LONDON — The world is moving towards legal gender equality — but it’s moving very, very slowly.
Only six countries currently give women and men equal rights, a major report from the World Bank has found.
That’s an increase — from zero — compared to a decade ago, when the organization started measuring countries by how effectively they guarantee legal and economic equality between the genders.
But the rate of progress means that, by CNN calculations, women won’t achieve full equality in the areas studied by the World Bank until 2073.
Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden scored full marks of 100 in the bank’s “Women, Business and the Law 2019” report.
Of those nations, France saw the biggest improvement over the past decade for implementing a domestic violence law, providing criminal penalties for workplace sexual harassment and introducing paid parental leave.