Women yet to achieve full legal equality in economic opportunities  — World Bank

Not a single country in the world has secured all the legal rights necessary for women’s full economic participation, a new global report by the World Bank Group has revealed, underscoring the depth of gender inequality embedded in legal and institutional systems worldwide.

The findings, contained in Women, Business and the Law 2026, show that despite decades of reforms and global commitments to gender equality, women across the world continue to face entrenched legal and structural barriers that limit their economic potential.

“Not a single economy has secured all legal rights needed for women’s full economic participation,” the report states, describing the situation as unfinished business in the global push for gender equality.

According to the report launched last week, laws designed to ensure equal economic opportunities for women are only half-enforced on average across the globe.

Launching the report, Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics noted that even as they make progress in establishing new equal-opportunity laws, economies on average have in place fewer than half of the policies and services needed for enforcement.

“On paper, most countries are doing reasonably well: the average country scores 67 out of 100 on the adequacy of laws to enable economic equality between women and men. But when it comes to enforcing the laws, the average score drops to 53. And when the systems needed to implement those rights are assessed, the adequacy score is just 47.

These numbers reflect huge opportunity gaps— and the findings of this report provide policymakers with intelligence to reverse the decline in the growth potential of developing economies,” Gill noted.

Women, Business, and the Law assesses the global state of women’s economic participation across 10 key areas, including safety from violence, access to childcare, entrepreneurship, employment protections, asset ownership, and retirement security.

 It identifies safety from violence as a key shortcoming, leaving women less able to work consistently.

“True equality begins with safety. Whether at home, at work, or in public, women deserve protection to thrive,” said Norman Loayza, Director of the World Bank’s Policy Indicators Group.

 “Globally, we’re falling short. We have only a third of the safety laws we need, and even then, enforcement is failing 80% of the time,” she added.

Tea Trumbic, Manager for the Women, Business and the Law project and the report’s lead author, said: “Over the next decade, 1.2 billion young people—half of them girls—will enter the workforce.

Many will come of age in regions where women face the biggest barriers, and where the GDP boost that would result from their participation is most needed. Ensuring equal opportunity for women here—and everywhere—benefits societies as a whole, not just women. It’s an economic must-have, in short, not just a nice-to-have.”

According to the report, entrepreneurship is another low-scoring area that the report establishes.

According to the report, although women can start businesses on the same legal terms as men in nearly all economies, only about half promote equal access to credit, leaving women entrepreneurs locked out of financing.

For the first time, the latest Women, Business and the Law report assesses not only the degree of equality in laws on the books, but also the extent to which those laws are enforced.

Legal experts surveyed estimated that laws that encourage full economic participation by women are only half-enforced, indicating that governments have a long way to go.
On average, the report says economies score 67 out of 100 on laws that support women’s economic equality—far from full parity.

“When enforcement mechanisms are examined, the global average score drops sharply to 53. The adequacy of systems required to implement those rights—such as courts, regulatory agencies and administrative bodies—falls further to just 47,” the report states.

“Even where gender-equal laws exist, women often lack the institutional support needed to exercise their rights under those laws,” the report notes. Weak justice systems, underfunded regulatory bodies and fragmented administrative processes often render legal protections ineffective.

In many countries, the report revealed that women still face legal restrictions that shape the types of jobs they can undertake or the hours they can work. In others, the absence of effective anti-discrimination laws leaves them vulnerable to wage gaps and workplace bias.

Safety remains a foundational concern. According to the report, without strong and enforced protections against violence, women’s ability to work, travel and participate in public life is severely constrained.

The report also revealed that access to finance also remains unequal. “While nearly all economies legally permit women to start businesses, only about half guarantee equal access to credit and financial services. Without adequate capital, women-led enterprises struggle to grow, innovate and compete on equal footing with male-owned firms,” the report states.

Childcare is another major gap, particularly in low-income countries where public childcare frameworks are largely absent. The report highlights that without affordable and accessible childcare services, many women are forced to scale back their careers or exit the workforce entirely, limiting both household incomes and national productivity.

Beyond issues of fairness and justice, the report warns that failure to secure full legal equality for women carries significant economic consequences.

“At a moment when global growth is sluggish and demographic pressures are intensifying, leaving women on the economic sidelines is not simply unjust, it is dumb,” the report states.

The cost of inaction is especially high in regions with rapidly growing youth populations, including parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, where legal barriers remain among the most restrictive and by limiting women’s participation, countries effectively sideline half their potential workforce—at a time when many are grappling with slowing growth and rising fiscal pressures.

Despite its sobering conclusion, the report acknowledges incremental progress saying between October 2023 and October 2025, dozens of economies enacted reforms aimed at expanding women’s economic rights.

These included strengthening protections against gender-based violence, expanding parental leave policies and removing employment restrictions that barred women from certain sectors.

However, the Bank said genuine transformation will require not only legislative changes but also stronger institutions, better funding for enforcement agencies and a deliberate effort to dismantle deeply rooted social and cultural norms that perpetuate inequality.