Women, Business & Law 2024 Report

Women, Business & Law 2024 Report

GS-2: Social Justice

(UPSC/State PSC)

Important for prelims

Women, Business and Law 2024 Report, World Bank, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), NCRB.

Important for mains

About the Women Business and Law 2024 report, India's performance in this report, the status of women in India, Way forward.

09/03/2024

Why in news:

Recently, the World Bank (WB) Group released a report titled Women, Business and the Law 2024, which offers an in-depth analysis of the various challenges hindering women's potential.

About the Women Business and Law 2024 Report:

  • This is the 10th report in a series of annual studies measuring laws affecting women's economic opportunity.
  • The report presents 10 indicators to track global progress towards legal gender equality in 190 economies :- security, mobility, workplace, wages, child care, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, wealth and pensions.
  • Protection from violence and access to child care services are very important indicators.

Key highlights of the report:

Legal Framework Index:

  • 11 of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) high-income economies scored 90 or more, with Italy leading the way with 95, followed by New Zealand and Portugal with 92.5.
  • In contrast, more than 37 economies grant women less than half the legal rights enjoyed by men, affecting nearly half a billion women. In particular, high-income economies have an average score of 75.4.
  • Upper-middle-income economies follow closely with an average score of 66.8. The difference in scores between the highest and lowest scoring economies is most pronounced in high-income economies, with a substantial difference of 75 points.

Women have fewer legal rights than men:

  • When legal differences related to violence and child care are taken into account, women worldwide enjoy only 64% of the legal protections compared to men. This is less than the previous estimate of 77%.

The gap between legal reforms and actual outcomes for women:

  • Even though many countries have enacted laws promoting gender equality, there is a significant gap between these laws and women's actual experiences.
  • 98 economies have enacted laws mandating equal pay for women for work of equal value.
  • Yet only 35 economies, less than one in five, have adopted pay-transparency measures to address the pay gap.

Poor performance by countries:

  • Togo has been a leader among sub-Saharan economies, enacting laws that grant women about 77% of the rights of men, more than any other country on the continent.
  • Yet, Togo has so far installed only 27% of the systems needed for full implementation.
  • This rate is average for sub-Saharan economies.
  • In 2023, governments were vocal in pursuing three categories of legal equal opportunity reforms, pay, parental rights and workplace safety.
  • Still, almost all countries performed poorly in two categories being tracked for the first time – access to child care and women's safety.

Women Safety:

  • The biggest weakness is women's safety, with a global average score of just 36. Women have barely one-third of the legal protection they need against domestic violence, sexual harassment, child marriage and femicide.
  • Although 151 economies have laws prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace, only 39 economies have laws prohibiting it in public places. This often prevents women from using public transportation to go to work.

Child Care:

  • Women spend an average of 2.4 hours more per day in unpaid care work than men, the majority of which is spent on child care.
  • Only 78 economies, less than half, provide some financial or tax support to parents with young children.
  • Only 62 economies – less than a third – have quality standards governing child care services, without which women might think twice about going to work while they have children in their care.

Major barriers for women:

  • Overall, women face many obstacles in many fields. The main obstacles are as follows:

In the field of entrepreneurship:

  • In the area of entrepreneurship, only one in five economies mandates gender-sensitive criteria for public procurement processes, meaning women are largely missing out on economic opportunities worth US$10 trillion per year.

In the field of salary:

  • On the pay front, women earn only 77 cents for every US$1 paid to men. The gap in rights extends to retirement. In 62 economies, the retirement age for men and women is not the same.
  • Women live longer than men, but because they are paid less when they work, they take time off when they have children and retire earlier, therefore they face lower pension benefits and greater financial insecurity in old age.

India's performance in this report:

  • India's rank has improved marginally to 113 with a score of 74.4%. While the country's score has remained stable since 2021, its ranking dropped from 122 in 2021 to 125 in 2022 and 126 in the 2023 index.
  • Indian women have only 60% as many legal rights as men, slightly lower than the global average of 64.2%.
  • However, India fared better than its South Asian counterparts, where women enjoyed only 45.9% of the legal protection enjoyed by men.
  • When it comes to freedom of movement and barriers to marriage, India gets full marks.
  • India received one of the lowest scores in an indicator evaluating laws affecting women's pay.
  • To enhance this aspect, India mandates equal pay for equal work, allowing women to work at night at an equal rate as men and may consider measures such as enabling women to engage in industrial jobs on an equal footing with men.

The way forward according to the report:

  • Accelerate efforts to reform laws and create public policies that empower women to work and start businesses.
  • Improve laws related to women's safety, access to child care, and business opportunities.
  • Establish frameworks that support effective implementation of laws that promote gender equality.
  • Enact legal reforms that mandate equal pay for work of equal value, and remove restrictions on a woman's ability to work in industrial jobs.
  • Expand maternity and paternity leave provisions and prohibit firing pregnant women.
  • Prohibit sexual harassment in the workplace, public places, education and online.
  • Provide financial assistance to parents with young children, and set quality standards for child care services.
  • Enact legally binding quotas for women on corporate boards, and mandate gender-sensitive criteria for public procurement processes.
  • Ensure equal retirement benefits for women, taking into account the duration of work absences related to child care.
  • Reducing the gender gap in employment and entrepreneurship could increase global GDP by more than 20 percent.
  • Closing the gender gap over the next decade would essentially double the current global growth rate.

About the status of women in India:

Low literacy rate:

  • Female literacy rate in India (64.46%) is much lower than male literacy rate (80%). It still remains very poor, especially in rural areas.

Low participation in the workforce:

  • Only 11.75% of India's police force are women, and 56.5% of women earning "regular wages or salaries" outside agriculture are not eligible for any social security.

Social Security Challenges:

  • Women face various social challenges like foeticide, domestic violence, rape, trafficking, forced prostitution, honor killing, sexual harassment at workplace etc.
  • According to NCRB report- In 2024, India's crime rate was 445.9 per 100,000 people.
  • It was registering a decline from 487.8 in 2020. However, crimes against women increased by 4%.

Lack of sanitary facilities:

  • Lack of access to hygiene products, menstrual education and sanitation and hygiene facilities necessary to manage menstruation properly.
  • According to a study by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) conducted in 2011, only 13% of girls in India know about menstruation before menstruation.

Stereotypes in Role:

  • A large section of Indian society considers it to be men's role to take on all financial responsibilities and work outside and women may be considered less reliable as workers due to their child-rearing duties.

Differentiation in Socialization Process:

  • In many parts of India, especially in rural areas, there are still different socialization norms for men and women.
  • Women are expected to be soft-spoken, calm and quiet, while men are expected to be confident, loud and capable of displaying any behavior they desire.

Underrepresentation in the Legislature:

  • Women are under-represented in various legislative bodies across India.
  • According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the number of women in the 17th Lok Sabha in India is 14.44%.

Source: Down to Earth

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Mains Question:

Discuss the way forward by analyzing the various challenges faced by women in the light of the Women, Business and Law 2024 report.

Critically analyze the status of women in India.