World Bank: women need more protection from violence

The World Bank says that East Asian economies and those in the Pacific perform poorly in protecting women against violence and more laws are needed.

According to the group’s Women, Business and Law 2018 report released last week, economies in this region have carried out 11 legal reforms in the past two years to promote women’s economic inclusion. For example, China expanded paid maternity for women under 25 years of age to equalize this benefit for all women. However, approximately half of the countries in this region do not have legislation protecting women from sexual harassment at work.

The biennial report introduces, for the first time, a scoring system of 0 to 100, to better inform the reform agenda. Scores are assigned to every monitored economy on each of the report’s seven indicators: accessing institutions, using property, getting a job, providing incentives to work, going to court, building credit, and protecting women from violence.

The region generally performs well on the "accessing institutions indicator,” as most economies do not differentiate between women and men in a range of public interactions, such as registering a business, opening a bank account or obtaining national identification, says the report.

“Much work remains to remove hurdles to women’s economic empowerment,” said Rita Ramalho, senior manager of the World Bank's global indicatorsgroup.“Violence against women, at home or in the workplace, is a particularly weak point in the region.”