World Bank: Saudi Arabia maintains strong reform momentum in women legal reforms

World Bank: Saudi Arabia maintains strong reform momentum in women legal reforms

RIYADH — For two years in a row, Saudi Arabia has achieved notable progress in the “Women, Business and the Law (WBL) Report”, a global measure of women legal reforms published by the World Bank Group.On a scale of 1 to 100, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia scored 80 in WBL 2021, up from 70.6 in WBL 2020. Its performance is most remarkable in five indicators on which it scored at the top of the scale: mobility, workplace, pay, entrepreneurship, and pension.These scores put Saudi Arabia on a par with many advanced economies with long traditions of women legal reforms.The Kingdom's strong performance comes as a result of a raft of reforms that it implemented last year to further expand women's participation in the economy.Saudi Arabia equalized women's access to all types of jobs in the labor market, lifted restrictions on their employment in sectors previously considered unsafe, and eliminated the ban on women's night work.Commenting on the results, Dr. Majed Al-Qasabi, minister of commerce and chairman of the board of the