Today, women have just three-quarters of the legal rights of men. In 1970, it was less than half. The Women, Business and the Law 2020 report presented results from our recent effort to document how laws have changed since 1970. This exceptional dataset has already facilitated ground-breaking research that shows that a country’s performance on the Women, Business and the Law index is associated with more women in the labor force, a smaller wage gap between men and women, and greater investments in health and education. We hope that sharing the data and reform descriptions on our website will lead to more evidence that will inspire policymakers to change their laws so that more women can contribute to economic growth and development.

Analysis of 1,518 reforms across 50 years and 190 economies yields some interesting insights. First of all, significant progress has been made around the world. Second, the pace of reform has varied across regions. The high-income OECD and Sub-Saharan Africa regions have noted the biggest progress both in terms of volume of reforms and improvement in their average WBL index scores. The third interesting finding is that progress has been uneven across the eight different areas of the law measured by Women, Business and the Law. Most reforms were recorded in the areas of workplace protections and laws dealing with working parents. Despite the progress that has been made, more work remains.
Figure 1. The pace of reform has differed across regions

While the pace of reform has differed significantly, there has been substantial improvement in all regions during the five decades covered by the data. Sub-Saharan Africa saw the greatest improvement, with an 81% change in average score between 1970 and today from 38.5 to 69.9 (Figure 1).

While the speed of reform has differed significantly across economies, some regional patterns prevail. The regional average score in 2019 is highest in high-income OECD economies but in 1970, it was economies in the Europe and Central Asia region that scored the highest. High-income OECD economies made significant strides in legal gender reform throughout the period covered by the data. Indeed, at 70.2%, the percentage change in the average WBL score of high-income OECD economies was the second highest amongst the regions. The 1970s were a particularly reformatory decade for gender laws in high-income OECD economies and, by the end of the decade, this region had surpassed Eastern Europe and Central Asia to claim the top spot, which it retains today. These two regions accounted for half of the total reforms recorded between 1970 and 2019 (Figure 2). Figure 3. The pace of reform varies across the indicators Figure 4. Top 10 most improved economies

Figure 2. Half of the reforms were enacted by Sub-Saharan Africa and OECD high-income countries

Read further from the source and the 1500 reforms using the second link Reforms published in the Women, Business and the Law 2020 report took place over the two-year period from June 2, 2017 to September 1, 2019. Forty economies from all regions and income groups made the economic empowerment of women a priority by executing 62 reforms facilitating women’s entry into the workforce. Access all reforms by Economy or by Indicator in the drop-down menu below.