AYV News, June 6, 2024
Sierra Leone has scored 92.5 in World Bank’s 2024 Women, Business and the Law index, surpassing the Sub-Saharan Africa average excelling in Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Entrepreneurship, and Pension, showcasing robust legal framework for women’s rights and business.
Women, Business and the Law 2024 (WBL2024) presents an index covering 190 economies and structured around the life cycle of a working woman.
In total, 35 questions are scored across eight indicators. Overall scores are then calculated by taking the average of each indicator, with 100 presenting the highest possible score.
Data refer to the laws and regulations that are applicable to the main business city (Freetown).
Different rules may apply in other jurisdictions so local legislation should be reviewed. Based on this approach, Sierra Leone scores 92.5 out of 100.0.
The overall score for Sierra Leone is higher than the regional average observed across Sub-Saharan Africa (74.0). Within the Sub-Saharan Africa region, the maximum score observed is 97.5 (Togo).
When it comes to constraints on freedom of movement, laws affecting women’s decisions to work, laws affecting women’s pay, constraints related to marriage, constraints on women starting and running a business, and laws affecting the size of a woman’s pension, Sierra Leone gets a perfect score.
When it comes to laws affecting women’s work after having children, and gender differences in property and inheritance, Sierra Leone could consider reforms to improve legal equality for women.
For example, one of the lowest scores for Sierra Leone is on the indicator measuring laws affecting women’s work after having children (the WBL2024 Parenthood indicator). To improve on the Parenthood indicator, Sierra Leone may wish to consider making the government administer 100% of maternity leave benefits, and making paid parental leave available.
During the past year (October 2nd, 2022 to October 1st, 2023), Sierra Leone prohibited gender-based discrimination in employment. Sierra Leone mandated equal remuneration for work of equal value and removed restrictions on a woman’s employment in industrial jobs. Sierra Leone increased paid maternity leave from 84 days to 98 days, introduced 14 calendar days of paid paternity leave, and prohibited the dismissal of pregnant workers. Sierra Leone enacted legislation accounting for periods of absence due to childcare in the calculation of a woman’s pension benefits.
Women, Business and the Law 2024 is the tenth in a series of annual studies measuring the enabling environment for women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies.
This edition of the report updates the Women, Business and the Law 1.0 index of eight indicators, structured around women’s interactions with the law as they begin, progress through, and end their careers: Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension.
Women, Business and the Law 2.0 sets a new frontier for measuring the environment for women’s economic inclusion across three pillars: legal frameworks, measuring laws; supportive frameworks, measuring policy mechanisms to implement laws; expert opinions, shedding light on experts’ perception of women’s outcomes.
Women, Business and the Law 2.0 also introduces two new indicators: Safety, measuring frameworks addressing violence against women, and Childcare, measuring frameworks for the availability, affordability and quality of childcare.
Data in Women, Business and the Law 2024 are current as of October 1, 2023. By examining laws and policy mechanisms affecting the economic decisions women make as they go through different stages of their working lives, as well as the opinions of experts on the legal environment for women’s economic inclusion, Women, Business and the Law makes a contribution to policy discussions about the state of women’s economic opportunities.
