World Bank report shows closing the gender employment gap could raise long-term GDP
World Bank Group chief economist and senior VP for development economics Indermit Gill notes that denying equal rights to women across much of the world is not just unfair to women, it is also a barrier to countries’ abilities to promote green, resilient and inclusive development. According to a new World Bank report, the global pace of reforms toward equal treatment of women under the law has dropped to a 20-year low, constituting a potential impediment to economic growth at a critical time for the global economy. 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% of the legal rights that men do.