Steps towards gender equality taken in 2022 lowest since start of the century: World Bank

Only 34 gender-related legal reforms across 18 economies were recorded in 2022 worldwide. This is the lowest number in a year since 2001, according to a recent report published by the World Bank.

Meanwhile, the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law (WBL) index, which is based on assessing laws affecting women’s economic participation across the world, saw a marginal increase of half a point to reach an overall global score of 77.1 in its 2023 edition. “Most reforms focused on increasing paid leave for parents and fathers, removing restrictions on women’s work, and mandating equal pay,” said the report.

Globally, women enjoy only 77 percent of the legal rights that men do, the study said. Moreover, as many as 2.4 billion women of working age around the world live in countries that do not grant them the same rights as men.

India retained its overall score of 74.4, which it has held since 2021. However, the country’s score puts it behind several lesser-developed economies such as Zimbabwe, Congo, Ghana and Nepal. While India got a perfect score when it comes to its laws and regulations related to workplace, mobility and marriage, the country scored a mere 25 points out of 100 for laws related to pay.

Reform fatigue

Between 1970 and 2023, the global WBL score went up by 68.34 percent, rising from 45.8 to 77.1 points. The highest gains were recorded in the first decade of this century with more than 600 gender-related measures being recorded between 2000 and 2009. A peak of 73 reforms were recorded in 2002 and 2008.

According to the World Bank, it will take around 1,500 more legal reforms to attain substantial gender equality across the globe. However, the number of such steps per year has seen a decline since 2008. “Reform fatigue seems to have set in, particularly in areas that involve long-established norms, such as the rights of women to inherit and own property,” the World Bank report said.

Based on these estimates, at the current pace, it could take at least 50 years to achieve legal gender equality globally when it comes to women’s economic participation. This means that a young woman entering the workforce today will not be able to enjoy a world with gender-equal rights during her career.

Some are doing better than the others

Across the world, 14 high-income economies were found to have laws that gave women the same rights as men in all aspects, achieving a perfect WBL score. Although there has been progress in all countries, with all nations introducing at least one reform since 1970, it has been uneven.

As many as 176 countries have room to improve when it comes to regulations that impact the economic participation of women. OEDC or Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, which are all high-income economies, had the highest average score of 95.3, while MENA (Middle East and North Africa) had the lowest average score of 53.2.

Countries with larger gender gaps are catching up

Data shows that countries that have had lower levels of gender equality historically are catching up with the rest of the world.

MENA countries as well as nations such as Bahrain, Botswana, Congo and the United Arab Emirates have recorded some of the highest growth rates in the WBL index since 2000.

Between 2000 and 2023, the overall score of MENA countries went up by 52 percent. Meanwhile, the sub-Saharan Africa region saw an increase of 36.7 percent during this period.

Uneven progress

Most legal reforms measured by WBL till date across the world have been aimed at addressing domestic violence, prohibiting gender discrimination in employment and legislating against sexual harassment.

Indicator-wise, workplace parenthood and marriage have seen the most number of legal reforms over the years. On the other hand, mobility, assets and entrepreneurship are the three areas that have seen the least number of reforms.