Around the world, women face persistent barriers in seeking to enter the labor force, attain leadership positions, and launch businesses. Gender inequality not only prevents women from achieving their full potential and gaining economic independence, but also inhibits the growth of national...

Drawing on various macro- and micro-data sources, the authors present robust evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between female labor force participation and inequality. Overall, female labor force participation is found to have a strong and significant dis-equalizing impact in at...

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the existence and impact of gender discriminatory laws on women's outcomes across various domains (categories) that constitute the Women in Business and the Law measure of gender inequality. The evidence to date suggests that there are significant...

This paper offers for the first time a global picture of gender discrimination by the law as it affects women's economic opportunity and charts the evolution of legal inequalities over five decades. Using the World Bank's newly extended Women, Business and the Law database, the paper documents...