Equal treatment of women under the law is necessary for dynamic & resilient economies. The 2023 report finds that 176 countries maintain legal barriers to women’s full economic participation.
This brief presents new data collected by the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law project on childcare legislation in 95 economies around the world.
This two-part policy brief series traces the development and reform of law in India related to three critical areas that affect women’s rights and economic opportunities. Part II: Answers from the Movement on Protection from Violence.
This two-part policy brief series traces the development and reform of law in India related to three critical areas that affect women’s rights and economic opportunities. Part I: Answers from the Movement on Equal Inheritance Rights.
This Brief analyzes laws from 190 economies to assess the extent and coverage of current legislative safeguards women from cyber harassment, one of the many forms of cyber violence.
This paper aims to provide global evidence on whether and what attributes of laws governing the provision of childcare services affect women's labor market outcomes.
This thematic note emphasizes the role of laws and regulations in safeguarding women’s economic opportunities, for the purpose of informing the update of the World Bank Group’s Gender Strategy.
This brief provides insight into how Ethiopia increased the duration of paid maternity leave from 90 to 120 days and introduced three days of paid paternity leave in 2019.
This Brief presents data collected by the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law (WBL) project on selected contours of National Financial Inclusion Strategies that can support women’s entrepreneurship.
Featuring WE Empower Challenge awardees and finalists who share their stories and discuss laws that facilitate women’s entrepreneurship as well as remaining opportunities for legal reform to further advance women’s economic empowerment.
Documenting the relationship between legal gender equality and the use of financial services, using individual-level data from 148 developed and developing economies.
This pilot project presents a new conceptual framework for measuring the implementation gap by examining supportive frameworks for primary legislation and expert opinions of laws in practice.
Women, Business and the Law presents a new conceptual framework for measuring the legal environment around the provision of childcare services. Related research provides further analysis of the data.
This working paper reviews the empirical literature on the impact of gender discriminatory laws on women’s outcomes across various domains constituting Women, Business and the Law’s measure of gender inequality.
Differences women face in their working lives relative to men can result in unequal economic outcomes in retirement. This case study examines the gender gap in access to pensions.