Findings towards entrepreneurship, equality and the empowerment of female legal professionals will be unveiled at an international forum in Sydney next week.

A highlight of the Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, to be held on 16-18 December in Sydney’s Shangri-La Hotel, will be an international forum on gender equality.

The forum will include the highly anticipated launch of this year’s World Bank report: Women, Business and the Law 2016: Removing Restrictions to Enhance Gender Equality.

Attendance at the forum is free of charge if you register before 12 December. To secure your place, click here.

Sterling Publishing, the publisher of Lawyers Weekly, has joined other leading institutions including the Reserve Bank of Australia, ASX, BlackRock and PwC to support the event.

Special guest Dr Augusto Lopez-Claros, the director of the Global Indicators Group of the World Bank, will unveil the benchmark report at the gender forum and contest key report findings, including the relationship between socio-economic factors and gender inequality.

Julie Coates, PwC’s partner and banking and financial services leader, will also deliver a presentation on gender equality.

Since 2009, Women, Business and the Law has collected international data on laws and regulations constraining women’s entrepreneurship and employment, specifically in relation to the business of law.

According to Fariborz Moshirian, professor of finance and director of the Institute of Global Finance at the UNSW Business School, the conference’s host, the report is invaluable to Australia’s legal sector – particularly to firms with KPIs to achieve greater gender representation and equality.

“The dataset illuminates how government policies limit women’s full economic participation through unequal laws and a business environment that does not adequately support the businesses women tend to concentrate in,” Mr Moshirian said.

“The new edition of the report also highlights reforms carried out over the past two years and expands coverage to examine legal protections addressing violence against women and analyses the nature of discrimination against women.”

Mr Moshirian said that as well as delivering key observations on the research findings, Dr Lopez-Claros will discuss the report’s pioneering research on the barriers to women's entrepreneurship and employment in 173 economies.

“He is an outstanding speaker with a distinguished track record in promoting global prosperity and gender parity, and I highly encourage the legal community to participate in the forum,” he said.

For additional details on the forum on gender equality plus the wider Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, please click here.