According to the report Women, Business and the Law 2023, recently published by the World Bank, there are only 14 countries in the world which agree on full legal protections to women. Among them are Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, as well as Germany and the Netherlands are the nations offering full equal rights for men and women, at least from a legal perspective.
The Netherlands and Germany are the new addition to the list of those rated at 100 points this year. Both countries equalized parental leave rights between the sexes. In the case of Germany, the law changes took place before the past 12 months but the country received a revised score as part of this year's report, striking the mark of100 percent equality for the first time.
Out of the 190 assessed countries and territories, 99 places
rank at 80 percent or above, up from 98 in 2022 and 94 in 2021. Saudi Arabia,
which entered in last as recently as 2019, has upgraded its score following new
laws implemented in the country and now ranks 136th at 71.3 percent. The last
place in the 2023 ranking went to the West Bank and Gaza (26.3 percent), ahead
of Yemen (26.9 percent), Sudan (29.4 percent) and Qatar (29.4 percent).
The United States ranks at 91.3 percent below countries like
Peru and Albania. It loses its points because of a lack of laws assuring equal
pay and equal pensions in addition to having extremely bad laws around parental
leave.
Infographic by: statista
