AEQUITAS lawyers contributed to Women, Business and the Law 2020 index
Published on 14 January 2020, the 6th Report called Women, Business and the Law of The World Bank for 2020 placed Kazakhstan among the countries with still existing restrictions on women’s access to labor force. This Report covers the legal situation of women in 8 spheres of life: mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pension in 190 world economies.
Overall Kazakhstan has 72.5 points out of 100. For comparison, last year this index was 75.63 out of 100, which means a slight deterioration in the pension indicator, but an improvement in the pay indicator. These changes are related to pension reforms in Kazakhstan, namely equalizing the retirement age of men and women with full pension benefits. In accordance with Art. 11 of the Pension Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan the retirement age for women increases annually by 6 months over 10 years and will be equal to the retirement age for men by 2027.
It is also worth noting, that today 90 countries of the world have at least one restriction on employment of women in this or that industry or field. Of them, in 30% of the countries women are restricted from taking jobs considered to be dangerous, hard or morally unsuitable for them; in 40% of these 90 countries women are restricted from taking jobs in just certain areas; and in 15% of the countries women may not work during the night.
So, for instance, in Kazakhstan, there still exists a list of jobs, which women are banned to be employed in. Kazakhstan reduced the types of jobs prohibited to women from 287 to 219, while Moldova and Uzbekistan abolished their lists of banned jobs in 2019. Earlier similar lists were abolished in Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine.
The Kazakhstan part of the analysis was prepared in collaboration with 13 lawyers from leading law firms and legal centers, including AEQUITAS Partner and Head of Labor & Employment Yuliya Chumachenko jointly with Senior Associates Larissa Yemelyanova and Alexandr Chumachenko.