GOVERNMENT POLICY
ON GENDER ISSUES
The Gambia is a nation with an acute sense of unity amidst its diverse ethno linguistic composition. This is a function of the advantage of small size, which nurtures familiarity, inter-marriage, miscegenation and a high degree of mutual tolerance. This sense of togetherness, which is at the root of the extended family system, also provides the mental framework and attitudinal disposition which enables us to manage tensions related to the cleavages of class, caste, religion, ethnicity and gender relations.
Thus, while the familiar problems of women exist in terms of limited access to development resources, modern educational facilities and health care; a patriarchal legacy that restricts decision-making power at the various levels of the state, the community and family to men; a traditional agricultural system that relies on the labour of women while at the same time discriminating against them in land ownership and employment; The Gambia has never lost sight of the importance of our womenfolk.
A National Women's Council Act was enacted in 1980 to set up a body to advise government on women 's affairs and a Women's Bureau established to implement decisions of this council. Non-governmental organisations have also been encouraged to operate in areas that address women's issues and this experience has heightened awareness on the concerns of women.
At the international level, The Gambia participated in fora that brought women issues in the forefront of development concerns and the recommendations of such gatherings have been taken into account in the appropriate sectoral policies and programmes. These international conventions include The Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Beijing Plan of Action. This high level of commitment to the woman question led the World Bank to identify The Gambia as a pilot site for the Women In Development Project in 1990. This intervention that was jointly funded by the African Development Bank, the government of Norway and the government of The Gambia, experimented on a multi-sectoral approach to the gender problem and one of the activities called for the development of a national policy for women. The project thus sought to mark a point of departure from the piecemeal, ad-hoc and incremental approach to the advancement of women, which had since been the modus operandi and a comprehensive approach and the strengthening of the machinery of government for women to directly manage their affairs. Thus, the structure of government in the transition period featured an unprecedented proportion of women in Cabinet and a rational allocation of port-folios allowing women to run the sectors that are strategic to the elevation of their status and their socio-economic advancement.
Cabinet in the transition period included four female members assigned with the portfolios of Health, Social Welfare and Women's Affairs, Education, Tourism and the Law. The majority of health personnel in The Gambia are women and women teachers are a high percentage of the teaching force. The informal sector and the horticultural sub-sector, which are linked to the tourism industry have women as the main agents just as their numbers are significantly increasing in the legal profession. Further, the priority programs of the transition period, which expanded educational, and health services were inter all predicated on the intention to increase access of such services to women. Similarly, the agricultural program in the transition period was oriented toward support of women activities in rice, cereal and horticultural production.
Naturally, the government of the Second Republic intends to build on achievements of past programs and to sustain and improve upon the momentum of the transition period. Through this policy, the framework exists to translate the objectives of the national Vision 2020, which is to harmonise the relationship between the sexes through the elimination of inequalities and the empowerment of women. It was therefore, reassuring that the process to formulate this policy embraced the principle of collective self-reliance which is central to the philosophy of the Second Republic, by consulting a wide spectrum of all categories of women, contracting national consultants and the setting up of a review committee composed of Gambians with the institutional memory of past interventions and with the knowledge and expertise on the development concerns of women. It is evident in the policy that this core of expertise was successful in anchoring the policy in the national strategic vision and in integrating it with the policies and programs of other relevant sectors. This has ensured the internal consistency of the policy and its concordance with both the macro-economic framework and the thrusts of sectoral policies.
The development in thinking and intervention activities that have influenced the national policy on women have of necessity, created an imbalance between the original legislation and the policy itself. The need therefore, arises to revisit the National Women 's Council Act in order to revise its provisions accordingly. The outcomes of the preliminary review by the national consultants have been quite instructive. However, my government will further subject these into more vigorous scrutiny with a view to amending the relevant provisions of the Act to create the appropriate environment to implement the policy. Implementation capacity is however, not only constrained by an obsolete level environment, but by limited human resources, a weak institutional framework and the scarcity of programme resources. The Action Plan for the Advancement of Women that is being developed will document such needs in the form of programs and technical co-operation proposals. This Action Plan along with this policy will then serve as the basis of partnership in program and project development and implementation on the advancement of women between government and the donor community. Already, government is in collaboration with DFID to mainstream poverty and gender with a �1 million grant from the British Government.
I therefore, commend this policy on the Advancement of Gambian Women to all friendly donor agencies and take the opportunity to extend an invitation for partnership to execute it and implement its corresponding programmes in order to achieve its objectives which are reflections of joint international commitments towards the global advancement of women.
H E ALHAJl DR YAHYA A. J.J. JAMMEH. PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE GAMBIA
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PREFACE
As we enter the 21st century, Gambian women are poised to take control of their destiny, and in the process, recreate a new and developed Gambia in partnership with the men of the country. As a result, the National Policy for Advancement of Gambian Women focuses precisely on improving gender relations, whilst taking cognisance of the constraints Gambian women face, as a result of lack of equal access to education, adequate health care, finance, jobs, and related matters. The policy aims to mainstream women '8 issues into the national development process, by setting goals and strategies for the various sectors to ensure the implementation of concrete and sustainable programmes for the advancement of women.
