{"id":1356582,"name":"Women can register a business in the same way as men: number of countries (yes)","unit":"countries","createdAt":"2026-11-06T10:24:32.000Z","updatedAt":"2026-11-13T20:54:44.000Z","coverage":"","timespan":"1970-2025","datasetId":8250,"shortUnit":"","columnOrder":0,"shortName":"sg_bus_regt_eq_yes_count","catalogPath":"grapher/wb/2026-11-06/gender_statistics_country_counts/gender_statistics#sg_bus_regt_eq_yes_count","descriptionShort":"Number of countries where Women, Business and the Law answers “yes” to: “Women can register a business in the same way as men”.","descriptionFromProducer":"**Definition:** The indicator measures whether there are restrictions on a woman registering a business (i.e. if a woman needs her husband’s or guardian’s permission, signature or consent to register a business; or the registration process at any stage requires a woman to provide additional information or documentation that is not required of a man).\n\n**Limitations and exceptions:** The Women, Business and the Law methodology has limitations that should be considered when interpreting the data. All eight indicators are based on standardized assumptions to ensure comparability across economies. Comparability is one of the strengths of the data, but the assumptions can also be limitations as they may not capture all restrictions or represent all particularities in a country. It is assumed that the woman resides in the economy's main business city. In federal economies, laws affecting women can vary by state or province. Even in nonfederal economies, women in rural areas and small towns could face more restrictive local legislation. Such restrictions are not captured by Women, Business and the Law unless they are also found in the main business city. The woman has reached the legal age of majority and is capable of making decisions as an adult, is in good health and has no criminal record. She is a lawful citizen of the economy being examined, and she works as a cashier in the food retail sector in a supermarket or grocery store that has 60 employees. She is a cisgender, heterosexual woman in a monogamous first marriage registered with the appropriate authorities (de facto marriages and customary unions are not measured), she is of the same religion as her husband, and is in a marriage under the rules of the default marital property regime, or the most common regime for that jurisdiction, which will not change during the course of the marriage. She is not a member of a union, unless membership is mandatory. Membership is considered mandatory when collective bargaining agreements cover more than 50 percent of the workforce in the food retail sector and when they apply to individuals who were not party to the original collective bargaining agreement. Where personal law prescribes different rights and obligations for different groups of women, the data focus on the most populous group, which may mean that restrictions that apply only to minority populations are missed. Women, Business and the Law focuses solely on the ways in which the formal legal and regulatory environment determines whether women can work or open their own businesses. The data set is constructed using laws and regulations that are codified (de jure) and currently in force, therefore implementation of laws (de facto) is not measured. The data looks only at laws that apply to the private sector. These assumptions can limit the representativeness of the data for the entire population in each country. Finally, Women, Business and the Law recognizes that the laws it measures do not apply to all women in the same way. Women face intersectional forms of discrimination based on gender, sex, sexuality, race, gender identity, religion, family status, ethnicity, nationality, disability, and a myriad of other grounds. Women, Business and the Law therefore encourages readers to interpret the data in conjunction with other available research.