When Women Win, the World Wins
In May 1988, Alejandra Arévalo became the first female geologist to enter an underground mine in Chile. In doing so, she defied a popular myth: that a woman brings bad luck by venturing into a mine. She also broke the law. At the time, Chilean women were forbidden to work in underground mining or in any other job that “exceeded their strength or put at risk their physical or moral condition.” Arévalo’s defiance helped spark a revolution. By 1993, the restrictions on women in mining had been abolished; and by 2022, women represented 15% of the Chilean mining workforce, a threefold increase since 2007.
Equally substantial progress has occurred worldwide over the past half-century. Globally, women’s legal rights have improved by about two-thirds, on average, since 1970. Major reforms have dismantled a wide array of barriers that women face at all stages of their working lives, but especially in the workplace and in parenthood. Yet as the world marks this year’s International Women’s Day, it is clear that there is still a huge global gender gap.
In fact, the latest data show that the gap is much wider than previously thought. When legal differences regarding protections against violence and access to childcare are considered, women enjoy just twothirds of the legal rights that men do – not 77%, as was previously believed. The World Bank’s latest Women, Business and the Law report finds that no country – not even the wealthiest ones – grants women the same legal rights as men.
The greatest deficiency involves safety: women enjoy barely one-third of the necessary legal protections against domestic violence, sexual harassment, and femicide. Inadequate access to childcare services is another hindrance. Only 62 economies – fewer than one-third of the world’s countries – have established quality standards governing childcare services. As a result, women across 128 economies may have to think twice about going to work while they have children in their care.
Moreover, the gender gap is wider than laws on the books might suggest. For the first time, Women, Business and the Law compared progress in legal reforms with actual outcomes for women in 190 economies, finding a surprising delay in implementation. Although