Of the 141 economies studied in Women, Business and the Law 2012: Removing Barriers to Economic Inclusion, 103 impose at least one legal difference on the basis of gender. Economies with greater legal differentiation between men and women continue to have, on average, lower female participation in the formal labor force.
UN Women informs us that “women perform 66 percent of the world’s work, produce 50 percent of the food, but earn 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property.”To shed light on why this grim statistic still holds true, Women, Business and the Law aims to examine legal differentiations on the basis of gender in 141 of the world’s economies.