The Tribune

By MORGAN ADDERLEY

Tribune Staff Reporter

madderley@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas has been ranked 62 out of 187 nations in a recent World Bank report analysing countries where women are fully equal to men under the law.

The report, published in February, found only six countries received a score of 100. The Bahamas’ score is 83.75 - the same as Kenya, Malawi, and the United States.

Entitled “Women, Business, and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform”, the study analyses how laws impact women by either advancing or impeding their efforts for gender equality.

The Bahamas ranked fourth of regional countries such as St Lucia (which scored 89.38), the Dominican Republic (88.75), and Guyana (86.88).

However, it ranked above countries such as Jamaica (68.13), Barbados (73.75) and Trinidad and Tobago (77.50).

“To develop a better understanding of how women’s employment and entrepreneurship are affected by legal discrimination, (the study) examines ten years of data through an index structured around the economic decisions women make as they go through their working lives,” it notes.

“We know that achieving gender equality requires more than just changes to laws. The laws need to be meaningfully implemented - and this requires sustained political will, leadership from women and men across societies, and changes to ingrained cultural norms and attitudes.”

The study is divided into eight categories.

The Bahamas scored 100 in five categories: going places; starting a job; getting married; managing assets; and getting a pension.

It scored 75 in two: getting paid and running a business; and scored 20 in one: having children.

The going places category “measures constraints on freedom of movement, including whether women can independently decide where to go, travel and live.”

The second, starting a job, “analyses laws affecting women’s decisions to enter the labour market.”

The getting paid section measures laws concerning the gender wage gap and occupational segregation, while the category of getting married focuses on legal constraints regarding marriage — for example, the introduction of domestic violence laws.

The section on having children focuses on laws “affecting women’s work after pregnancy”, such as those relating to paid maternity leave.

The category of running a business “analyses constraints to women starting and running businesses”. For example, gender discrimination in access to credit, whether women are allowed to register businesses, sign contracts, and open bank accounts in the same way as men.

The category of managing assets measures gender differences in inheritance and property law while getting a pension examines laws “affecting the size of a woman’s pension”.

The study also notes how reforms can be made to reduce gender discrimination.

“There are certain triggers for reforms benefitting gender equality,” it says. “Advocacy by women’s groups coupled with public interest litigation is one such trigger as is support from bilateral and international organisations.

“These catalysts are very similar to reforms in other areas such as the business environment, where reforms are often driven by internal constituencies or encouraged by international organisations.”

In 2016, voters rejected a constitutional referendum which sought to give men and women equal rights under the law.