Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Only 14 countries have full equal rights for women

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
  • 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 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?
Loading...
Don't miss any update on this topic

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

Sign up for free

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.

Stay up to date:

Education, Gender and Work

Related topics:
Equity, Diversity and InclusionFinancial and Monetary Systems
Share:
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how Education, Gender and Work 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
World Economic Forum logo
Global Agenda

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

Closing the AI equity gap: Trust and safety for sustainable development

Keyzom Ngodup Massally and Jennifer Louie

December 3, 2024

How new taxi marketplaces are tackling old challenges

About us

Engage with us

  • Sign in
  • Partner with us
  • Become a member
  • Sign up for our press releases
  • Subscribe to our newsletters
  • Contact us

Quick links

Language editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

Sitemap

© 2024 World Economic Forum