Women, Business and the Law 2026

Women, Business and the Law 2026 is the 11th in a series of annual studies measuring the laws and policies that affect women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies. The 2026 edition presents an updated Women, Business and the Law 2.0, a new framework that assesses three pillars capturing both de jure and de facto dimensions of gender equality: legal frameworks, supportive frameworks, and enforcement perceptions. Women, Business and the Law 2026 updates its index of 10 topics structured around a working woman’s life cycle: Safety, Mobility, Work, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Childcare, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension. This edition also includes important methodological updates, including a new partial-credit scoring approach and revisions to several questions across topics. By examining laws affecting the economic decisions that women make throughout their lives, the frameworks supporting the implementation of those laws, and the perceptions of experts on the extent to which those laws are enforced, Women, Business and the Law continues to gather new evidence of the critical relationship between legal gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. Data in Women, Business and the Law 2026 are current as of October 1, 2025.