The global gender gap for women in the workplace is far wider than previously thought, according to the World Bank.
When legal differences involving violence and childcare are taken into account, women enjoy fewer than two-thirds the rights of men in most countries around the world.
The World Bank’s latest ‘Women, Business, and the Law’ report says women on average enjoy just 64% of the legal protections that men do — far fewer than the previous estimate of 77%.
Although laws on the books imply that women enjoy roughly two-thirds the rights of men, countries on average have established less than 40% of the systems needed for full implementation.
For example, some 98 economies have enacted legislation mandating equal pay for women for work of equal value. Yet only 35 economies — fewer than one out of every five — have adopted pay-transparency measures or enforcement mechanisms to address the pay gap.
“Women have the power to turbocharge the sputtering global economy,” said Indermit Gill, chief economist of the World Bank Group and senior vice-president (Development Economics).
“Yet, all over the world, discriminatory laws and practices prevent women from working or starting businesses on an equal footing with men. Closing this gap could raise global gross domestic product by more than 20% — essentially doubling the global growth rate over the next decade — but reforms have slowed to a crawl.”
In 2023, governments were assertive in advancing three categories of legal equal-opportunity reforms — pay, parental rights, and workplace protections. Still, nearly all countries performed poorly in the two categories being tracked for the first time — access to childcare and women’s safety.
Although 151 economies have laws in place prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace, just 39 have laws prohibiting it in public spaces. This often prevents women from using public transportation to get to work.
Most countries also score poorly for childcare laws. Women spend an average of 2.4 more hours a day on unpaid care work than men — much of it on the care of children.
Today, only 78 economies provide some financial or tax support for parents with young children. Only 62 economies have quality standards governing childcare services, without which women might think twice about going to work while they have children in their care.
Women also seem to face significant obstacles in other areas. In the area of entrepreneurship, for example, just one in every five economies mandates gender-sensitive criteria for public procurement processes, meaning women are largely cut out of a $10-tn-a-year economic opportunity.
In the area of pay, women earn just 77 cents for every $1 paid to men. The rights gap extends all the way to retirement.
In 62 economies, the ages at which men and women can retire are not the same. Women tend to live longer than men, but because they receive lower pay while they work, take time off when they have children, and retire earlier, they end up with smaller pension benefits and greater financial insecurity in old age.
