Women, Business and the Law: Does Culture Matter?

This article aims to investigate the effect of countries’ culture on women’s right to economic participation. As a secondary objective, the article aims to analyse the effect of culture on the progress made in the laws of the countries over the last five decades. The dataset comprises the national culture dimensions of Hofstede and the scores related to gender inequalities in the law provided in the Women, Business and the Law (WBL) database from The World Bank. Using multivariate regression analysis, we evaluated the effect of the cultural dimensions on the current WBL scores and on the variation of the WBL scores over the last five decades. The results show that the dimensions of culture (individualism, uncertainty avoidance and power distance) affect women’s right to economic participation and/or the evolution of laws in this direction. The results also suggest that although some countries still have much to advance in their legislation, more and more countries are reaching the goal of having an egalitarian society.