ONLY 6 COUNTRIES GIVE WOMEN THE SAME WORK RIGHTS AS MEN

The situation

A decade ago, no country in the world treated men and women equally under the law, according to a gender equality index from the World Bank. Today, only six countries do — and the United States isn’t one of them.

Results of study

A new index by the World Bank analyzes how each country’s laws affect women at every stage in their working lives - from applying for a job to having a child to receiving a pension - and the extent to which legal gender equality has progressed over time.

The study shows that over the past 10 years, the majority of the world moved closer to gender equality under the law, raising the global average score from 70.06 to 74.71 today.

By the index’s measures, six countries have laws that protect men and women equally: Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden.

U.S. falling behind

The United States, meanwhile, is far from the leading pack. Its 2018 score came in at 83.75, a score that has stayed flat for the past 10 years. The U.S. tied with Malawi, Kenya and The Bahamas. More than 60 other countries had better scores.

The United States received a perfect 100 in all but three categories. It earned a 75 in the category for equal pay for work of equal value, underscoring the fact that despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the gender pay gap in the U.S. has persisted: In 2017, women earned 82 percent of what men earned, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

The study, titled “Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform,” calculated each country’s score using 35 different indicators, focusing on laws that affect women’s ability to live and work freely. Each of the data points were divided into eight categories: Going places; starting a job; getting paid; getting married; having children; running a business; managing assets; and getting a pension.

The study’s authors then generated an unweighed average of all eight indicator scores on a scale of 0 to 100.