Gendered Laws and Women in the Workforce

Abstract

This paper offers for the first time a global picture of gender discrimination by the law as it affects women's economic opportunity and charts the evolution of legal inequalities over five decades. Using the World Bank's newly constructed Women, Business and the Law database, we document large and persistent gender inequalities, especially with regard to pay and treatment of parenthood. We find positive correlations between more equal laws pertaining to women in the workforce and more equal labor market outcomes, such as higher female labor force participation and a smaller wage gap between men and women. (JEL D63, J16, J31, J71, J78, K31, K38)

The Distribution of the Gender Wage Gap: An Equilibrium Model

“…It rose from 61.3 in 1989 to 80.6 in 2014. As a point of reference, the average score in highincome OECD countries is 94.7 points, while the countries with the lowest WBL are found in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where the average score is 49.6 points (Hyland, Djankov, and Goldberg 2020).…”

Gender and vulnerable employment in the developing world: Evidence from global microdata

“…The first covers the economic and demographic structure of the country and consists of seven indicators, selected from the World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI) database (World Bank 2021): (1) log of GDP per capita (PPP-adjusted), (2) Gini coefficient of income inequality, (3) log of population, (4) total fertility rate, (5) young-age dependency ratio, (6) old-age dependency ratio, and (7) vulnerable employment as a percentage of total employment, estimated by the ILO. The second group of characteristics covers the extent of legal discrimination against women as measured in the World Bank's Women, Business, and the Law (WBL) database (Hyland et al 2020). We select the global index (WBL index), as well as the eight sub-indexes: Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension.…”

“…Excluding agriculture, the gender gap is positive in 71 out of 76 countries. We then correlate the estimated country-specific gender gaps with economic and demographic structural factors, as well as legal gender disparities, which are measured from the World Bank's 'Women, Business, and the Law' (WBL) database (Hyland et al 2020). The off-farm gender gap correlates negatively with per capita income and the old-age dependency ratio, and positively with total fertility rate, the young-age dependency ratio, and the overall prevalence of vulnerable employment.…”

“…We also contribute to a recent but growing literature arguing that gender discrimination embedded in legislation affects women's labour market outcomes. 13 At the country level, more gender-egalitarian laws associate positively with female labour participation outside of agriculture and negatively with the gender wage gap (Hyland et al 2020). Using firm-level microdata across 94 developing countries, Islam et al (2019) find that legal gender disparities are associated with fewer women hired as paid employees, as top managers, and with fewer female business owners.…”

Analysis of gender equality in professional activities

“…The research findings of Hyland, Djankov and Goldberg (2020) indicate that women still face gender discrimination in various spheres. The level of legal discrimination is particularly high in some densely populated countries, which limits economic opportunities for a very large number of women.…”