The World Bank releases Women, Business and the Law 2024 Report

Posted 06 Mar 2024

Updated 27 Mar 2024

2 min read

The Report measures the laws that affect women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies.
- The assesses economies across 10 indicators: Safety, Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Childcare, Entrepreneurship, Assets and Pension.

Key findings of the report
- It measures the gap between women’s legal rights on paper and reality.
  - Globally, women have just two-thirds of the rights of men in the workplace.
  - Indian women have just 60% of the legal rights compared to men.
- Women earn just 77 cents for every dollar paid to men.
  - Less than 20% economies adopted enforcement mechanisms to address the pay gap.
- Nearly all economies performed poorly in Safety and Childcare.
  - Women have a third of the legal protection they need from domestic violence, sexual harassment, child marriage, and femicide.
  - Women spend nearly 2.4 hours more a day on unpaid care work than men, much of it involving childcare.

Recommendations
- Expand maternity and paternity leave provisions.
- Enact legal mandate for equal pay, and lift restrictions on women’s work in industrial jobs.
- Implement legally binding quotas for women on corporate boards.
- Ensure equal retirement benefits for women, accounting for childcare related work absences.

The Code on Wages, 2019: It prohibits gender discrimination in matters related to wages and recruitment of employees for the same work or work of similar nature.
Maternity Benefit Amendment Act, 2017: It provides for maternity benefits and creche facility in every establishment having fifty or more employees.
Sexual Harassment of Women at Work Place (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH Act).

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