Following extensive consultations with gender experts, academics, civil society representatives, and colleagues within the World Bank Group, the Women, Business and the Law team designs questionnaires that are administered to a large sample of lawyers, judges, academics, and members of civil society organizations in 190 economies. These local experts—who complete the questionnaires on a pro bono basis—are identified by their expertise in the various areas of law covered by the report.

The team further engages with local experts through conference calls, written correspondence, and in-person meetings on country visits. All questionnaire responses are then analyzed, with each answer verified against the corresponding primary legal source. Lastly, the data undergoes a thorough internal review process in which comments on the data are received from across the World Bank Group.

The Women, Business and the Law 2021 index consists of 35 scored questions across eight indicators: Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension. In addition to the data published in the seven Women, Business and the Law reports, the team has recalculated the 35 scored data points and built a 50-year panel showcasing the evolution of women’s rights from 1970 until today.

Information on the construction of the panel, the methodology, and the scoring for each question can be found in the report's Data Notes, available on the Women, Business and the Law website at: wbl.worldbank.org/en/methodology.

The Women, Business and the Law index is based on statistically significant associations with outcomes related to women’s economic empowerment, in particular with women’s labor force participation as well as with other outcomes of interest. The first seven indicators demonstrate statistically significant associations with one or more of the following outcomes even after controlling for the log of GNI per capita and region fixed effects: the female to male labor force participation rate ratio from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators database, the female to male wage ratio from the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, the percentage of firms with a female top manager from the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys and the percentage of females (age 15+) who report owning financial accounts from the World Bank’s Global FINDEX database. For the final indicator, Pension, a statistically significant association was found with the percentage of females (age 15+) who report saving or setting aside any money for old age in the past year from the World Bank’s Global FINDEX database.

In addition to the association of indicators with outcomes, Women, Business and the Law employs a thorough review of the economic literature that supports each indicator. This review demonstrates how legislation influences women’s equality of opportunity during different phases of their working lives and affects their economic inclusion.

Finally, to ensure their relevance to women’s human and economic rights, each indicator is supported by the international legal framework set out in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Questions on sexual harassment under the Workplace indicator, divorce and domestic violence questions under the Marriage indicator, and childcare credits under the Pension indicator are also supplemented by the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (DEVAW) and by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women General Recommendations (CEDAW GR). Finally, questions on maternity leave for the Parenthood indicator use the International Labor Organization (ILO) Maternity Protection Convention N. 183 of 2000 as a benchmark.

Women, Business and the Law 2021 provides scores for each economy covered. Thirty-five data points are scored across eight indicators of four or five binary questions, with each indicator representing a different phase of a woman’s career. Indicator-level scores are obtained by calculating the unweighted average of the questions within that indicator and scaling the result to 100. Overall scores are then calculated by taking the average of each indicator, with 100 representing the highest possible score.

Policymakers, international organizations, civil society organizations, gender equality advocates, investors, and researchers can use Women, Business and the Law findings in many ways. For instance, the data can be used to identify good practices and compare countries on how conducive their regulatory environment is for women business owners and workers. Women, Business and the Law findings can also be used to assess the economic impact of laws and regulations on women’s prospects as employees and entrepreneurs, bolstering traditional human rights arguments with economic research. Further, the findings can be used to influence legislative change, make informed decisions regarding policy reform and private investment, and support research on institutions and regulation.

Over the past 10 years, Women, Business and the Law has taken as its starting point that the law can help women reach their full potential. It is the framework by which governments can identify barriers to women’s success and, by removing them, boost their labor force participation. However, for women to thrive in the world of work, the laws that guarantee their equality of opportunity must be meaningfully implemented and enforced.

Women, Business and the Law recognizes that there is often a gap between the laws on the books and actual practice. While the findings of Women, Business and the Law 2021 do not cover implementation or practice, the study proposes a new area of research on access to justice through a gender lens. By strengthening the rule of law and narrowing inequality, access to justice can be a fundamental component of sustainable economic growth. With this research, the project hopes to focus on the ways in which women’s access to justice can be ensured both through implementation of the good practice legislation covered by the project’s indicators and through the enactment of specific laws and regulations. 

Women, Business and the Law focuses on the formal legal and regulatory environment determining whether women can open their own businesses or work. Although many women in developing economies start businesses or work in the informal economy, a goal of this project is to define some of the features of the legal framework that make it more difficult for women to transition from the informal to the formal economy. Further, to maintain comparability across economies, Women, Business and the Law includes an assumption that the woman in question is employed in the formal sector. However, many of the indicators have direct relevance for women who work in the informal sector, for example laws affecting women’s ability to own or inherit property, or protections against domestic violence. Indirectly, legal protections affecting the formal sector provide a foundation for economic inclusion and offer incentives for women to be employed in or start businesses in the formal sector. 

Women, Business and the Law data is based on codified laws only and in some common law jurisdictions, legal precedent. Religious or customary practices that are not codified are not reflected in the data. Unwritten social or cultural norms—which may have a large impact on women’s lives—are not considered either. This limitation ensures that the indicators remain actionable, because the law is what policymakers can change.