World Bank report finds women’s economic rights only half-enforced

WASHINGTON--Laws designed to ensure equal economic opportunities for women are only half-enforced on average across the world, signaling that barriers limiting women’s full contribution to growth and prosperity are far steeper than previously understood, according to the World Bank Group’s latest Women, Business and the Law report. The report finds that even if existing laws were fully enforced, women would still enjoy barely two-thirds of the legal rights of men.

For the first time, the report assesses not only the degree of equality in laws on the books, but also the extent to which those laws are enforced. Legal experts surveyed estimated that laws that encourage full economic participation by women are only half-enforced, while economies on average have in place fewer than half of the policies and services needed for enforcement. The World Bank reports that only 4 percent of women globally live in economies that provide nearly full legal equality, a shortfall that reduces growth potential and job creation.

For the Netherlands, the World Bank’s WBL snapshots show a high level of legal equality under the earlier WBL 1.0 scoring, with the Netherlands scoring 97.5 out of 100 in the 2022 index.  In the World Bank’s newer WBL 2.0 framework, a Netherlands economy profile published as part of the WBL 2024 rollout illustrates the broader shift in measurement, showing the Netherlands with a 90.0 legal frameworks score, a 60.8 supportive frameworks score, and a 79.4 expert opinions score.  The profile reflects a recurring theme in the global findings: stronger performance on laws on the books than on the policy and institutional supports that help make those rights effective in practice.

“On paper, most countries are doing reasonably well: the average country scores 67 out of 100 on the adequacy of laws to enable economic equality between women and men,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s Chief economist and senior vice president for development economics. “But when it comes to enforcing the laws, the average score drops to 53. And when the systems needed to implement those rights are assessed, the adequacy score is just 47. These numbers reflect huge opportunity gaps, and the findings of this report provide policymakers with intelligence to reverse the decline in the growth potential of developing economies.”

Women, Business, and the Law assesses women’s economic participation across 10 key areas, including safety from violence, access to childcare, entrepreneurship, employment protections, asset ownership, and retirement security. The report identifies safety from violence as a major shortcoming affecting women’s ability to work consistently. “True equality begins with safety. Whether at home, at work, or in public, women deserve protection to thrive,” said Norman Loayza, director of the World Bank’s Policy Indicators Group. “Globally, we’re falling short. We have only a third of the safety laws we need, and even then, enforcement is failing 80 percent of the time.”

Tea Trumbic, manager for the Women, Business and the Law project and the report’s lead author, underscored the urgency of action as workforce demographics shift. “Over the next decade, 1.2 billion young people, half of them girls, will enter the workforce. Many will come of age in regions where women face the biggest barriers, and where the GDP boost that would result from their participation is most needed. Ensuring equal opportunity for women here, and everywhere, benefits societies as a whole, not just women. It’s an economic must-have, in short, not just a nice-to-have.”

The report also points to persistent barriers in entrepreneurship. While women can start businesses on the same legal terms as men in nearly all economies, only about half promote equal access to credit, limiting women entrepreneurs’ ability to finance and scale. Childcare remains another major constraint: less than half of the 190 economies covered have laws providing financial or tax support for families, and among those economies only 30 percent of the policies needed to support affordable and high-quality childcare services are in place.

Despite these gaps, the World Bank reports continued legal reform momentum. Over the past two years, 68 economies enacted 113 positive legal reforms across most areas of women’s economic life, with notable progress in entrepreneurship and safety from violence. Sub-Saharan Africa implemented 33 reforms over the past two years, the largest number of any region. Egypt was identified as the top reformer over the period, with changes including extended paid parental leave for mothers, the introduction of paid leave for fathers, equal pay requirements, and provisions supporting flexible work arrangements.

Caribbean context: mixed economy scores within Latin America and the Caribbean

While the new report’s headline message is global, available World Bank economy snapshots illustrate how Caribbean jurisdictions have scored under the WBL 1.0 approach. In the World Bank’s 2022 snapshots, the Latin America and the Caribbean regional average is listed at 80.4.  Within that context, Barbados is listed at 80.0, Trinidad and Tobago at 75.0, and The Bahamas at 81.3, while Jamaica is listed at 68.1.  These snapshots underscore the report’s central point that scores can vary widely across economies, and that progress depends not only on legal texts but also on practical implementation and the systems that support enforcement.

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