The Women Business and the Law (WBL) 2020 index to measure the economic empowerment of women was recently published.

WBL Index

• The WBL report released by the World Bank.
• It is based on the countries’ formal laws and regulations that have a bearing on women’s economic participation, covering eight areas (eg, parenthood, equality of pay).
• It tracks how laws affect women at different stages in their working lives and focusing on those laws applicable in the main business city.

India’s poor performance

• India placed 117th among 190 countries on the index.
• India, the world’s most populous democracy scored 74.4 on a par with Benin and Gambia and way below least developed countries like Rwanda and Lesotho.
• The global average was 75.2 — a slight increase from 73.9 in the previous index released in 2017.

Global Performance

• Only eight economies scored a perfect 100 — Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg, and Sweden.
• Those countries have ensured equal legal standing to men and women on all the eight indicators of the index.
• No economy in ‘East Asia and the Pacific’, ‘Europe and Central Asia’, or ‘Latin America and the Caribbean’ were among top reformers, the report claimed.
• Countries in ‘Middle East and North Africa’ and ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’ accounted for nine of the 10 top progressing countries on the WBL Index:

1. Saudi Arabia
2. The United Arab Emirates
3. Nepal
4. South Sudan
5. São Tomé and Príncipe
6. Bahrain
7. The Democratic Republic of Congo
8. Djibouti
9. Jordan
10. Tunisia

Significance of the Index

• Legal rights for women are both the right thing to do and good from an economic perspective.
• When women can move more freely, work outside the home and manage assets, they are more likely to join the workforce and help strengthen their country’s economies.

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