Page 6 Ending Sex Discrimination in the Law EQUALITY NOW – BEIJING+25 Since 1995, there has been progress made but it has been slow and inconsistent, and legal equality for women has not been achieved by the vast majority of States. 3 While more than half of laws highlighted by Equality Now as sex discriminatory in our successive reports have been fully or partially repealed, amended or voided (see Annex), many sex discriminatory laws, particularly those in the area of family law, remain entrenched. While 77% of States guarantee equality on the basis of sex in their constitutions, 23%,4 including the United States, 5 do not have sex equality as a constitutional guarantee. Too many sex discriminatory laws remain in force According to UN Women’s6 analysis of World Bank 20187 data, ongoing restrictions on women’s economic rights alone include: •• 104 countries that have laws which prevent women from working in specific jobs; •• 59 countries that have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace; •• 18 countries that have laws that allow husbands to legally prevent their wives from working; •• Close to 40 percent of countries that have at least one constraint on women’s property rights as measured by the World Bank’s “using property” indicator; •• In 36 of 189 countries analysed by the World Bank, widows are not granted the same inheritance rights as widowers; •• 39 countries prevent daughters from inheriting the same proportion of assets as sons; •• 65 countries restrict women from working in mining; •• Women also face job restrictions in industries such as manufacturing, construction, energy, agriculture, water and transportation. The areas of law that defer to custom or religion, particularly family law, have been intractable. These include laws that recognize guardianship of men over women such as in Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan, and other countries. If women are unequal in the family (the basic unit of society) or if they remain legal minors, they will never reach their full potential. Reform of discriminatory family laws needs to be prioritized.