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Gender Gender Gender Gender Gender Constitutional Protections for Equal Rights and Non-DiscriminationThe WORLD Policy Analysis Center analyzed national constitutional texts in force as of May 2017.

The Constitutions database includes analyses of constitutions from all UN member states.

We only referred to additional legislation when it was explicitly referenced in the constitution.

Although the vast majority of countries have written constitutions in place, a few countries (e.g. the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Israel) either have no written constitutions or have a series of laws that function similarly to a constitution, rather than a single text. In these cases, our data was collected from documents or laws that are considered to be constitutional in nature either by the country itself or by the legal community.

Why consider constitutions? Governments establish human rights through national and sub-national legislation, targeted programs and policies, and national constitutions. Among these tools, constitutions fulfill several unique and important functions:

Constitutions are fundamental building blocks of a nation’s government and laws. As such, they can play an important role in establishing values and rights.

Constitutions are particularly difficult to repeal or amend. Their commitments remain relatively stable and permanent even as different political parties assume power.

Constitutions are typically the highest laws of a country and so can be used to shape legislation and policies.

Constitutions often contain mechanisms for the legal enforcement of citizens’ rights. In countries around the world, such provisions have been used successfully to combat discrimination and hold governments accountable to their commitments.

Constitutions often outline broad rights that require complementary legislation or policies to be fully effective. For example, legislation that guarantees free secondary school helps realize the constitutional right to education. Nevertheless, constitutions’ critical role in formally establishing countries’ fundamental values makes them an important unit of analysis on their own.

Adult Labor Rights & ProtectionsThe WORLD Policy Analysis Center reviewed original labor and social security legislation, complemented and verified by information on social security systems from each UN member state and global sources to collect information about policies for adult labor. The following sources were used to gather information on this subject:

International Labour Organization (ILO)’s NATLEX database;

ILO’s Maternity Protection and Working Time databases;

World Bank’s Women, Business, and the Law;

Official country websites;

Lexadin;

World Legal Information Institute;

The Social Security Programs Throughout the World database (SSPTW); and

Hard copies of relevant legislation at ILO’s headquarters in Geneva and McGill University's and Harvard University’s law libraries.

Additional information to fill in gaps from the abovementioned sources was drawn from the following:

International Review of Leave Policies and Related Research;

Benefit summaries and information available from the Mutual Information System on Social Protection (MISSOC) and the Mutual Information System on Social Protection of the Council of Europe (MISSCEO).

Initial data analysis has focused on national-level law and policy. In countries where labor policies are set at the state or provincial level, such as the U.S. and India, we coded based on the lowest level of guarantee.Protection from Child MarriageThe WORLD Policy Analysis Center analyzed the following sources to establish the minimum age at which a girl or boy can be married with no restrictions in each country as of January 1st, 2019:

Lexadin World Law Guide;

Foreign Law Guide;

International Labour Organization (ILO)’s NATLEX database;

Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute;

Asian Legal Information Institute;

JaFBase; and

Official country websites.

If information from the abovementioned sources was not available, the following sources were reviewed:

The most recent reports submitted by countries to the monitoring committees of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) as of January 2019, as well as the reports detailing the committees’ concluding observations.

In some cases, hard copies and electronic copies of legislation were obtained from libraries such as the Swiss Institute for Comparative Law, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Law Library, the Harvard Law School Library, and the Northwestern University Library.The database captures national-level legislation. In countries where minimum age of marriage laws are set at the state or provincial level, we coded based on the state or province with the lowest minimum age provisions.Access to EducationThe Education Database was created through a systematic review of national constitution, law and policy guarantees extended to public education. To construct the database, WORLD analysts reviewed:

Original, legislative texts (education acts, child protection legislation, disability rights acts, and anti-discrimination legislation) identified primarily using the UNESCO Observatory on the Right to Education and the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) NATLEX database, current as of June 2018.

Non-legislative policy and government commitments, identified via the UNESCO Observatory on the Right to Education, UNESCO’s Planipolis Portal of Education Plans and Policies, country questionnaires fielded and published by UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the European Commission’s review of National Education Systems, and government education websites in place as of June 2018.

Full constitutional texts and all amendments as of May 2017 from official government websites, supplemented with Constitution Finder (University of Richmond), and other sources. For countries that did not have a written codified constitution, analysts reviewed all laws considered to have constitutional status.

All indicators reflect national-level constitutional, legislative, or policy guarantees. In countries where guarantees are set at the state or provincial level, the database captures information for the state or province with the lowest level of protection.Countries structure their education systems in many different ways. When countries do not split their education systems according to primary, lower secondary and upper secondary, we assigned these categories based on the available information on levels of schooling to increase comparability across countries. Stages of schooling were established as follows:

When countries have eight or more years of primary school and split it into stages, the upper level of primary is treated as lower secondary for comparability.

For a minority of countries that do not split secondary into levels, we apply the general secondary data to both levels of secondary education.

Indicators on tuition-free and compulsory education include constitutional guarantees to tuition-free and compulsory. Additional, dedicated constitutional rights to education are assessed separately, according to the process outlined on this Methodology page. Preventing Workplace Discrimination and Sexual HarassmentThe WORLD Policy Analysis Center reviewed original legislation and statutory protections extended to the private sector in labor codes, anti-discrimination legislation, equal opportunity legislation, and penal codes. Data is current as of January 2021 for variables focused on gender and sexual harassment, as of May 2018 for variables focused on disability, and as of August 2016 for 13 protected characteristics. Original, full-text, national-level legislation for all 193 United Nations member states was identified primarily using the International Labour Organization (ILO)’s NATLEX database. The World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law and other supplemental sources were consulted to ensure all applicable legislation was reviewed.This data analysis has focused on national-level legislation; for countries that legislate at the sub-national level and have no federal policy in place, we coded based on the lowest level of protection set at the state or provincial level. This analysis captures legislative language that explicitly applies to private-sector workplaces, and excludes provisions that guarantee non-discrimination without specifying their applicability to work (such as protections which may apply to public spaces or educational institutions). In some countries, case law has extended the application of more general prohibitions to specific areas of work and to cover additional protected characteristics. However, systematic review of case law is outside of the scope of this analysis and rights extended through litigation are not reflected in these findings.For details on the variables included in this category, please see WORLD global maps on Gender.For more information about WORLD’s approach to building globally comparative databases on policies affecting human health, development, well-being, and equity, please visit our Methodology page.