Women, business and the law in 2014. World Bank report on the elimination of restrictions to improve gender equality.
Today I bring you a summary article of a World Bank Report on gender, with absolutely current data on the situation in the world about the differences between men and women regarding the law.
"Women, Business and the Law of 2014. Elimination of restrictions to improve gender equality" finds that while 42 countries reduced legal differences between men and women, 128 of 143 countries studied continue to impose legal differences based on I generate at least one of the indicators keys of your report.
The report also identifies 48 legal and regulatory reforms enacted between March 2011 and April 2013, that could improve women's economic opportunities.
In all economies, married women face more legal differentiations than unmarried women. In 25 countries, married women cannot legally choose where to live in the same way as married men, and in 29 of them they cannot be legally recognized as head of the family in the same way as married men.
The 2014 report includes new questions on issues such as gender differences in obtaining national ID cards, the use of quotas to increase female representation on boards of directors, national parliaments and local governments, property rights of women in the conjugal home, and the number of women judges in the supreme courts. The report also includes a new indicator, Protection of Women from Violence, which examines the laws on domestic violence against women and the existence and scope of laws on sexual harassment.
The report reveals that economies with the highest number of restrictions on women's work have, on average, the lowest female participation in the formal workforce and have fewer companies with female participation in their ownership.
Conversely, economies that provide a higher degree of motivation for women to work have greater income equality.
Each region includes countries with unequal rules for men and women, although the extent of inequality varies widely. On average, high-income economies differ less than low- and middle-income economies.
The Middle East and North Africa have the largest legal differences between men and women, followed by South Asia and Africa. A notable exception in Africa is the Ivory Coast, with the highest number of gender parity reforms worldwide in the past two years. Ivorian wives can now choose the family residence and claim tax deductions for their children or spouses in the same way as their husbands, as a result of extensive reforms in 2013. Also, now either spouse may be the one to stop working if they consider it contrary to the interests of the family, whereas before the 2013 reform, only husbands legally had this possibility. At the regional level, most of the improvements in gender parity occurred in sub-Saharan Africa.
Using recently released historical data from the "50 Years Database of Women's Legal Rights," the report also highlights how the legal constraints on women's rights have changed over time on two of the indicators., the Company and the Law (Access to Institutions and use of property) in 100 economies.
More than half of the restrictions on legal rights that women had in 1960 have already been removed. Although great strides towards gender parity have been made in most economies by easing legal restrictions on women, the Middle East and North Africa has been the least reform since 1960.
I hope this summary of the report has been of interest to you. It is unforgivable that in the 21st century the World Authorities allow that certain countries maintain discriminatory and even vexatious laws, maintaining gender differences between men and women.
Fortunately, the world did not consent to apartheid and ended it in the 20th century. How long is the world going to consent to female apartheid? ” Marta Morón Torres.
