Only 14 countries have full equal rights for women

Mar 10, 2023

With the collaboration of Statista.

People on a march calling for gender equality.

Belgium, Canada, Denmark and France are among the countries offering full equal rights for men and women, from a legal perspective. Image: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

Katharina Buchholz

Data Journalist, Statista

Our Impact

What's the World Economic Forum doing to accelerate action on Gender Inequality?

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Gender Inequality is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Gender Inequality

Germany and the Netherlands are the latest additions to a World Bank list of countries that offer full equal rights for women.
Countries are ranked on a scale where 100 means full equal rights – of 190 nations assessed, 99 have scores of 80 or above.
Some of the lowest-ranked countries have scores under 30.

There are only 14 countries in the world which offer full legal protections to women, according to the report Women, Business and the Law 2023, recently published by the World Bank. Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and Sweden as well as Germany and the Netherlands were the nations offering full equal rights for men and women, at least from a legal perspective.

Germany and the Netherlands were the newcomers among those rated at 100 points this year. Both countries equalized parental leave entitlements between the sexes. In the case of Germany, the law changes occurred before the past 12 months but the country received a revised score as part of this year's report, hitting 100 percent equality for the first time.

99 places out of the 190 assessed countries and territories ranked at 80 percent or above, up from 98 in 2022 and 94 in 2021. Saudi Arabia, which came in last as recently as 2019, has improved its score following new laws implemented in the country and now ranks 136th at 71.3 percent. The last place in the 2023 ranking went to the West Bank and Gaza (26.3 percent), ahead of Yemen (26.9 percent), Sudan (29.4 percent) and Qatar (29.4 percent).

Discover

How is the World Economic Forum promoting equity in the workplace?

The Future of Jobs Report 2023 found that 75% of companies surveyed expect to adopt AI, big data and cloud technologies in the next five years.

The Centre for the New Economy and Society provides a platform for leaders to share insights on the adoption and efficacy of new technologies, and the readiness of the workforce to use them. Our work includes developing insights and dialogue on growth, jobs, skills, equity and risks.

Learn more about our impact:

Gender parity: Since 2006, we have annually measured the state and evolution of gender parity in 102 countries, supporting decisionmakers to identify the most effective policies to close gender gaps. In Chile, we helped establish gender parity accelerators and benefitted 728,000 women – reducing the gender gap by 37% in the participating companies.
Reskilling Revolution: With our partners, we are helping the global workforce future-proof their careers, working with over 350 organizations to provide 1 billion people with better education, skills and economic opportunities by 2030.
Disability inclusion: Working with the Valuable500, we are collaborating with the largest global network of CEOs committed to closing the disability inclusion gap. Members are making progress by increasing the adoption of digital accessibility best practices and including disability in diversity, equity and inclusion strategies.
Racial justice: We are collaborating with a global coalition of 55 organizations in 13 industries who are committed to building equitable and just workplaces for professionals from under-represented racial and ethnic identities.

Want to know more about our centre’s impact or get involved? Contact us.

The United States ranked at 91.3 percent below countries like Peru and Albania. It lost points because of a lack of laws guaranteeing equal pay and equal pensions in addition to having notoriously bad laws around parental leave.

Only 14 countries have full equal rights for women

Germany has a score of 100 for the first time following legal changes in the past year. Image: Statista

Have you read?

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.