Key Details
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, Drivers and Trends in the Equality of Opportunity for Sexual and Gender Minorities, traces how national legal protections changed, rather than ranking countries by people’s lived experience.
Method: The study codes 133 legal and policy questions across 64 countries and six areas, including decriminalisation, education, employment, services and social protection, civil and political inclusion, and hate-crime protection.
Global trend: The average legal-inclusion score rose from 16 to 31 out of 100 between 1961 and the study’s 2024 endpoint, with faster progress after the late 1990s.
India’s trajectory: India is in the 13-country high-progress group. Its recorded score rose by 40.6 points to 52.8. This is a grouping by the pattern of change, not a claim that India ranks among the top 13 on its final score.
Coverage limit: Although scores extend to 2024, the legal research has a June 2023 cut-off; the 2024 values carry forward the last recorded status.
India’s Reform Path Has Been Shaped by Courts as Well as Legislation
The paper identifies India as an example of substantial legal change through judicial and administrative action, alongside legislation. It highlights the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision striking down the part of Section 377 that criminalised consensual same-sex relations, followed by the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, and subsequent measures concerning recognition and protection.
India’s placement in the high-progress group captures change across the period studied. It does not mean that protections are complete across every legal area, or that formal rights translate automatically into equal access to jobs, services or safety.
Legal Progress Has Been Uneven Across Countries—and Across Rights
Across the 64 countries, gains in services and social protection and employment protections contributed most to the increase in the overall score. Hate-crime protection remained especially weak, reaching an average of just 9 out of 100 at the endpoint.
The study finds three broad paths: limited progress or reversals, gradual improvement, and faster, wider reform. Countries can reach similar overall scores through different combinations of rights, which is why a single number cannot show where protection remains thin.
Economic Growth Alone Does Not Explain Reform
The paper finds that participatory democracy and interpersonal connections across borders are more consistently associated with legal inclusion than income growth alone. Historical legal systems matter most for decriminalisation, where inherited penal provisions can persist until changed by courts or lawmakers.
These are associations, not estimates of what any single institution or policy caused. The study’s distinctive contribution is to show that reform depends on the legal area and a country’s institutional path—not simply on becoming wealthier.
Policy Relevance
For India, the paper shifts attention from a broad question — whether the law has become more inclusive — to which protections exist and whether people can use them. Its index can identify changes in national law, but it cannot establish whether discrimination is addressed in workplaces and services, whether remedies are accessible, or whether protections are enforced across states.
That distinction is important for interpreting India’s high-progress trajectory. Further assessment needs evidence on implementation and lived outcomes, alongside an up-to-date account of legal changes beyond the study’s June 2023 research cut-off.
Follow the Full Paper Here: World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 11480, Drivers and Trends in the Equality of Opportunity for Sexual and Gender Minorities