MikeLigalig.com

The World Bank’s survey of Women, Business and the Law reports that almost 90 percent of the world’s countries still have at least one legal difference restricting women’s opportunities in 2014. And some countries see draconian limits on the freedom of women. Nine states including Malaysia, Syria, and the West Bank restrict women’s movement outside the home. Fifteen economies including Bolivia, Cameroon, Jordan, and Sudan allow husbands to prevent their wives from accepting jobs. Nearly 30 economies, including Indonesia and the Philippines, still designate husbands head of household with power over decisions like where to live or getting official documents. And 79 different economies restrict the type of jobs women can do just on the grounds of their sex. In Russia, for example, women are barred from working as freight train conductors, sailors, woodworkers, high antenna installers, or drivers of loading machines.

Beyond legal discrimination is more widespread practical discrimination. Violence toward women starts early and is repeated hideously often. Sex-selective abortion is replacing infant neglect as the tool of choice among families across the globe who want girls not boys, with somewhere between 4 million and 12 million sex-selective abortions performed in India alone over the past three decades. Some 125 million women worldwide have been subject to genital mutilation. And domestic violence toward women (PDF) remains by far the most widespread form of violence worldwide.

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It’s worth noting that China’s attitudes changed very slowly—with a majority still agreeing with the statement in the second survey round—while India actually saw a reversal in attitudes. Signs of progress in Saudi Arabia are even harder to spot. The country did allow women to vote in local elections this year (the only type of elections the inherited autocracy permits), but women still aren’t allowed to drive to the polls, or anywhere else for that matter. Two women were recently given a 10-month prison sentence because they had taken a food parcel to the house of someone they thought was in an abusive relationship. Apparently this amounted to the illegal act of “incitement of a wife to defy the authority of her husband.”

The World Bank’s analysis suggests that greater gender parity in legal rights is associated with greater female participation in the labor force, greater ownership of firms, and greater income equality. But the real argument for gender parity isn’t instrumental—it’s a moral issue. It’s hard to see why gross discrimination on the basis of sex should have any more international legitimacy than discrimination based on skin color. By that standard, there’s no reason why the policies practiced by Saudi Arabia toward women should be any more tolerable than the policies used by apartheid-era South Africa to keep whites privileged over blacks.

That oil-rich Saudi Arabia will face the same sanctions and global opprobrium which South Africa suffered in the 1980s may seem unlikely today. But the evolution in global attitudes toward women’s rights suggests that gender discrimination is fast becoming unacceptable. The men who rule Saudi Arabia and countries like it would be wise to change their policies toward their female citizens, before change is forced on them.

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