By Kirsty Needham SYDNEY, June 17 (Reuters) - Less than half of working age women are employed across the Pacific Islands due to outdated laws and other barriers, the World Bank said in a new report on Tuesday, and said closing the gender gap could boost economic growth. The World Bank economic update for the Pacific also forecast regional growth slowing to 2.6 percent in 2025, down from 5.5 percent in 2023. With 57% or around 500,000 women not in work across the Pacific Islands, the report said boosting female participation to the same level as men could lift the region's gross domestic product by 22% by increasing household incomes and supporting private sector growth. In Fiji, the biggest Pacific Islands economy, the boost to GDP could be 30%, it said. The gender gap in the labour market exists despite women attaining similar education levels as men, and could be partly attributed to social norms, the report said. Six countries did not have paid parental leave, often forcing women to leave the labour force when they started families, it said. In the energy sector, which is under pressure to expand its workforce as islands upgrade infrastructure and transition to renewables, the World Bank found women held less than 19% of jobs across 12 Pacific countries, and fewer than 5% of well-paid technical roles. "Ignoring women as part of that pool is just not good business sense," Helle Buchhave, World Bank senior social development specialist, said in an interview. "We are working with them to increase women's employment in the sector," she added. The World Bank has recommended gender targets and said governments should remove outdated restrictions that prevent women working in some countries, including safety restrictions in some industries, and bans on women working at night in countries including the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. "It's not part of today's world - that kind of protection of women in the labour force ignores the fact that safety is for both men and women," Buchhave said. Five countries - Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu - lack legal protections against gender-based discrimination in employment, the report said. The remote atoll nation of Kiribati had the best legal workplace protections for women, it found. "Closing the workforce gender gap is one of the highest-impact reforms Pacific governments can pursue," said Ekaterine Vashakmadze, World Bank senior economist. (Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Kate Mayberry) ((Kirsty.Needham@thomsonreuters.com;)) Keywords: PACIFIC WORLDBANK/GENDER (PIX)
