Opinion | International Women’s Day: when women win, the world wins

In May 1988, Alejandra Arevalo 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”.

Equally substantial progress has occurred worldwide over the past half a 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 parenthood. Yet, as the world marks this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8, it is clear that there is still a huge global gender gap.

In fact, the gap is much wider than previously thought. When legal differences regarding protections against violence and access to childcare are considered, women enjoy just two-thirds of the legal rights men do – not 77 per cent, 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 countries have established quality standards governing childcare services. As a result, women across 128 countries 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, the “Women, Business and the Law” project compared progress in legal reforms with actual outcomes for women in 190 economies, finding a surprising delay in implementation. Although laws on the books imply that women enjoy roughly two-thirds the rights of men, countries on average have established less than 40 per cent of the systems needed for full implementation.