Tashkent

Uzbekistan has scored 82.5 out of 100 points in the World Bank’s “Women, Business, and the Law” rating, securing a position among the top five countries that have made significant progress towards gender equality in the legal sphere, Podrobno.uz reports.

World Bank experts assessed the status of women in 190 countries based on indicators such as safety, freedom of movement, employment, wage equality, marriage, parenthood, childcare, entrepreneurship, property rights, and pension provision. The findings were presented in the report titled “Women, Business, and the Law.”

The latest report evaluated changes in the laws of countries. During the analyzed period, only 18 countries worldwide implemented legal reforms aimed at ensuring gender equality, and Uzbekistan was among them.

Uzbekistan entered the top five countries that achieved significant progress. Since October 2022, Uzbekistan has implemented four important legal reforms that have improved the status of women.

Specifically, regulations were enacted to ensure equal pay for work of equal value between women and men, restrictions on women’s employment in certain industries were lifted, and norms protecting women from domestic violence were introduced.

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These reforms positively impacted the improvement of Uzbekistan’s positions in two key indicators: “wage equality” and “marriage,” allowing the country to increase its rating by 11.9 points. In total, Uzbekistan scored 82.5 out of 100 points in the “Women, Business, and the Law 2024” index. In terms of points, Uzbekistan is on par with Singapore, Turkey, and the UAE, and it demonstrates the best results in Central Asia.

“The World Bank welcomes the progress made by Uzbekistan in advancing gender equality, as noted in the latest ‘Women, Business, and the Law’ report. Recent legal reforms have significantly expanded civil, labor, and economic rights for women. We were pleased to contribute to the implementation of these reforms,” remarked Tatiana Proskuryakova, the World Bank’s Regional Director for Central Asia.

It is noted that the World Bank supported reforms in Uzbekistan by providing the necessary analytical and financial assistance to the government.

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 Courtesy: Central Asian Light (Posted on March 5, 2024) 

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