the provision of affordable and quality childcare services.