Ghana maintained its 26th position, out of 53 countries in Africa, in the 2024 World Bank Women, Business & Law Index.

The country also maintained its 7th position in West Africa, but better than Nigeria (66.3%).

The West African nation scored 75%. It got the same scores in 2021, 2022 and 2023 respectively.

Several African countries however improved their rankings.

Ghana scored poorly in the Parenthood (20%) and Pay (50%) categories.

It however scored 75% in the Entrepreneurship and Pensions categories respectively. The positions were however unchanged from the 2023 rankings, meaning there was no progress made in these categories. 

The country scored full marks of 100% in Mobility, Workplace and Marriage.

The overall score for Ghana is higher than the regional average across Sub-Saharan Africa (74.0).

Within the Sub-Saharan Africa region, the Togo obtained the maximum score 97.5.

Relative Strengths

The report said Ghana got a perfect score for constraints on freedom of movement, laws affecting women’s decisions to work, and constraints related to marriage.

Areas for Improvement

The report recommended that Ghana institute reforms to improve legal equality for women.

“When it comes to laws affecting women's pay, laws affecting women's work after having children, constraints on women starting and running a business, gender differences in property and inheritance, and laws affecting the size of a woman's pension. For example, one of the lowest scores for Ghana is on the indicator measuring laws affecting women’s work after having children”, it said.

To improve on the Parenthood indicator, the report urged Ghana to consider making paid leave of at least 14 weeks available to mothers, making the government administer 100% of maternity leave benefits.

Recent Reforms

There were no reforms were observed during the past year (October 2, 2022 – October 1, 2023).

The Women, Business and the Law 2024 presents an index covering 190 economies and structured around the life cycle of a working woman.

In total, 35 questions were scored across eight indicators. The overall scores are then calculated by taking the average of each indicator, with 100 representing the highest possible score.