This move attempts to bridge the gaps of inequality and deprivation between men and women, by offering a framework through which Gambian women can become active participants in the national development process. Gambian Women according to our national statistics comprise 49.93% of the Gambian population in relation to 51.085% males (1993, Central Statistics, Population Figures). The majority of Gambian women are rural based and are engaged in agricultural production. As agriculturists they produce the bulk of the food for local consumption.
Inspite of their important role as producers, there is still an adherence to the traditional processes that has made women a marginalized group of people in the society. The priority given to male children in our patriarchal society has ensured male dominance in the decision making process. To redress this lopsided situation, the focus of the National Policy on women has been on the socio-economic conditions of the girl-child and women. The challenge is to undergo a transformation in attitude to promote fundamental changes in gender relations that redress the inequities in the traditional division of labour, which restricts women into subsidiary roles and stifles their participation in public life. These are the preconditions for the successful mainstreaming of gender issues in fulfilment of the main strategic objective of the policy and our international obligations as spelt out in the Beijing Platform, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the African Platform for Action and other international conferences. We are well aware of the fact that, at the international level, the 1975 International Women 's Year and Decade influenced policy formulation for women globally. At the United Nations initiative, national governments were called upon to adopt the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies. The Gambia had enacted the National Women's Council Act of 1980. This legislative set-up the National Women's Bureau and National Women's Council, making the Council the highest advisory body to the government on women's issues and concerns.
Together with its development partners, The Gambia has made significant strides in addressing women 's needs and concerns. The National Women 's Bureau and Council have been fully established. There have also been such other initiatives as the implementation of the Women in Development Project, setting up a Committee on Post Beijing activities, the Strategy for Poverty Alleviation and the implementation of various sectoral programmes and projects.
However, as evidenced by the policy document, there are gaps to be filled. In this respect the policy goals are twofold:
a) To catalyse all possible courses of action necessary to eliminate all forms of inequality between women and men, and
b) To create of an enabling environment for the promotion of women's participation in all spheres of life.
For these goals to be reached, a number of objectives have to be achieved. Notably, to ensure that specific and sectoral policies are gender sensitive, planning systems will have to take into account women's needs, concerns, gender analysis, impact assessment frameworks and research findings into women's issues. Projects and programmes for women will also be based on the strategies specified in the policy, the international instruments on gender mentioned above; and implementation arrangements will take a multi-sectoral approach and include monitoring and co-ordination mechanisms that will ensure that targets and objectives are attained and that participation of government, NGOs and the international donor communities mutually reinforce each other for maximum impact.
The policy on women is timely and relevant in the context of the country's recently formulated VISION 20/20 aimed at transforming The Gambia into a self-reliant and developed nation. This transformation cannot however take place without women taking an active part in the activities necessary for the realisation of the vision. The policy document is based on the recognition of the premise that security and economic empowerment for women through the elimination of poverty and promotion of sustainable livelihood, is a critical requirement for achievement of sustainable development. This policy recognises the need for support of women's issues from all members of society, as there will be no gender equality without the full participation of the males and females as equal partners in the development of our society.
Signed....
Mrs Isatou Njie-Saidy
Vice President,
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The National Policy for the Advancement of Women in The Gambia is presented in three parts:
Part 1: Provides an in-depth comprehensive analysis of the current situation. The National machinery for women's affairs and the sectors of education, population, health, agriculture, environment, tourism, youth and employment are critically reviewed in terms of their area of competence. The issue of poverty and violence in all its facets is also discussed. The general observations as far as the sectoral policies and interventions are concerned are that practical achievements have been made, but in terms of strategically changing the status of women the challenges are still overwhelming. Intersectoral and inter-agency networks are weak and need to be developed and given direction by the National Women 's Council and Bureau and the
Department of State responsible for Women 's Affairs to guarantee the mainstrearning of women 's issues into overall national socio-economic development under the framework of this policy.
Part 2: Is a synthesis of international instruments such as the Beijing Platform for Action, CEDAW and The African Platform for Action and National Strategies. These should be used to measure the successes and shortcomings of the various sectors in policy formulation and implementation. Goals, objectives and strategies be proposed for the National Machinery that emphasises their capacity building and human resource development functions and de-empha- sizes their implementation role. Goals and strategies are drawn up for the various sectors to provide a framework for policy formulation and implementation of concrete and sustainable programmes for the advancement of women. This policy initiative is an attempt to bridge the gaps in addressing the concerns of women, and offers a framework within which Gambian women can move out of inequality and deprivation towards greater participation in national development processes.
Part 3: Proposes institutional arrangements for implementation of the National Policy for the Advancement of Gambian Women. The Department of State for Women's Affairs will continue to be the focal point. The National Women's Council will be the National Assembly for women. The selection of Council Members would ensure the democratic nature of the Council and provide broad based representation giving the Council mandate to represent women's interests rather than that of politicians and to function as the supreme national body that promotes women's participation in the development process. The Bureau would serve as the support base for the National Women's Council.
