There have been new warnings this week that the world is failing in its efforts to ensure equal economic opportunities for women.

The World Bank has issued its, Women, Business and the Law report which found laws designed to ensure equal economic opportunities for women are only half-enforced on average across the world, indicating that the barriers that keep women from contributing fully to growth and prosperity are far steeper than previously thought. It added even if the laws were fully enforced, women would still enjoy barely two-thirds of the legal rights of men.

Legal experts surveyed estimated that laws that encourage full economic participation by women are only half-enforced, indicating that governments have a long way to go. Even as they make progress in establishing new equal-opportunity laws, economies on average have in place fewer than half of the policies and services needed for enforcement. Only 4% of women across the world live in economies that provide nearly full legal equality. That is keeping economies from reaching their full potential to grow and create jobs.

“On paper, most countries are doing reasonably well: the average country scores 67 out of 100 on the adequacy of laws to enable economic equality between women and men,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. “But when it comes to enforcing the laws, the average score drops to 53. And when the systems needed to implement those rights are assessed, the adequacy score is just 47. These numbers reflect huge opportunity gaps— and the findings of this report provide policymakers with intelligence to reverse the decline in the growth potential of developing economies.”

Tea Trumbic, manager for the Women, Business and the Law project and the report’s lead author, was blunt saying the lack of progress was creating a looming further crisis.

“Over the next decade, 1.2 billion young people -half of them girls – will enter the workforce,” she explained. “Many will come of age in regions where women face the biggest barriers, and where the GDP boost that would result from their participation is most needed. Ensuring equal opportunity for women here – and everywhere – benefits societies as a whole, not just women. It’s an economic must-have, in short, not just a nice-to-have.”

Women, Business, and the Law assessed the global state of women’s economic participation across 10 key areas, including safety from violence, access to childcare, entrepreneurship, employment protections, asset ownership, and retirement security. It identifies safety from violence as a key shortcoming, leaving women less able to work consistently. “True equality begins with safety. Whether at home, at work, or in public, women deserve protection to thrive,” said Norman Loayza, director of the World Bank’s Policy Indicators Group. “Globally, we’re falling short. We have only a third of the safety laws we need, and even then, enforcement is failing 80% of the time.”

Entrepreneurship was another area for concern. Although women can start businesses on the same legal terms as men in nearly all economies, only about half promote equal access to credit, leaving women entrepreneurs locked out of financing.

Much is being done to create new equality laws, but the World Bank’s message is that while the laws are in place the momentum to fully implement them is still far too slow.

Jon Guy, Editor,

Emerging Risks