Women on average have only three-quarters of the legal protections given to men during their working life, ranging from bans on entering some jobs to a lack of equal pay or freedom from sexual harassment, according to a study from the World Bank. Researchers examined whether adult men and women had equal rights under the law in 187 countries to produce an equality index and measure progress over the last decade. They probed laws linked to women’s work and economic freedom, including the right to work, equal pay, penalties for sexual harassment at work, parental work protections and inheritance rights. Six countries – Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg, and Sweden – now hold perfect scores of 100 in the index compared to none 10 years ago. However, 56 countries made no improvements to equality laws at all in the areas studied over the last 10 years. Europe and Central Asia had the highest regional equality score, with women getting about 85 percent of the rights granted to men on average, while in the Middle East and North Africa women had fewer than half the rights of men.

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