Women, Business and the Law 2026: What Egypt’s Results Mean for Competitiveness

A governed reading of legal opportunity, enabling systems and implementation

Egypt — official edition result: Legal Frameworks: 48.5; Supportive Frameworks: 48.13; Enforcement Perceptions: 41.82; recalculated WBL 1.0: 61.875

Executive summary

The World Bank Group’s Women, Business and the Law 2026 release covers 190 economies and provides a structured diagnosis of the conditions shaping women’s economic opportunity. Egypt is covered, but the source does not publish an official ordinal rank for Egypt.

For competitiveness policy, the value of the framework lies in locating barriers that can restrict labor-force participation, earnings, enterprise creation, asset ownership and long-term economic security. The scores must be read with the edition’s methodology and evidence date, not as a complete judgment on equality in practice.

Release and methodology

Field	Value
Release date	2026-02-24
Coverage	190 economies
Data reference	Data current to October 1, 2025; 2024–2025 values recalculated under the 2026 methodology
Measurement system	Consolidated WBL 2.0 — three pillars and ten topics; separate recalculated WBL 1.0 file
Egypt result	Legal Frameworks: 48.5; Supportive Frameworks: 48.13; Enforcement Perceptions: 41.82; recalculated WBL 1.0: 61.875
Egypt rank	Not published; none inferred

Global signal

The consolidated WBL 2.0 framework measures legal frameworks, supportive frameworks, and enforcement perceptions across ten topics and 190 economies.

Egypt’s measured profile

Topic	Score
Safety	43.75
Mobility	25
Work	50
Pay	81.25
Marriage	0
Parenthood	64.25
Childcare	50
Entrepreneurship	62.5
Assets	25
Pension	83.25

These values identify gaps within the issuer’s measurement frame. They do not, by themselves, establish the causes of women’s labor-market outcomes or prove the quality of implementation.

Competitiveness implications

Legal barriers can narrow the effective supply of skills and reduce returns on education and training.
Weak supportive systems can prevent formal rights from becoming usable services, finance, childcare and business access.
Enforcement gaps can raise uncertainty and transaction costs for women workers, entrepreneurs and investors.
Closing the measured gaps should therefore be linked to productivity, enterprise growth, formalization and inclusive investment—not to score maximization alone.

ENCC policy priorities

Horizon	Priority	Monitoring indicator
0–6 months	Validate every low-scoring Egypt item against primary law, regulation and procedure.	Share of items with verified primary evidence
0–6 months	Assign a responsible institution to each confirmed legal or administrative gap.	Share of confirmed gaps with named owner
6–12 months	Separate legislative reform from service-delivery and enforcement requirements.	Delivery plans with budget, timetable and service standard
12–18 months	Test implementation through administrative data and user experience.	Availability of sex-disaggregated use, time and outcome evidence
18–24 months	Reconcile reforms with the next comparable official data vintage.	Versioned evidence and score-reconciliation note

Comparability and limitations

Use only the official 2026-methodology recalculation for 2024–2025 comparisons. Do not splice published 2024 or legacy scores into that series. The framework is bounded by the issuer’s questions, evidence rules and reference date. It does not capture every subnational rule, informal practice, social norm or lived enforcement experience.