\n\n**Notes from original source:** This is one of the 35 scored indicators.","type":"int","dataChecksum":"754464558226938765","metadataChecksum":"3818898926387177388","datasetName":"World Bank Gender Statistics (country counts)","updatePeriodDays":365,"datasetVersion":"2026-11-06","nonRedistributable":false,"display":{"name":"Yes","unit":"countries","tolerance":0,"numDecimalPlaces":0},"schemaVersion":2,"presentation":{"titlePublic":"Women can register a business in the same way as men: number of countries (yes)"},"dimensions":{"years":{"values":[{"id":1970},{"id":1971},{"id":1972},{"id":1973},{"id":1974},{"id":1975},{"id":1976},{"id":1977},{"id":1978},{"id":1979},{"id":1980},{"id":1981},{"id":1982},{"id":1983},{"id":1984},{"id":1985},{"id":1986},{"id":1987},{"id":1988},{"id":1989},{"id":1990},{"id":1991},{"id":1992},{"id":1993},{"id":1994},{"id":1995},{"id":1996},{"id":1997},{"id":1998},{"id":1999},{"id":2000},{"id":2001},{"id":2002},{"id":2003},{"id":2004},{"id":2005},{"id":2006},{"id":2007},{"id":2008},{"id":2009},{"id":2010},{"id":2011},{"id":2012},{"id":2013},{"id":2014},{"id":2015},{"id":2016},{"id":2017},{"id":2018},{"id":2019},{"id":2020},{"id":2021},{"id":2022},{"id":2023},{"id":2025}]},"entities":{"values":[{"id":273,"name":"Africa","code":"OWID_AFR"},{"id":275,"name":"Asia","code":"OWID_ASI"},{"id":276,"name":"Europe","code":"OWID_EUR"},{"id":294,"name":"North America","code":"OWID_NAM"},{"id":277,"name":"Oceania","code":"OWID_OCE"},{"id":295,"name":"South America","code":"OWID_SAM"},{"id":355,"name":"World","code":"OWID_WRL"}]}},"origins":[{"id":28356,"titleSnapshot":"Women, Business and the Law 1.0 - Historical panel, 1971-2024","title":"Women, Business and the Law","description":"Women, Business and the Law is a World Bank project that tracks laws affecting women's economic opportunities in 190 economies.\n\nThis file is the historical panel for the original framework (known as WBL 1.0), covering report years 1971 to 2024. For each economy and report year, it answers 35 yes-or-no questions about the law across eight topics: mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pension. It also gives a score from 0 to 100 for each topic, and an overall index score, which is the average of the eight topic scores. A higher score means laws treat women and men more equally.\n\nEach report describes the laws in force in the year before it is published (on October 1, in recent reports).","producer":"World Bank","citationFull":"World Bank (2024). Women, Business and the Law 2024 - 1.0 data for 1971-2024 [dataset]. Washington, DC: World Bank.","attribution":"World Bank – Women, Business and the Law (2024)","urlMain":"https://wbl.worldbank.org/en/wbl-data","urlDownload":"https://wbl.worldbank.org/content/dam/sites/wbl/documents/2024/WBL2024-1-0-Historical-Panel-Data.xlsx","dateAccessed":"2026-11-06","datePublished":"2024-03-04","license":{"url":"https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0038489","name":"CC BY 4.0"}},{"id":28449,"titleSnapshot":"Women, Business and the Law 1.0 - Latest report year","title":"Women, Business and the Law","description":"Women, Business and the Law is a World Bank project that tracks laws affecting women's economic opportunities in 190 economies.\n\nSince its 2026 edition, the project uses a broader framework (known as WBL 2.0). To keep the long-run series comparable, the World Bank also recalculates the latest report year under the original framework (known as WBL 1.0). This file contains that recalculation: for each economy, it answers 35 yes-or-no questions about the law across eight topics (mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pension). It also gives a score from 0 to 100 for each topic, and an overall index score, which is the average of the eight topic scores. A higher score means laws treat women and men more equally.\n\nThe file also lists every answer that changed since the 2024 report. Some are reforms (changes in the law), and some are revisions (corrections of earlier answers). For each change, it gives the first report year it applies to. Our World in Data asked the World Bank which year each change applies from, and the World Bank's Women, Business and the Law team sent this version of the file with that column added. The rest of the file is identical to the one published on the WBL website.\n\nEach report describes the laws in force in the year before it is published (on October 1, in recent reports).","producer":"World Bank","citationFull":"World Bank (2026). Women, Business and the Law 2026 - 1.0 scores for comparison purposes [dataset]. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://doi.org/10.57966/gtdw-yp27","attribution":"World Bank – Women, Business and the Law (2026)","urlMain":"https://wbl.worldbank.org/en/wbl-data","dateAccessed":"2026-11-13","datePublished":"2026-02-23","license":{"url":"https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0038489","name":"CC BY 4.0"}}]}