About Women, Business and the Law

For men and women throughout the developing world the chance to start and run a business or to get a good job is the surest hope of a way out of poverty. Creating the kind of environment in which this hope can flourish  -- for women as well as men -- requires effort in a broad range of areas, from security and infrastructure to education and health. It also requires well-tailored, accessible business regulation that gives women with initiative and ability the opportunity to build a business or have a good job, without depending on connections, wealth or power.

In recent years, an increasing number of governments have been focusing on creating a sounder business environment. And we have seen increasing evidence of the impact of these reforms on registration of formal firms, access to finance and job creation. But how to be sure that as governments improve business regulation, women entrepreneurs and workers benefit alongside men? Answering this question requires an understanding of many factors, from access to good basic infrastructure, education and healthcare, to social and cultural norms.

Another important piece of the puzzle has to do with the laws, regulations and institutions that differentiate between women and men in ways that affect their incentives or capacity to work or to set up and run a business. Women, Business and the Law focuses on filling in some of the information gaps for this particular piece of the puzzle.

Women, Business and the Law seeks to promote equality, a central pillar of the international human rights regime. With 187 current States Parties, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has been ratified almost universally and serves as the most important international instrument protecting women’s human rights. While coverage of the Convention is comprehensive, a substantial portion of the text is devoted specifically to women’s economic and social rights, and each indicator in Women, Business and the Law corresponds to one or more of the rights contained within CEDAW. The Women, Business and the Law 2012 report was made possible with funding from the Nordic Trust Fund for Human Rights.

Women, Business and the Law focuses on setting out in an objective fashion legal differentiations on the basis of gender in 142 economies around the world, covering 6 areas -- accessing institutions, using property, getting a job, providing incentives to work, building credit, and going to court. Women, Business, and the Law 2012 is the second in this series of reports and has significantly expanded in depth of data covered. The data in this report are current as of March 2011.

These indicators were constructed by using codified sources of national law -- such as Constitutions, gender equality laws, marriage and family codes, personal status codes, labor laws, passport procedures, citizenship rules, inheritance statutes, codes of civil procedures, education acts, tax regulations and social security codes. Broadly based legal questions were posed to local legal experts who are listed under our ‘Contributors’ tab. Their survey responses were compiled and where possible, we link to the original text of laws. Please note that as reforms and changes to web pages are ongoing, we cannot guarantee that all laws and links on this site are up-to-date. Responses from Doing Business 2012 surveys on getting credit, enforcing contracts, and employing workers were also used. The data from the surveys were checked for accuracy by referencing primary legal sources, resulting in revision or expansion of the information collected. For more information on our sources, visit the Methodology section of the site.

This project recognizes the many issues that affect women’s economic opportunities, but focuses on one particular area: aspects of the formal legal and regulatory environment that enable women to manage their own businesses or find and maintain jobs. Although there was an effort in this second edition to reduce some of the methodological shortcomings of the pilot, the report still represents a partial effort on several levels, both in the selection of the broad topic areas and within each topic area itself. Examples of things the report does not cover include the following:

• Women, Business and the Law does not cover areas such as affirmative action and voting rights.
• The project focuses on laws that govern the formal economy although we recognize that many women in developing countries are employed in, or start businesses in, the informal economy. The reasons for this focus are, the difficulty of identifying the often unwritten rules of the informal economy; and the underlying premise that when women move from the informal to the formal economy, they obtain greater opportunities in higher-paying industries, greater social protection and formal mechanisms for recourse should their rights be denied. However, in practice, all the indicators other than getting a job and providing incentives to work cover regulations that affect women in both the formal and informal sectors.
• Customary law, or laws that are based on the accepted customs or practices of a particular group, can exist in parallel with common or civil law regimes. Where such parallel legal systems exist, customary law can determine a woman's rights in marriage or to property and inheritance, often granting women different rights than those they would be granted under the formal legal system. For the first time, the current edition of Women, Business and the Law attempts, albeit partially, to cover customary law by examining whether customary law is recognizes as a source of law in the constitution, and whether it is exempt from constitutional provisions on non-discrimination. The actual application of customary law is not covered, due to the difficulties in defining its rules.
• In focusing on written legislation, the project recognizes often large gaps between law on the books and actual practice; women do not always have access to the equality that may be theirs under formal law. However, the project’s focus on formal law is consistent with the idea that facilitating the entry of women into the labor force involves improving the regulatory environment for women, stimulating business and job creation, and making businesses and the overall economy more competitive.