In this respect the Bureau's role would include information gathering, dissemination, research and analysis of data. It will take the lead role in the monitoring of women's programmes and on co-ordinating women's issues and provide the necessary backstopping for other institutions and organisations. The capacity of the divisional offices is to be strengthened to raise their status to enable the Bureau to reach grassroots organisations. Desk officers at the Bureau would provide the link between the national machinery and focal points, who would be appointed in all the sectoral ministries and NGOs.
At the ward, district, divisional and national levels, women 's groups will be registered to ensure ease of communication. These groups will select their representatives who will represent them at the divisional level and be selected to the National Women's Council. This will ensure that women with demonstrated capabilities and interests are the true representatives of the women.
Gambian women presently constitute 49.93% of The Gambian population in relation to 51.085% males (1993, population figures). The majority of Gambian women are rural based and engaged in agricultural production constituting the main food producers and also carrying out other activities such as processing and marketing fish, fish products and fresh produce, selling crafts in the tourism industry, and other informal sector activities. In Gambian society today, the traditional roles of women are still recognised and inequality in the society is taken as given, having been reinforced by massive illiteracy (73%) and women's lack of self-worth due to the way they are socialised.
Available data indicates that women comprise about 50% of the agricultural labour force, 70% of the unskilled agricultural labour force and are responsible for about 40% of the total agricultural production. This data suggests that women are a labour force, as opposed to being managers in the agricultural sector. In the area of crop production, women produce 3% of the maize, 6% of the millet, 2% of the sorghum, 3% of coarse grains, 99% of upland rice and 24% of groundnuts, (population Data Bank, 1993). Horticultural production (vegetables) is predominantly a female activity and women livestock farmers raise and manage most of the small ruminants and rural poultry. In fisheries, women foffi1 80% of the fish off-loaders, 99% of the traditional fish processors, 50% of the processors in the major coastal areas (Saine and Williams, 1995). In forestry women are engaged in planting seedlings and wood lots.
In the area of health, maternal mortality remains unacceptably high at 10.5 per thousand live births. In fact the maternal mortality rate may be as high as 16.6 per thousand life births in the rural area. The under 5 mortality (U5MR) is 160.5 per 1000 (GCPFDS, 1990) and its amongst the highest in the region. However, data available from maternal mortality figures show a declining trend. Presently, 90% of women are provided with antenatal care and about 60% of all deliveries are attended by a trained health worker, whilst traditional birth attendants (TBA's) carry out 65% of deliveries in homes in the rural areas. In the area of childcare, 85% of children are fully immunised.
With an annual population growth rate of 4.1% (1993 Census) and a high total fertility level of 6.1, the implications on our socio-economic development are indeed profound. This is exacerbated by a youthful population that comprise 63% of people below the age of 24 years, 45% of those under 15 and 18% within the 15-17 age bracket. Other population related issues affecting the welfare of women include but are not necessarily limited to, infertility, early marriage, boy-child preference, harmful traditional practices and inadequate representation of women in decision-making.
As regards education, women are equally less disadvantaged as in other sectors. At the moment, the primary gross enrolment rate stands at 56% of which young girls' enrolment represents 4.6%. Female enrolment at the Junior Secondary level is 37% and at the Senior Secondary level 31% (Education Statistics 1994/95). Preference is indicated for Madrassa education, particularly for girls because of the moral and religious education it offers. Girls enrolment is constrained among other things by cost of schooling, distance from home to school, the offering of a non broad-based curriculum, gender biases on teaching/learning materials, stereotyping and other socio-cultural deterrents both at home and in the school.
In the non-formal education sector opportunities have been created for women and girls to become literate in their own languages. However, these efforts are limited by factors such as heavy workload of women, lack of labour saving devices and poor attitude of men towards women's literacy. As a result of the foregoing, women 's access to employment is limited in terms of getting employed in the first place, staying in employment and making it to the top. Women occupy 12.8% of managerial positions, 13.9% of the professional and technical 26.3% of clerical, 9.4% of the skilled labour force and 61.9% of the unskilled labour category (Population Data Bank, 1994).
While domestic workers fall within the informal sector employment category, they are excluded from the Labour Act of 1990, thus reinforcing society's perception of domestic activity as a female domain and not worthy of legislation or monetisation. Domestic workers are mainly young women and face problems of sexual harassment, long working hours and poor wages. The gendered nature of poverty has been well documented and continues to be a threat against human rights. It is integrally linked to other conditions which restrict human potential such as-hunger, poor sanitation and hygiene, illiteracy, lack of access to education, lack of access to health services, high fertility rates, prostitution and child labour. According to an ILO study, 3% of urban households and 33% of the urban population are food poor as compared to the rural areas where the figures are 37% and 54% respectively.
Women play a central role in the tourist industry, a major source of foreign exchange for the Gambia. They serve as food and craft vendors, but also provide labour for the hotel industry. In spite of their central role, women face a number of constraints in the industry. Constraints such as, inadequate access to permanent employment, lack of access to senior level management positions, lack of access to training for senior level positions in the hotel industry, lack of access in the fine and creative arts, clothing and textiles and consistent exposure to sexual exploitation.
