World Bank – Moving towards gender equality: A new index looks at legal reforms to help women’s economic inclusion. Do you think the world is becoming more equal for women at work? The recently published Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform gives us some insight. While achieving gender equality requires a broad range of efforts over time, the study focuses on the law as an important first step to providing an objective measure of how specific regulations affect women’s incentives to participate in economic activity. What is captured in the Women, Business and the Law index? The study introduces a new index structured around eight indicators that cover different stages of a woman’s working life, which have significant implications for the economic standing of women: Going Places, Starting a Job, Getting Paid, Getting Married, Having Children, Running a Business, Managing Assets and Getting a Pension – 8 Indicators that Measure How Laws Affect Women Through Their Working Lives –

For instance, if a woman cannot leave her home without permission can she effectively look for a job or go on an interview? Even if she is hired, will she need to quit if she gets married or has children? Will she have to move to a lower paying job because she must balance work with caring for her family? And what if the law does not allow her to manage her own assets, affecting her ability to start a business? At the end of her career, will she have to retire earlier than a man, giving her a longer retirement but a smaller pension to live on because she worked for fewer years with lower pay? As you can see, these indicators are closely associated with outcomes that relate to women’s economic empowerment, in particular women’s labor force participation. The study found that in economies that conducted reforms, more women work and are paid better…”