- The "Women, Business and the Law 2026" report places Jordan among the countries most advanced in global reforms.
- The World Bank: Jordan exceeds the global average in the index of frameworks supporting women's economic rights.
- The World Bank: Jordan achieves a perfect score in the wages axis after legislative reforms.
- The World Bank: Jordan maintains 100 points in entrepreneurship and women entering the business world.
- The World Bank: Proposals to extend maternity leave to 90 days and ban dismissal during pregnancy enhance protection for female workers in Jordan.
Jordan ranks among the countries that achieved the "most significant reform progress" globally, in an index measuring the laws regulating women's economic rights, in addition to supportive policies and the extent of their actual implementation, according to the "Women, Business and the Law 2026" report.
The report, issued by the World Bank, shows that Jordan has recorded clear legislative and regulatory progress that qualifies it among the countries that have made notable global progress, alongside countries like Egypt, Madagascar, Somalia, the Sultanate of Oman, and Kyrgyzstan, although it remains below the global average in some indicators, according to the kingdom.
The report, which compared 190 countries between October 2023 and October 2025, shows that Jordan scored 52.50 points on the legal framework index, 68.55 points on the supportive frameworks index, and 40.22 points on the enforcement perceptions index.
These results show that Jordan's performance exceeded the global average of 47 points in terms of supportive frameworks, while it remained below the global average of 67 points in the legal framework, and also below the global average of 53 points in enforcement perceptions, reflecting a gap between written laws and their practical application, a phenomenon the report confirms as global since no country has achieved full legal equality for women.
The report highlights the reforms implemented by Jordan over the past two years, which formed the basis of this progress. In the wages axis, Jordan's score rose to 100 points in 2024 compared to 75 points in 2020 and 2023, after introducing amendments that strengthened the principle of equality and non-discrimination in treatment.
Jordan's score also rose in the work environment axis from 75 points in 2020 and 2023 to 75 points in 2024, after banning discrimination based on gender, abolishing restrictions on women's work, and institutionalizing flexible work arrangements.
In the entrepreneurship axis, Jordan maintained a score of 100 points in 2023 and 2024, after having been 75 points in 2020, reflecting the continued full legal equality for women in entering the business world.
The report also referred to the explicit definition of sexual harassment in the workplace and its criminalization for the first time within the safety axis, despite the score remaining at 0 points in 2024 according to the calculation mechanism.
The report notes that the proposed amendments in the labor law contributed to enhancing protection in the paternity axis, by extending maternity leave to 90 days, banning termination of female workers' services during pregnancy, and aligning this protection with social security benefits, with the score in this axis remaining at 40 points.
It also referred to legislative requirements obliging employers to provide child care facilities or alternatives within the child care axis.
The report indicated that this progress was supported by the World Bank's Mashreq Women's Empowerment Program, which supports pillars including child care, empowering the legislative and work environment, enhancing economic opportunities for women, and implementing the gender-sensitive strategy.
According to the report, Jordan remains among the countries with the lowest rates of women's participation in the workforce among the non-conflict-affected countries, at 14% over the past two decades.
However, the reform path since 2020 has contributed to raising Jordan's score from 40.6 points in 2020 to 46.9 points in 2021, and then to 59.4 points in 2024, exceeding the regional average for the Middle East and North Africa region of 38.6 points and approaching the global average of 64.2 points, while still facing a gap in legal gender equality.
The World Bank Mashreq Women's Empowerment Program is a multi-donor technical assistance program supporting various activities within the following pillars: supporting child care, empowering the legislative and work environment, enhancing access to economic opportunities for women, and supporting the implementation of the gender-sensitive strategy and its action plan.
The "Women, Business and the Law 2026" report by the World Bank shows that the methodology for calculating results has changed from previous editions, as it no longer limited to measuring written laws regulating women's economic rights but has expanded to include policies and supportive institutional frameworks, alongside assessing the actual implementation of these laws.
The report adopted an analytical framework based on three main pillars: the legal framework, the supportive frameworks, and enforcement perceptions, with equal weighting for each in the final score, as well as introducing new assessment tools to measure enforcement and enhance the comparability of international data, providing a more comprehensive and realistic reading of progress compared to previous reports.
During her participation in the event launching the report, Social Development Minister and Chairwoman of the Ministerial Committee for Women's Empowerment, Wafaa Bani Mustafa, said that Jordan had progressed by 19 points in just five years in the Women, Business and the Law index, through adopting a legislative reform approach that has enhanced the status of Jordanian women as one of the significant drivers of the economy.
Bani Mustafa emphasized that improving Jordan's rank in the Women, Business and Law report is among the priorities of the Economic Modernization Vision launched by His Majesty King Abdullah II, noting that this progress was achieved with his support and guidance, through adopting consecutive legislative reforms over the past five years.
She added that among the most significant achievements in this regard were the constitutional amendments that ensured the empowerment and protection of women from all forms of violence and discrimination, along with the labor law, which contributed to improving the work environment through supporting child care and banning discrimination in wages.
