The World Bank published this week a report titled “Women, Business and the Law 2020” in which it shed light on the repercussions of legal gender discrimination on the choices made by women in terms of career and entrepreneurship. For this purpose, the World Bank built an index based on data collected from 190 countries around the globe, with the index embedding 35 data points that help shape women’s economic decisions during various phases of their lives including marriage and motherhood. These data points comprise, for instance, elements such as a woman’s freedom to travel and ability to open a bank account, sign contracts, or register a business, as well as the existence of laws that ban gender discrimination by employers when hiring or the layoff of pregnant working women. The 35 data points are later grouped under eight major categories, namely: “Mobility”, “Workplace”, “Pay”, “Marriage”, “Parenthood”, “Entrepreneurship”, “Assets”, and “Pension”. The latest edition of the report covers the last fifty years, while previous versions covered only ten. According to the report, the best index score is 100, which implies equal legal rights for both genders in a particular country. In this vein, eight countries have registered a score of 100 in the 2020 Women, Business and Law index, namely Canada, Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Latvia, and Iceland. Nevertheless, the average global index score stood at 75.2, signifying that women generally benefit from three-quarters of the legal rights enjoyed by men across the covered data points. This score has, however, sizably improved when compared to the 46.5 global average score registered in 1970, thanks to some 1,517 reforms introduced by countries to their legal frameworks since then to enhance gender equality.

As far as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is concerned, the latter registered a meager score of 49.6 in the 2020 Women, Business and Law index, implying that women in the region benefit from half of the legal rights of their male counterparts. Said average shows a significant improvement when compared to the year 1970 score of 31.0. In fact, the report mentions that the progress achieved started taking place since the year 2000, with the reported progress in the thirty years era preceding the year 2000 remaining somewhat negligible. The report also unveiled that the MENA region has been taking positive steps in conducting reforms to combat gender inequality, with nearly one third of the worldwide reforms taking place in the MENA region since the year 2017. The KSA topped the MENA region in the 2020 Women, Business and Law Index with a score of 70.6, followed by Tunisia (70.0), Algeria (57.5), and the UAE (56.3).

Locally, the World Bank assigned Lebanon a score of 52.5 in the 2020 Women, Business and Law index, the fifth highest in the MENA region yet trailing far behind the global average of 75.2. This implies that Lebanese women enjoy almost 53% of the legal rights granted to men across the 35 covered data points. Delving further into the index’s constituents, Lebanon registered a full score of 100 in the “Mobility” category, mirroring equal gender rights in the country when it comes to a woman’s ability to choose her living location, to travel outside her home or country, and to apply for a passport. In parallel, Lebanon registered a score of 75 in the “Entrepreneurship” category, 60 in the “Marriage” category, 50 in each of the “Workplace” and “Pay” categories, and 40 in the “Assets” category. Conversely, Lebanon’s worst performance was in the areas of “Pension” and “Parenthood”, with respective scores of 25 and 20. On a more positive note, however, Lebanon was mentioned among the four MENA countries that have introduced domestic violence laws in 2015 (along with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Algeria).