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Women in South Asia continue to fall behind their peers in other parts of the world as the region has been lagging in enacting reforms to empower them, a World Bank study said.
“Only three reforms have been made in two economies in the past two years,” according to World Bank Group’s Women, Business and the Law 2016 report.
Several economies from South Asia are among the most restrictive in the world in the dimensions measured affecting women’s entrepreneurship and employment, it said. While Afghanistan imposes more than 20 legal barriers to women’s economic inclusion, job restrictions remain widespread for India’s 612 million women.
Unfair regulations The report finds married women in Afghanistan cannot choose where to live, apply for a passport, or obtain a national ID card in the same way as married men. Indian women are not allowed to work in mining or in jobs that require lifting weights above a certain threshold or working with glass.
Moreover, India has no laws to protect women against sexual harassment in public places, even as protections exist in 18 other economies around the world, the study found.
India’s neighbour Pakistan has issued two reforms in the past two years. It has set the legal age of marriage for boys and girls at 18 years, apart from introducing criminal sanctions for men who contract marriage with a minor and anyone who performs, facilitates or permits underage marriage.
While Pakistan has introduced a 22 per cent quota for women in local government, they are barred from working in many jobs, including those in factories and in mining. “In order to register a business, married women in Pakistan need to include their husband’s name, nationality, and address – and they need to do this in the presence of a witness,” the report said.
In Nepal, women cannot confer citizenship to their children or to their non-national spouse in the same way as men.
The report, published every two years, examines laws that impede women’s employment and entrepreneurship in 173 economies throughout the world. The 2016 edition expands coverage in South Asia from 5 to 8 economies, adding Afghanistan, Bhutan and the Maldives.
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