Country Rankings

Explore the global index that ranks countries on women’s workforce equality. Although inequality for women in the workforce persists worldwide, governments are beginning to understand the costs—and take action.

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This report measures the formal legal obstacles to women’s economic participation around the world. While there is often a large gap between laws on the books and their implementation, formal legal equality is a critical first step to closing the gap between women and men in the economy. All the top-ranked countries score at least a 90 out of 100 on protecting women’s access to institutions and their use of property. Many countries miss the mark on protecting women from violence, providing incentives to work, and eliminating barriers to jobs. No country gets a perfect score on women’s workplace equality, but Australia comes closest, with a score of 94.9 out of 100.

Out of the 189 countries covered, none of those ranked at the bottom scores highly on a single indicator. The ten bottom-ranked countries have near-zero scores for protecting women from violence and allowing women to build credit. Yemen is ranked last, with a score of 24.2 out of 100.

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Women’s access to employment and economic opportunity depends on many factors, from underlying economic conditions to social norms. This interactive highlights one critical precondition for women’s economic participation: equality under the law. The World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2018 report presents data on close to 170 gender inequalities in legal treatment in 189 countries, grouped into seven categories: accessing institutions, building credit, getting a job, going to court, protecting women from violence, providing incentives to work, and using property. The World Bank then scored countries on a narrower list of fifty legal gender inequalities selected from the full data set. For completeness, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) added to this list an additional six legal gender inequalities from the World Bank data set, selected because of their significance to women’s rights and opportunities. CFR then calculated a ranking of countries, giving each an overall average score between 0 and 100 (100 being the best).

Download the data

This data set includes the Council on Foreign Relations’ expanded set of scored questions and its country rankings.

See the methodology

Source: World Bank

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This country is not in the data set. The World Bank scored 189 countries on their level of legal inequalities related to women’s work.

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Regions

  • East Asia and the Pacific
  • Europe and Central Asia
  • Latin America and the Caribbean
  • Middle East and North Africa
  • OECD
  • South Asia
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
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All income groups

Income

  • High
  • Upper middle
  • Lower middle
  • Low
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  • Highest to lowest score
  • Lowest to highest score

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  • Overall average
  • Accessing institutions
  • Building credit
  • Getting a job
  • Going to court
  • Protecting women from violence
  • Providing incentives to work
  • Using property

Iran

Region

Middle East and North Africa

Income group

Upper middle

Average score

31.2 / 100

Individual indicator score

  • Accessing institutions
    33.3
  • Building credit
    25
  • Getting a job
    46.9
  • Going to court
    0
  • Protecting women from violence
    6.3
  • Providing incentives to work
    66.7
  • Using property
    40
Learn more about the legal barriers women face in the workplace
See the methodology for more information

How Iran ranks:

17 of 20

Middle East and North Africa

51 of 51

Upper middle income group

185 of 189

Globally

Women’s Workplace Inequality Worldwide

This chart visualizes countries’ gross national income (GNI) per capita against their score for women’s workplace inequality. 
The size of the circle represents the country’s female population.

Average score

2017 gni per capita (US $)

log scale

GNI per capita data not available for: Iran

The legal barriers Iran should address:

  • Accessing institutions
  • Building credit
  • Getting a job
  • Going to court
  • Protecting women from violence
  • Providing incentives to work
  • Using property
  1. Married women are required by law to obey their husbands.
  2. Women cannot apply for a passport in the same way as men.
  3. Women cannot travel abroad in the same way as men.
  4. Women cannot travel outside the home in the same way as men.
  5. Women cannot choose where to live in the same way as men.
  6. Women cannot get a job or pursue a trade or profession in the same way as men.
  7. Women cannot be head of the household or head of the family in the same way as men.
  8. Women cannot confer citizenship on children in the same way as men.
  1. Utility companies do not provide information to private credit bureaus or public credit registries, impeding women from building their credit histories to access finance.
  2. The law does not prohibit discrimination by creditors on the basis of sex or gender.
  3. The law does not prohibit discrimination by creditors on the basis of marital status.
  1. There is no legally mandated paid parental leave.
  2. The law does not mandate equal remuneration for work of equal value.
  3. The law does not mandate nondiscrimination in employment based on gender.
  4. The law does not prohibit the dismissal of pregnant workers.
  5. Parents cannot work flexibly.
  6. Women cannot work in jobs deemed hazardous, arduous, or morally inappropriate in the same way as men.
  7. Women are not allowed to perform the same tasks at work as men.
  8. The ages at which men and women can retire with full pension benefits are not equal.
  9. The ages at which men and women can retire with partial pension benefits are not equal.
  1. Women’s testimony does not carry the same evidentiary weight in court as men’s.
  2. The law does not establish an antidiscrimination commission.
  3. The law does not mandate legal aid in civil and family matters.
  4. There is no small-claims court or fast-track procedure for small claims, which small businesses (often owned by women) use to speed up and reduce the cost of court proceedings.
  1. Domestic violence is not legally prohibited.
  2. There is no law prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace.
  3. There is no law prohibiting sexual harassment in schools.
  4. There are no criminal penalties for sexual harassment in the workplace.
  5. There are no civil remedies for sexual harassment in the workplace.
  6. There is no law explicitly criminalizing marital rape.
  7. There are no clear criminal penalties for domestic violence.
  8. With parental consent or judicial authorization, the minimum age of marriage for girls is below eighteen.
  1. Payments for childcare are not tax-deductible.
  2. Employers do not have to provide leave for employees to care for sick relatives.
  1. The law does not account for the valuation of nonmonetary contributions to the household.
  2. Daughters do not have the same rights as sons to inherit assets from their parents.
  3. Female surviving spouses do not have equal rights to inherit assets as males do.

Legal reforms Iran has implemented between 2015 and 2017:

No reforms were undertaken between 2015 and 2017 related to women’s workplace equality.

Increased gender parity

Neutral to gender parity

Decreased gender parity

See all

Learn more about the legal barriers to work that women face around the world