Women in Bangladesh continue to receive lower wages than their male counterparts for the same work, according to the World Bank's (WB) latest report titled 'Women, Business and the Law 2026'.
The report, released on Tuesday, says Bangladesh scored much lower than the global standards across three key pillars -- legal frameworks, supportive frameworks and enforcement perceptions.
The 11th edition of the report introduced a revamped "2.0" methodology that evaluates not only laws on the books but also supportive institutional frameworks and expert perceptions of how these laws are applied.
Under this new methodology, Bangladesh scored 34.38 out of 100 on the Legal Frameworks Index, well below the global average of 67.
With a score of 35, the country also fell short of both the global average (46.83) and the South Asia regional average (36.61) on the supportive frameworks index.
In enforcement perceptions, Bangladesh scored 27.92, compared with the global average of 53.31 and the South Asia average of 35.32.
These lower scores indicate that gaps still persist between law and practice, said the report.
However, Bangladesh scored above the regional average in specific topics such as safety, marriage, entrepreneurship and assets, it added.
The report pointed out that South Asia, including Bangladesh, remains one of the regions with the most restrictive legal barriers to women's full economic participation. This is particularly concerning as the region faces unprecedented pressure to harness its expanding youth population to drive growth, it said.
Bangladesh was featured in a specialised pilot survey conducted with Gallup to capture population-level perceptions. Perceptions of pay equality in Bangladesh were the lowest among the pilot economies.
According to the report, a majority of both male and female respondents in the country believe that women and men are not paid equally for the same work, with many attributing the gap to gender bias and women's concentration in lower-paying sectors.
The WB emphasises that closing these gender gaps is not merely a matter of fairness but an economic imperative. Reducing the gender employment gap could boost long-term GDP per capita by an average of 20 per cent globally, with even higher potential gains.
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