The absence of an organised structure for women and the inadequate linkage between the industry and production groups in horticulture and small ruminants has restricted the optimal realisation of the potential in the sector. With 44% of the population being under age 15 (Population Data Bank, 1995), the need to maximise the potential of this group cannot be over-emphasised. In this regard a variety of schemes have been introduced to reduce the problems of youths and enhance their effective participation in national development. These include the National youth Service and President Award Scheme, NGO training programmes in family life and various skill development and income generating programmes.
In realisation of the importance of sports to the development of one's body and mind, women have been introduced to various sports, although, with limited success. The media constitute an important pillar of development by not only setting the agenda but playing a "gate-keeping" role as well, until recently women have been perceived receivers of messages. However, efforts have been initiated with the introduction of women theatre groups, local communicators, village video halls and similar initiatives to make women playa lead role in information, education and communication processes. At the professional level the formation of WAMNET -The Gambia Chapter of West Africa Media Network for Gender Development has the basic objective of ensuring the positive portrayal of women's success stories, achievements and challenges.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Institutionally women's groups existed at village level during the pre-colonial and colonial era. These groups provided financial, physical and psychological support to their respective members. Following the attainment of independence an urban based Gambian Women's Federation emerged to provide focus and attention for women's groups and organisations. Subsequently, more concrete opportunities to address women's issues emerged with the promulgation of the National Women's Council as the policy advisory body to government on women's issues supported by an executive arm, the National Women's Bureau. This provided the framework for addressing women's issues. In the 1981-86 five year plan, government reassured its commitment to the development of women by introducing policy measures both at the national and sectoral levels aimed at integrating women in the national development process, promoting equality, and improving services to and the productivity of women.
The government's commitment reflected international trends. the Women's Bill of Rights, the declaration of 1975 as international women's year and decade, the call for the adoption of the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies for the advancement of women, the UN Convention on The Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which The Gambia ratified in 1992, and more recently the Beijing Platform for Action, 1995 amongst others. Regardless of the foregoing, the National Women's Council and Bureau continues to face limitations in addressing women's issues and empowering women due to weaknesses related to the legal framework in the setting up of these institutions and internal organisational constraints due to inadequate support.
NATIONAL POLICY ON WOMEN
The recognition of the important role of women in the development process was in 1980, when the first policy statement to this effect was made. This was however not complemented by the articulation of an overall national policy for women. This lack of articulation tended to weaken the way that women's issues are dealt with both at national and community level to the extent that there has not been the necessary policy orientation to guide the co-ordination of the different strategies geared towards promoting the advancement of women.
This policy initiative is thus an attempt to bridge the gaps in addressing the concerns of women, and offers a framework within which Gambian women can move out of inequality and deprivation, towards greater participation in national development processes.
In agriculture where women constitute 50% of the agricultural labour force, several interventions have been initiated to uplift women's productivity. This is as a result of constraints. Constraints such as, low level of education, inadequate labour saving devices, poor transport systems, the middle person phenomenon, and marginalisation of women once mechanisation is introduced, inadequate access to and control over production resources and inadequate female representation in top level agricultural management (2.6% for women as compared to 8.6% for men (Population Data Bank 1995).
The problem is further compounded by limited appropriate post harvest technologies and other factors such as maintenance, cost of spare parts and limited managerial capacity at community level. In the health domain, evidence exists to show that the introduction of Primary Health Care (PHC) program in 1978 led to an improved health status for women and children. This includes, the substantial decline in infant mortality from 213/1000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 213/1000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting live births in 1960 to 19/ 1000 in 1980, and 126/1000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 126/1000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting in 1995 (above the regional average of 106/1000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 106/1000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting) and in under five mortality from 375/1000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 375/1000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting in 1960 to 250/1000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 250/1000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting in 1980 and 110/1000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 110/1000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting in 1995; a drop in the maternal mortality ratio from 2000/1 00 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 2000/1 00 end_of_the_skype_highlighting,000 live births before the introduction of PHC, to 1,050/ 100,000 lives births in 1993; an increase in the percentage of births attended by health staff from 54% in 1985 to 65% in 1990; a decline in low birth weight from 35% in 1980-82 to 10% in 1990; 88% of children being immunised against measles and 93% against DPT in 1995.
Despite this progress, maternal and infant/child mortality and morbidity rates remain unacceptably high. More substantial contributions to health status improvement has been due to the stagnating or declining public sector resources, low quality of health services, especially for women and children in rural areas.
In the area of population and development despite an increase in the contraceptive prevalence rate to 12% for all methods (modem and traditional) in 1995, and a decline in total fertility rate from 6.5% in 1980 to 6.1 in 1993, the situation remains precarious. The Gambia has both one of the highest population growth rates in Africa at 4.1% per annum 5 (1993 census) as well as the highest population densities at 97 persons per square kilometre.
