Women, Business and the Law 2024 Report
Source: PIB
GS II: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation
Overview
- News in Brief
- What are the findings?
- Performance of India
Why in the News?
Women, Business and the Law 2024 is the tenth in a series of annual studies measuring the enabling environment for women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies.
News in Brief
- It measures women’s economic participation in – mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pensions.
- The data offer objective and measurable benchmarks for global progress toward gender equality.
What are the findings?
- Pay
- Women earn just 77 cents for every dollar paid to men.
- In all, 92 economies lack provisions mandating equal pay for work of equal value; 20 prohibit a woman from working at night; and 45 prohibit a woman from working in jobs deemed dangerous.
- Country Analysis
- The report also assesses the gap between legal reforms and actual outcomes for women in 190 economies.
- The report highlights that countries, on average, have established less than 40% of the systems needed for full implementation.
- Womens Safety
- Most concerning is women’s safety, as women enjoy barely a third of the needed legal protections against domestic violence, sexual harassment, child marriage and femicide.
- Out of 151 countries that have laws in place prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace, just 39 have laws prohibiting it in public spaces, according to the report.
- Childcare Laws
- Most countries have scored poorly on childcare laws.
- Today, only 78 economies—fewer than half—provide some financial or tax support for parents with young children.
- Only 62 countries have quality standards governing childcare services.
- Women Entrepreneurship
- Women face impediments in the area of entrepreneurship.
- Just one in five economies have added gender-sensitive criteria for public procurement processes.
- Women also earn just 77% of what men earn, as per the report.
- Retirement
- In 62 economies, the age at which men and women can retire is not the same, with women retiring earlier than men.
- In 81 economies, a woman’s pension benefits do not account for periods of work absences related to childcare.
Performance of India
- India’s rank has marginally improved to 113.
- India has a score of 74.4 per cent.
- Indian women have just 60 per cent of the legal rights compared to men.
- India scored higher than both the global and South Asian averages in supportive frameworks.
- India performed lower in frameworks was childcare.
- India receives one of its lowest scores in the indicator evaluating laws impacting women’s pay.
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