In the 9th edition of the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law report, which assesses the impact of laws on women's economic opportunities in 190 economies, Kazakhstan received a score below the world average, with 75.6 points compared to the global average of 77.1 points, QazMonitor reports.
The report is structured around eight indicators in women’s interactions with a country’s legal system across different life situations and environments, including Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension.
Kazakhstan falls behind in ensuring women’s rights in the workplace, as the average in the Europe and Central Asia region is placed at 84.4 points, while our country stands at only 75.6 points. Our country shares this position with Belarus, trailing behind Armenia (87.5 points) and Tajikistan (78.8 points), and ahead of Russia (73.1 points) and Uzbekistan (70.6 points).
The country lags behind in Workplace with 50 points and in Pensions with only 25 points. However, it shows satisfactory indicators in Pay and Entrepreneurship, both scoring 75 points, and in Parenthood scoring 80 points. Additionally, Kazakhstan demonstrates good indicators in Mobility, Marriage, and Assets, with all three areas scoring 100 points.
However, Kazakhstan's indicators fail to reach the global average, as the report notes that globally women enjoy only 77% of legal rights that men do. This figure reveals that nearly 2.4 billion women of working age around the world live in economies that do not grant them the same rights as men. Despite that, the report notes that the Kazakh government amended work restrictions for women over the 2021-2022 period.
Scores above the global average of 77.1 can be observed in high-income OECD countries, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean regions. The Middle East and North Africa, as well as South Asia, have the lowest average scores.
Fourteen countries with a perfect score of 100 points (full economic equality for women) are as follows: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden.
According to the report, in 2022, the global pace of reforms toward equal treatment of women under the law has slumped to a 20-year low in the wake of global economic challenges. Nevertheless, ensuring equal access to job opportunities will level the playing field and make the economy more dynamic and resilient in the face of shocks.