This population trend has serious implications for our socio-economic development as well as for the uplifting of the status of women and needs thus be addressed. 2.5 In the field of education, significant improvements have been registered and the National Education Policy 1988-2003 attempts to further increase enrolment in grades 1-6 by 95% and transition rate from grades 6- 7 by 100% by year 2003. However, the present trend is indicative of a need to focus attention on addressing issues of access, retention and performance as they impinge on the education of the girl child. Efforts in this direction are consistent with the 1997 constitution (Section 30) which guarantees to all persons the right to equal educational opportunities and facilities, and compulsory basic education, as well as requires the state to provide free education to all Gambians.
While in the recent past significant achievements has been made in creating women's employment opportunities both in formal and informal sectors. The disparity between employed women and men continues to be unacceptably high and this requires to be bridged if significant strides are to be made particularly in economic empowerment of women. Women's low education levels, absence of affirmative action policies in training institutions or work place, distance of formal sector employee from home of employee, the dual career role of women i.e. child care and family responsibilities vice versa career responsibility stifles women's employment opportunities or retard their progress while in employment.
As a result of the foregoing, there is need to address the issue of poverty. A recently completed analysis of the 1993 Household Survey found that 33% of the population are poor and women constitute the majority. It was also found that poverty is most prevalent in the rural areas. Women's poverty is accentuated by inappropriate gender relations particularly that of the sexual division of labour, women's lack of credit and production resources, and their relatively poor health among others. Unless these issues are addressed women will remain poor and voiceless.
Despite the central role women play in the tourist industry, the benefits that accrue to them from the sector remains marginal. Women's low educational levels relegate them to lowly paid menial jobs and their upward mobility opportunities are restricted by several socio-cultural factors both in the work place and home. Perhaps more importantly is the absence of the necessary linkages to provide the market for women's horticultural and small ruminants' products.
Indeed significant and sustainable women's advancement can only be attained if the problems of the girl child are addressed. The problems of early marriage and unplanned pregnancies inhibit their career development prospects and perpetuate high fertility rates. The lack of employable skills resulting to dependency and the inadequate attention to their other concerns would need to be appropriately addressed to enhance the optimum utilisation of our human resource base.
Ultimately women 's empowerment is about making women and girls visible and their voices heard, and enable them to take full control of their lives. The role of the media in this regard is phenomenal. But to achieve the desired effect women must be able to set the pace and the agenda to their strategic advantage.
Furthermore, a strong National Machinery for women's affairs is imperative if significant achievements are to be made in women's advancement efforts. The present institutional framework has demonstrated weaknesses due to several factors including inadequate mandate, poor staffing, lack of support and weak horizontal and vertical linkages.
These must be addressed to enable the Bureau and council to provide the necessary co-ordination and directions that will steer women's empowerment on a career and well designed path.
Hitherto, the non-articulation of a policy not only meant that interventions were piece-meal and dissipated but ineffective, resulting in little gain in the security, equality and economic empowerment of women. This policy is thus expected to provide the co-ordination that will eliminate poverty, promote sustainable livelihood and ensure sustainable development for women. This is consistent with the country's recently formulated vision 2020 aimed at transforming The Gambia into a self- reliant and developed nation which naturally requires women's active part since they constitute nearly one half of the nation's population. The policy is also consistent with and complementary to international conventions. Conventions such as, The Convention of Elimination of all Forms of Discriminations, (CEDAW) adopted in 1978, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, The Nairobi forward looking strategies and the World Women's Conference in Beijing 1995 Global Platform for Action amongst others.
Furthermore, it is an attempt to maximise the full utilisation of our available national human resources as well as facilitate its efficiency and rational development relative to our prevailing socio-economic trends.
Apart from the link between this policy and the fulfilment of Gambian commitments made at Beijing, The Beijing conference underscored the fact that it is incumbent upon everyone, governments, international bodies, NGOs, individuals and groups to see that women are recognised as human beings with every right and privilege afforded human beings. That women have a voice in their own destiny, That women are given equal access to jobs, education, finance, land ownership and soon and that women participate actively in the world economic and security order as equal partners in the development of the world, This can be more readily promoted where there is a clear policy statement to provide direction and guide interventions aimed at achieving this.' The National Policy on Women is expected to provide this policy guidance,
From the point of view of where Gambian women are today, statistics show that women are still highly under-represented in the formal economic sector and dominate the informal sector as unskilled workers. Women generally have a higher unemployment rate (19%) than men (14%) (The Gambia National Report on Women: The Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women, 1995, p.30), and Gambian women in decision-making positions are few. For Similar comparisons can be made for the professional and technical occupations where females consist of 1.9% as opposed to 86.1% for males, and in the clerical positions where they are 26.2% compared to 73.7% for males. In the distribution of skilled and unskilled labour, women consist of 4.9% of the skilled labour force and 61.9% of the unskilled labour force, and males 90.6% of the skilled and 38.1% of the unskilled labour force, indicative of women's lesser educational qualification and access to training. In access to education, girls consist of 42.6% of the gross enrolment rate for the primary level, 37% of the Junior Secondary and 31% of the Senior Secondary levels (Population Data Bank 1995).
