Identifying and Addressing Gender Issues in Doing Business

Doing Business, the World Bank's annual flagship publication, claims that payoffs for women from regulatory reform are large despite a lack of explicit focus on social factors affecting the economic participation of women. Taking off from our previous findings that discrimination hindering women's economic participation originate at the level of traditions and perpetuate at the level of regulations, this article suggests a combined qualitative and quantitative methodology that addresses gender issues in the Doing Business project. The approach evaluates discrimination at the level of traditions with one of two quantitative methodological options that incorporate gender perspectives at the regulatory level.