Countries inch towards legal gender equality

The data in the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2021 report show that gendered laws have been improving in a number of countries in the Middle East, and North and Sub-Saharan Africa in recent years. Simeon Djankov and Eva (Yiwen) Zhang write that lessons from the success of early crisis response measures to reduce the gender gap in labour force participation can serve to inform future recovery programs, and in a possible situation of a chronic pandemic, accelerating the drive towards legal gender equality is all the more needed.