The race towards equal rights for women has slowed to a near halt, falling to a 20-year low, according to a recent World Bank Report.

The move now negates substantial gains made in the last three decades, leaving women out of economic gains and denying the global economy close to a 20 per cent addition to its GDP.

The World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law index rose just half a point to 77.1—indicating women, on average, enjoy barely 77 per cent of the legal rights that men do.

At the current pace of reform, in many countries, a woman entering the workforce today will retire before she can gain the same rights as men, the report notes.

The global lender’s chief economist and senior Vice President for Development Economics Indermit Gill said most economies now need all hands on deck to recover from the Covid-19, climate and conflict-driven shocks hence including women would be critical to boosting productive capacity.

“Governments can’t afford to sideline as much as half of their population. Denying equal rights to women across much of the world is not just unfair to women; it is a barrier to countries’ ability to promote green, resilient, and inclusive development,” Dr Gill said.

Kenya scored 80.6 in the Women, Business and the Law 2023 index falling below its neighbours Tanzania (81.3), Uganda (81.3) and Rwanda (83.8).

The index, which assesses 190 countries’ laws and regulations in eight areas related to women’s economic participation—mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pensions, was topped by European countries, where the first 17 scored 100.

Worldwide, nearly 2.4 billion women of working age still do not have the same rights as men and the World Bank economists believe closing the gender employment gap could raise long-term GDP per capita by nearly 20 per cent on average across countries.

Studies estimate global economic gains of $5 - 6 trillion if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men do.

“Women cannot afford to wait any longer to reach gender equality. Neither can the global economy,” the report noted.