To promote women's equal access to and control of production resources.
Advocate for an increase allocation of public expenditure towards women's economic opportunities in terms of access and control of resources.
Advocate for National Assembly Members to review Bills, and legislation discriminating against women's ownership of productive resources.
Promote credit and savings programmes for disadvantaged resource-poor women.
Support initiatives aimed at women's access, control and ownership of land.
By the year 2004 knowledge would have increased on the actual and potential role of women in national development and ensure that gender concerns are integrated fully at all levels of development.
Promote dialogue among women of different classes, ethnicity, and caste to identify common ground for coming together to improve their position and status as women.
Raise gender consciousness through seminars, workshops, traditional communication and other media forms.
Promote use of women peer communicators to reach other women.
To strengthen the National Women's Council and Bureau so as to better address the needs and concerns of women.
Train Bureau staff in gender, policy and impact analysis and other managerial skills.
Strengthen the research, documentation and other units of the Bureau.
Enhance the reach of the National Women's Council to women.
Increase resource allocation to Women's Bureau.
Train National Women's Council members in their roles, responsibilities and other relevant areas.
Establish the offices and strengthen the capacity of staff of the Bureau at Divisional level.
Strengthen the capacity of the National Women's Council to serve as an advocacy group.
Promote community and donor participation in resource mobilisation for financing activities of the Council and the Bureau.
To ensure that women have access to decision-making positions.
To create and update a database of women in top level positions
Advocate for a quota system of job allocation to get more qualified women in the mainstream of development.
Sensitise the public to the benefits of women in power and decision-making positions.
Provide training to enhance women's access to and performance in decision-making positions.
Address the constraints of women who are in decision-making positions.
To genderize the main employment documents such as the General Orders, PSC
Regulations and the Schemes of Service and Labour Act 1990.
To ensure an increased membership of women in boards, commissions and other bodies
To ensure an enabling work environment and increase access to training facilities for all categories of female workers.
Create more training opportunities for uncertified female staff members, particularly those in the education and health sectors.
Ensure equal access to training opportunities for women.
Provide adequate and secure housing for female employees posted in rural areas.
Encourage domestic workers to join existing registered labour unions.
Advocate for the amendment of the 1990 Labour Act to include domestic workers.
Provide day care centres for women.
Increase in budgetary provisions for addressing women's issues in all government and non-governmental institutions to more appropriately address women's issues.
Ensure that the government increases the annual grant and subvention to the Women's Bureau.
Ensure that gender concerns in the sectoral Departments of State, Departments and NGOs are adequately funded.
Conduct annual gender audit of the national budget and NGOs.
Promote analysis and debate on the national budget as it impacts on women.
To enhance grassroots women 's participation in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the National Women's Policy.
Establish a database of national level and grassroots organisations involved in promoting the advancement of women.
Promote linkages between policy makers and all women at community level.
Promote regular consultation through workshops and seminars with all parties.
Strengthen the divisional planning units of local government councils.
To eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls.
Educate girls and women about existing Laws and Conventions protecting their rights and freedoms.
Provide legal assistance to poor women, disabled women and girls.
Train and sensitive security personnel to respond to domestic violence in a gender responsive way.
Ensure the codification of the CEDAW and other laws.
Enhance monitoring of implementation of CEDAW and Convention on The Rights of the Child.
Advocate for removal of legal and traditional barriers against the rights and freedoms of women and girls.
Advocate to de-emphasise the rigid sexual division of labour to ease the domestic burden on women and girls.
Educate and sensitise the public to report domestic violence.
Provide temporal shelter for women suffering from acts of violence.
Create awareness on existing laws and conventions against the discrimination of women.
Advocate that maximum penalties are imposed against perpetrators of violence against female youth and children.
Provide a legal adviser for the Women's Bureau and Social Welfare.
To encourage the participation of women in the promotion of peace.
Include more women in peace commissions and negotiations
Improve peace negotiation skills of women leaders.
Support women's groups and organisations promoting peace.
Ensure that girls are given a chance to continue their education.
Provide a Scholarship Scheme for girls.
Increase literacy programmes for women.
Improve girls and women's access to functional literacy, vocational education and training.
Increase opportunities for women to attend literacy classes and link the non- formal education system to income generating activities.
To improve the quality and to increase access to healthcare services for women and children by the year 2009 and also reduce infant maternal mortality by 25% by the year 2009.
Enhance quality and reach of health care programmes.
Strengthen and support women's role as family health promoters.
Implement health commitments made at International Conferences.
Carry out annual gender audits on health programmes and projects.
Improve access to health services by women and girls i.e. adequate logistics, maternity waiting homes, and improved referral system.
Ensure availability of staff trained in life saving skills at all levels for quality management of women and girls at risk of dying from female related diseases.
Improve staff retention in such cadres as midwives, nurses, anaesthetists and public health officers through the provision of better conditions of service.
Increase the involvement of women at grassroots level in the planning, implementation and management of health services especially the Bamako Initiative.
Design and implement post-natal services for women and girls.
