The laws relating to men and women's economic participation are equal in only a small minority of countries. Photo: The-Lane-Team (flickr)

Women who control the family purse strings are often thought to be better at pulling their families out of poverty than men because they're more likely to spend their funds on things like education and food.

But many barriers still seem to stand in the way of women's economic participation, an impression that was reinforced by the publication of a recent World Bank report called Women, Business, and the Law. The study took a look at laws around the world that might affect women's ability to work or start a business.

In short, women enjoyed equal rights with men in only 20 of 128 countries surveyed. The study concentrated legal areas that could affect economic participation, like women's right to manage, control, and inherit property.

But more equitable laws for women are only one piece of the complex puzzle of gender equality, as the World Bank itself carefully points out. For example, the report doesn't factor in the complex issue of how laws interact with social norms. Despite legal equality in several countries, the report notes that "women in every economy are paid less for their work than men — with the wage gap averaging 17 percent in 2008" (emphasis mine).

Despite the intricacy of the problem, legal equality remains important for entrepreneurs. As the report notes:

For men and women throughout the developing world the chance to start and run a business or to get a good job is the surest hope of a way out of poverty. [...] [This] requires good business regulation [...] so that the chance to build a business, or to have a good job, depends not on your connections or wealth or power, but on your initiative and ability.

Legal conditions that give each citizen an equal chance at work would make it easier for both men and women to lift themselves out of poverty, benefiting not only themselves, but their families and the communities they live in.