In addition, expert advice was sought to better understand gender equality on the ground and to allow comparisons with the legal index. The Middle East and North Africa is the only region where expert opinion has shown more gender equality in practice than the legal index suggests. The Rights Index outperformed expert opinion in all other regions and across all indicators, with Workplace showing the largest gap between laws and expert opinions on gender equality. Several respondents identified specific gaps in law implementation, even in economies that outperform the legal index. Women, Business and the Law examines the implementation gap by introducing a new conceptual framework to measure it. The 25-economies pilot exercise examines both enabling frameworks that create an enabling environment for working women and expert advice on progress towards gender equality for individuals on the ground. The implementation measures examined include enforcement of rights through equal access to justice, safety rules that implement the absence of restrictions, as well as online access and clear guidelines on the granting of benefits. On average, only half of the support frameworks were measured in the pilot economies, indicating a significant gap between the adoption of laws and their implementation. All have the opportunity to strengthen the legal environment for women workers and entrepreneurs in practice. Even in areas where basic legislation is strong, there is a lack of implementation and enforcement of laws. Although the results are preliminary, they confirm that legislation alone is not enough to improve gender equality and make it clear that these gaps should be further explored.
