The World Bank says 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.

In a statement accompanying The Women, Business and the Law 2023 report, Word Bank chief economist Indermit Gill said the potential impediment comes at a critical time for the global economy.

He said: “At a time 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.”

Gill: Mobilise full productive capacity

Currently, equality of economic opportunity for women is highest in The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development high-income economies but important reforms have continued in developing economies.

Sub-Saharan Africa made significant progress last year. The region accounted for over half of all reforms worldwide in 2022, with seven economies—Benin, the Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Malawi, Senegal, and Uganda—enacting 18 positive legal changes.

World Bank data shows that worldwide, nearly 2.4 billion women of working age still do not have the same rights as men.

Closing the gender employment gap could raise long-term gross domestic product per capita by nearly 20 percent on average across countries with studies estimating global economic gains of $5 to $6 trillion if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men do.

“Although great achievements have been made over the last five decades, more needs to be done worldwide to ensure that good intentions are accompanied by tangible results—that is, equal opportunity under the law for women.

“At the current pace of reform, in many countries a woman entering the workforce today will retire before she is able to gain the same rights as men,” the report notes.

Women, Business and the Law 2023 assesses 190 countr ies’ laws and regulations in eight areas related to women’s economic participation—mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pensions.

In 2022, the global average score on the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law index rose just half a point to 77.1—indicating women, on average, enjoy barely 77 percent of the legal rights that men do.

The post  Slow women reforms Worry world bank first appeared on The Nation Online.