Only 4% of women across the world live in economies that provide nearly full legal equality, and this is keeping economies from reaching their full potential to grow and create jobs, says a new report by global finance institution the World Bank.

Legal experts surveyed for the 'Women, Business and the Law' report estimated that laws that encourage full economic participation by women are only half-enforced, which indicates that governments have a long way to go.

“Over the next decade, 1.2-billion young people, half of them females, will enter the workforce. Many will come of age in regions where women face the biggest barriers and where the GDP boost that would result from their participation is most needed.

“Ensuring equal opportunity for women benefits societies as a whole, not just women. It is an economic must-have,” says World Bank Women, Business and the Law project manager and report lead author Tea Trumbic.

While progress is being made in establishing new equal-opportunity laws, economies on average have in place fewer than half of the policies and services needed for enforcement. However, even if the laws were fully enforced, women would still enjoy only about two-thirds of the legal rights of men, the report says.

While the average country score was 67% for the adequacy of laws to enable economic equality between women and men, this drops to only 53% in terms of enforcing the laws, says World Bank Group chief economist and development economics senior VP Indermit Gill.

Similarly, when the adequacy of the systems needed to implement those rights is assessed, the score drops to 47%.

“These numbers reflect huge opportunity gaps, and the findings of this report provide policymakers with intelligence to reverse the decline in the growth potential of developing economies,” he points out.

Childcare is a crucial opportunity for policymakers, the report highlights.

Affordable, reliable childcare tends to be one of the strongest predictors of whether parents, and particularly mothers, can work or move into higher-productivity jobs.

However, less than half of the 190 economies covered in the report have laws providing financial or tax support for families. Additionally, among those, only 30% of policies needed to support affordable and high-quality childcare services are in place.

In low-income economies, just 1% have access to childcare support mechanisms, the report shows.

Further, the report assessed the global state of women’s economic participation across ten key areas, including safety from violence, access to childcare, entrepreneurship, employment protections, asset ownership and retirement security.

Safety from violence was identified as a key shortcoming, leaving women less able to work consistently.

“True equality begins with safety. Whether at home, at work or in public, women deserve protection to thrive. Globally, we are falling short. We have only one-third of the safety laws we need and, even then, enforcement is failing 80% of the time,” says World Bank Policy Indicators Group director Norman Loayza.

Entrepreneurship is another low-scoring area.

Although women can start businesses on the same legal terms as men in nearly all economies, only about half promote equal access to credit, leaving women entrepreneurs locked out of financing, the report finds.

However, progress is occurring with respect to equal-opportunity laws on the books, with 68 economies having enacted 113 positive legal reforms across most areas of women’s economic life over the past two years, with the greatest progress made in entrepreneurship and safety from violence.

Seven countries also expanded paternity leave to help redistribute caregiving and support women’s employment.

Sub-Saharan Africa implemented 33 reforms over the past two years, which is the largest number of any region. Madagascar and Somalia lifted prohibitions on women working in sectors such as construction, manufacturing and agriculture, the report states.

Additionally, Egypt, Jordan and Oman made progress. Egypt was the world’s top reformer over the past two years, having increased its legal equality score by nearly ten points.

Recent reforms in Egypt extended paid parental leave from 90 to 120 days for mothers and introduced one day of paid leave for fathers, mandated equal pay and allowed requests for flexible work arrangements.