Create more health awareness to maximise community participation by developing and disseminating gender sensitive health education materials.
Improve counselling methods on family planning and disease specific to women.
Promote nutrition education programmes at all levels.
Enhance the capacity of Traditional Birth Attendants in Health Care Service Delivery System.
To increase the income earning opportunities and potential of Gambian women.
Promote the use and maintenance of appropriate technologies by women.
Support studies and research on appropriate technologies suitable for women.
Support initiatives and organisations that promotes markets, storage facilities and transportation for women's produce and products.
Sensitise women on the opportunities and role institutions involved in enterprise development.
Encourage banking institutions to provide loans to women entrepreneurs.
To enhance the capacity of Gambian women in environment and human resource management.
Support initiatives and organisations that promotes sustainable environmental development and management.
Promote initiatives that provide women with the basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing and education.
Help increase the access of and availability of appropriate technologies aimed at reducing the burden/workload of women.
To enhance the participation of disabled women and girls in the national socio-economic development process.
Support the development of initiatives for disabled women and girls.
Support the education of disabled girls in the official and non-official school systems of schooling.
Support organisations that work with disabled girls and women.
Promote income-generating ventures for handicapped women and girls.
Advocate for provision of easy access of the disabled to all-public buildings and facilities.
Advocate for the protection of disabled girls and women from sexual exploitation and harassment.
Sensitise the public on the rights of the disabled to education, health and access to other facilities.
Support the mainstreaming of disabled women and girls in the labour force.
Promote positive images of women in the media.
Portray successful women as role models.
Sensitise Media Practitioners to be gender sensitive.
Encourage Media Practitioners to include gender perspective in their work.
Ensure gender training to be mandatory for all personnel in Media Institutions.
Ensure the a11ocation of resources for a gender sensitive curriculum for training of communicators.
To enhance the capacity of communicators to address gender issues.
Training of women in Media for Management and Editorial positions.
Encourage women to invest and own independent women media houses.
Provide resources and facilities for the training of media personnel.
Encourage all institutions to make financial provision for gender sensitive communication activities of their programmes.
Involve Media Practitioners in the formulation of gender-based communication programmes.
Support traditional means and channels.
INSTlTUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF THE POLICY
THE NATIONAL WOMEN'S COUNCIL AND BUREAU
Within the framework of this National Policy for Women, the legal framework, the National Women's Council Act 1980, which set up the Women's Council and Bureau, as well as the institutional set up of the two national machineries have been reviewed.
This part addresses the institutional context within which this policy is expected, to be implemented, successfully. The Department of State responsible for Women's Affairs will continue to be the line Department of State for women's issues, and would have ultimate responsibility for providing policy guidance to government on issues affecting Gambian women. The National Women's Council would continue to function as a national assembly for women.
The National Women's Council would be empowered by an Act of the National Assembly to playa governance role. The Policy would seek to enhance the capacity of individual Councillors and Bureau and Council would have all the administrative and financial support and recognition they need from both government and the public, and remain institutions that are relevant to the needs and concerns of Gambian women.
The selection of Councillors would enhance the democratic nature of the Council and provide broad-based representation, giving the Council mandate to represent the interests of women and to function as the supreme national body that represents and promotes women's participation in the development process.
The Council would have technical committees selected from among its members to facilitate policy reviews and co-ordinate implementation of Council decisions. The respective Councillors would be responsible for liasing with the women they represent at the decentralised level and would promote awareness raising and confidence building among women. The Women's Bureau would serve as the support base of the National Women's Council. In this respect, its role would include information gathering, dissemination, research and analysis. In addition, the Bureau would assist Council in monitoring trends, forging links with other institutions on the socio-economic and political front, reviewing Bills, legislation, policies, programmes, new technology and so on and providing information as to how this is likely to affect women. The Bureau would also help in identifying capacity building and training needs of various stakeholders and animators at field level and linking them with institutions that can assist with their capacity building and training needs.
The Bureau would be pro-active enough to take on a lead role in co-ordinating women's issues and provide the necessary backstopping for institutions and organisations requiring this.
VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL LINKAGES
The Women's Bureau would have on its staff technical personnel to serve as desk officers and provide the link between the national machinery and focal points in the sectoral Departments of State and NGOs. The Bureau would monitor and assess sectoral impact in addressing the various constraints affecting women and where necessary would call for sectoral reviews and the realignment of efforts. Bureau staff and planning units of other agencies would also need to be involved in sectoral assessments/reviews of projects and programmes to determine the gender dimension of impact, and the various interventions.
At the divisional level it will be necessary to increase women's representation on the Divisional Co-ordinating Committee to take into consideration the needs, and concerns of women as they are articulated at the Ward and District level, and to include them into divisional plans and programmes. Selection of women representatives should not be on partisan political basis.
