The global pace of reforms toward equal treatment of women under the law has slumped to a 20-year low, constituting a potential impediment to economic growth at a critical time for the global economy.
The World Bank report said that in 2022, the global average score on its women, business and the law index rose just half a point to 77.1 per cent, indicating that women, on average, enjoy barely 77 per cent of the legal rights that men do.
The global bank specifically lauded Benin, the Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Malawi, Senegal and Uganda for enacting 18 positive legal changes to boost women’s representations, adding that the sub-Saharan Africa made significant progress last year as the region accounted for over half of all reforms worldwide in 2022.
The report noted that although great achievements had been made over the last five decades, more efforts were needed worldwide to ensure that good intentions are accompanied by tangible results.
The report stressed that with the current pace of reform in many countries, a woman entering the workforce today would retire before she would be able to gain the same rights as men.
In reaction to the findings of the report, the Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, Indermit Gill said: “At a time when global economic growth is slowing, all countries need to mobilise their full productive capacity to confront the confluence of crises besetting them. Governments can’t afford to sideline as much as half of their population.
“Denying equal rights to women across much of the world is not just unfair to women, it is a barrier to countries’ ability to promote green, resilient and inclusive development.”
The report also revealed that closing the gender employment gap could raise long-term GDP per capita by nearly 20 per cent on average across countries while estimating global economic gains of five to six trillion dollars if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men do.
