When Does Employment Actually Redistribute Power?

Women’s employment is not simply about access to the labour market. The deeper question is whether, and under what conditions, work translates into economic independence and the power to choose.

In A Costly Absence, I examined how gender inequality is not only a matter of justice: excluding women from economic opportunity also diminishes human capital and economic capacity. Yet the language of economic cost has a limitation. It tells us what the economy loses, but not how much agency an individual woman gains or loses.

The World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2026 examines this issue through legal and institutional indicators. Across 190 economies, the average score for women’s legal rights is 67 out of 100. The average score for supportive frameworks is 47, while the Enforcement Perceptions score is 53. The third measure is sometimes inaccurately described as a direct measurement of actual enforcement. It is instead a perception-based indicator derived from assessments by legal experts concerning implementation by public authorities.

WBL 2026 also introduced a revised methodology. The figure of 67 therefore cannot be placed beside earlier scores without methodological adjustment and then treated as evidence of a trend. To support comparisons over time, the World Bank recalculated historical results under the former method and aligned the 2024 and 2025 data with the 2026 methodology.

This distinction matters legally. The distance between law on the books and law in practice is not always caused only by weak enforcement. Sometimes the legal rule itself restricts women’s economic agency. Article 1117 of the Iranian Civil Code is a clear example: under the conditions stated in the provision, a husband may prevent his wife from pursuing an occupation that he considers incompatible with family interests or with his or her dignity. The effect of the provision cannot be understood from its text alone; judicial practice and the way courts apply it must also be examined.

A recent Economist analysis, “How work makes families more equal,” moves the discussion from the labour market into the household. Its central idea is that employment and independent income can, in some circumstances, increase women’s bargaining power. The relationship, however, is neither linear nor guaranteed.

A 2021 study by Bilge Erten and Pinar Keskin used the arrival of Syrian refugees as an external labour-market shock in Turkey. It found that reduced employment and income opportunities for women were associated with lower intimate-partner violence, particularly among women with less education. The authors considered this finding consistent with theories of instrumental violence. The result should not be generalised to all societies, and it does not establish that women’s employment itself causes violence. It shows that the relationship between income, power, and safety depends on social and household structures.

This is where the reciprocal relationship between law and women’s agency becomes clear. Law can create, restrict, or condition the possibility of economic independence. Economic independence can, in turn, strengthen women’s capacity to negotiate, resist, and demand legal reform. The World Bank estimates that closing gender gaps in employment and entrepreneurship could raise global output by approximately 20 percent.

Under what legal and social conditions does employment actually become the power to choose?

The issue is not simply whether women are permitted to work. It is whether work, within a given legal and institutional structure, gives them greater control over their own lives.

Sources

• The Economist, “How work makes families more equal” (3 September 2026).
• World Bank, Women, Business and the Law 2026.
• Bilge Erten & Pinar Keskin (2021), “Female employment and intimate partner violence: Evidence from Syrian refugee inflows to Turkey,” Journal of Development Economics, 150, 102607.