Legal protections against discrimination at work: Gaps and progress in 193 countries from 2016 to 2024

Employment discrimination remains pervasive worldwide, both directly affecting work and impacting other core aspects of life. Foundational international instruments including the UDHR, ICESCR, CEDAW, CERD, and the CRPD all address employment discrimination. Building on this longstanding agreement, in 2015 the Sustainable Development Goals created a new global commitment for all countries to prohibit employment discrimination by 2030. However, there has been no reporting on global progress over the SDG period toward comprehensively addressing discrimination at work through national legislation. Building and analyzing an original, longitudinal dataset of laws in all 193 U.N. member states, here we show that since 2016, legal protections against discrimination at work on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, disability, religion, migrant status, foreign national origin, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and gender identity have all increased worldwide–yet the pace of this progress must accelerate to meet the 2030 SDG targets. Further, many countries still lack protections against discrimination at work based on foreign national origin (51%), sexual orientation (63%), and gender identity (79%); many also fail to explicitly prohibit discrimination in aspects of work including hiring, pay, access to training, promotions, and terminations even for dimensions better protected overall like race. Addressing these gaps is critical.