African countries are expected to allow women to do anything they want. In legal terms, they should have the right to do any kind of job.
But this is not the situation in most African countries. Apart from having to grapple with the gender pay gap, women still do not have the same choice of jobs as men, as some jobs are by law reserved for men only.
This was contained in the 2018 edition of the World Bank publication, Women, Business and the Law that focused on legal restrictions on female employment. It found that globally, the gender employment gap existed in 104 out of 189 economies.
Over 2.7 billion women are legally restricted from certain jobs for reasons that they are deemed hazardous, “morally inappropriate” or arduous. Others cannot even work at night.
Here are some of the job restrictions that are deemed surprising in these selected African countries:
