Having laws is good. Being able to implement them would be better. This is the message delivered in a World Bank report called “Women, Business and the Law,” published on 4 March 2024. Based on a study of laws but also of the frameworks for their implementation, the institution concludes that women have some two-thirds of the rights men enjoy.
The damning details are in the laws and policies--or the lack of them--required to make major laws succeed. For example, while 98 economies have systems in place that guarantee equal pay for men and women, only 35 have adopted pay transparency measures or enforcement measures to actually close the gap. Only half of the women in the economies studied enjoy equal pay and access to well-paid jobs.
The analysis also looked at safety, mobility, work, pay, marriage, parenthood, childcare, entrepreneurship, assets and pensions, and found particularly high gender inequalities in safety and childcare. “Shortcomings in these two areas discourage women from entering the labour market,” says the report.
It added that, given the inequalities across this list of factors, no country is really offering a level playing field for women. “Not even a single high-income economy.”
“Women have the power to boost a flagging global economy, but discriminatory laws and practices in every corner of the globe prevent them from working or starting businesses on an equal footing with men,” says Indermit Gill, chief economist at the World Bank Group. “Reducing these inequalities could increase global GDP by more than 20% and double the global growth rate over the next decade.”
How Luxembourg stacks up
Luxembourg achieved a 100 in the World Bank’s original scoring, making it one of the most egalitarian economies worldwide alongside Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden (all of which also scored 100).
Strictly in terms of its laws, Luxembourg came in with a score of 85, behind Italy (95), Portugal (92.5), Belgium (90), Canada (90), France (90), Netherlands (90), Spain (90), Australia (90), Slovenia (90), Greece (87.5) and Norway (87.5).
In terms of the implementation of those laws, Luxembourg scored 70, behind Canada (97.5), France (87.5), United Kingdom (87.5), Germany (82.5), Austria (82.5), Ireland (81.7), Taiwan (79.2), Finland (77.5), Norway (75.8) and the United States (75).
Further details on the scores are not available in the report, and the World Bank database only includes data for the "100", which does not provide any insight into what is wrong with the other two scores.
This article was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.