The economic crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic is having a profound detrimental effect on most people around the world. Yet, it has impacted men and women differently. Women are more likely to work in health care, unpaid care, and domestic work, making them more susceptible to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Women still earn less than men for equally valued jobs, bear more of the childcare burden, and face a higher risk of violence in their homes. The pandemic has widened the gender gap in labor force participation, risking decades of progress for women as workers and entrepreneurs. As we write this, the COVID-19 pandemic is still claiming lives and livelihoods, and government policies to address the gender effects of the pandemic have not been enough given the magnitude of the challenge.
According to the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2021 report, women still have only three-fourths of the legal rights of men, on average around the world. This matters because better performance in the areas measured by the Women, Business, and the Law index is associated with a narrower gender gap in development outcomes, more female policymakers, higher female labor force participation, and lower vulnerable employment. A legal environment that encourages women’s economic inclusion can also make them less vulnerable in the face of a crisis.
Women, Business, and the Law measures how laws and regulations affect women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies. The 2021 edition covers reforms conducted between September 2019 and October 2020. The index analyzes economic rights during different milestones in a woman’s working life through eight indicators ranging from being able to move freely to rights in the workplace, through rights during marriage and after having children, how the law prevents or allows them to run their own businesses and manage assets all the way to retirement.
In ten countries, women are on equal legal standing with men across all areas measured – Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Sweden. This year, Ireland joined the group by reforming parental leave and Portugal equalized rules for remarriage.
Twenty-seven economies implemented reforms aimed at equality of opportunity across seven of the eight indicators measured by Women, Business and the Law. Economies in the OECD high-income and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions reformed the most. Yet, the MENA economies still have the most room to improve.
The reform effort is, however, insufficient in the vast majority of countries. Today fewer than half of economies worldwide (90) have mandated equal remuneration for work of equal value. And in 88 economies, laws restrict the jobs and hours that women can work, affecting 2.6 billion women. This leads to occupational segregation, which has resulted in women being overrepresented in jobs that are more affected by COVID-19 disruptions, such as education, retail, tourism, hospitality, and domestic services. While the Pay indicator, which measures job restrictions and the right to equal pay, recorded the most improvement in scores in the new Women, Business and the Law 2021 report, it is also the indicator with the second-lowest performance out of the eight indicators.