The field officers will have to be strengthened to bring them in line with other sectors in the field such as education, health and agriculture. A more appropriate designation should be used for the field officers to give them the status they deserve and to give them greater standing in the Divisional Co-ordinating Committee. At the Ward level all women's groups will be registered in relation to the activities they engage in. These groups will select their representatives who will represent them at the district level. This is to foster networking at the group and individual level and to ensure that it is women with demonstrated ability and contributions to issues that are the selected representatives of the women.
source:statehouse.gm
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Women in Africa's development
Africa Recovery Briefing Paper
Number 11, April 1998
Women in Africa's development
Overcoming obstacles, pushing for progress
By Takyiwaa Manuh**
African women's fundamental contributions in their households, food production systems and national economies are increasingly acknowledged, within Africa and by the international community. This is due, in no small part, to African women's own energetic efforts to organize, articulate their concerns and make their voices heard. At both grassroots and national levels, more women's associations have been formed during the 1990s, taking advantage of the new political openings to assert their leadership roles. They are also pressing for an expansion of women's economic and social opportunities, and the advancement of women's rights. By improving their own positions, they are simultaneously strengthening African society as a whole, as well as enhancing the continent's broader development prospects.
But women in Africa continue to face enormous obstacles. The growing recognition of their contributions has not translated into significantly improved access to resources or increased decision-making powers. Neither has the dynamism that women display in the economic, cultural and social lives of their communities through their associations and informal networks been channeled into creating new models of participation and leadership.
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Rebuilding in South Africa: women's contributions to African economies are increasingly recognized, but more opportunities are needed for women to fully develop their leadership roles.
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"Africa is overflowing with women leaders," notes Ms. Soukeyna Ndiaye Ba, President of Women's Development Enterprise in Africa, a Dakar-based non-governmental organization (NGO). "They lack only the training and the means to bloom." This highlights the next big step needed for advancing the position of women in Africa: strengthening their capacities and skills and expanding the opportunities for women to more fully develop their leadership roles.
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'If you want to develop Africa, you must develop the leadership of African women.'
-- Ms. Soukeyna Ba, Senegal
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Beyond such political challenges, the material conditions under which most women live and work continue to deteriorate in many countries due to economic and social decline, wars and conflict, and the spread of AIDS. Women constitute the majority of the poor and the illiterate in both urban and rural areas in Africa and many young women between the ages of 15 and 25 have been pushed into sex work and face the risk of HIV/AIDS infection.
Against this background, over 3,000 women converged on Dakar in 1994 to attend the African Women's Preparatory Conference. They came to articulate an African position for the Beijing Fourth Women's World Conference. The resulting African Platform for Action identified several priorities. These included combatting the increasing poverty of African women; improving women's access to education and health services, with a special focus on reproductive health; addressing women's relationship to the environment; increasing the involvement of women in the peace process; advancing the legal and human rights of women; highlighting the special concerns of the girl-child; and "mainstreaming" gender concerns within economic and development policy-making by disaggregating data along gender lines. The Dakar conference also noted the emergence of numerous women's groups and NGOs in Africa and the increasingly concrete expression of their organizational potential.
The Beijing conference that followed in 1995 stressed the empowerment of women as one of the central development goals of the 21st century. It adopted a Platform for Action which called for the mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the design, implementation and monitoring of all policies and programmes, including development programmes. It committed countries to design their own specific programmes and activities in consultation with women's groups and other NGOs to implement the Beijing Platform for Action.
A March 1997 survey by the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) found that only 10 African countries had drawn up action plans. A more hopeful indication was the September 1997 signing of a Gender Declaration by the leaders of the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) at their meeting in Malawi. The declaration commits member states to eradicate gender inequalities in the region; mainstream gender in all SADC activities; create a standing committee of ministers responsible for gender affairs; and set up focal points dealing with gender in all sector coordinating units as well as a gender unit in the SADC Secretariat.
Despite such positive moves, there has been insufficient political will and sustained commitment to meeting the needs and interests of women by local authorities and governments. While many countries have ratified UN agreements such as the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which guarantees women equal rights and protection from discrimination, these have not informed policy-making or translated into better living and working conditions for women. This hampers Africa's development by excluding the perspectives, skills and dynamism of half the population. Without meaningful commitment in the form of policy changes and the provision of resources to deal with the root causes of women's conditions, Africa cannot hope to see a breakthrough in its development and renewal.
Within the international development community, there has been a shift in thinking from the initial "women in development" (WID) approach, which focused narrowly on women's productive roles, to a broader "gender and development" perspective, which takes into account all spheres of women's lives and seeks to bring gender analysis into the core of development policy (see box "Shifting views of women and development").
UN agencies such as the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) and UN Development Programme (UNDP) support gender awareness training for policy-makers in Africa, provide technical assistance and build strong gender components into their own programming and projects. Similarly, the Commonwealth Secretariat has commissioned several studies on gender and economic policy-making and applies a gender perspective to analyze the effectiveness of governmental policies and public services. The World Bank also emphasizes the developmental costs of ignoring women and denying them access to key resources, and urges countries to draw up gender action plans.
However, the severe economic constraints that African countries face tend to undercut these new emphases and shifts in approach. The continuing poverty of the majority of African countries, declining terms of trade and the burden of external debt create an unfavourable environment for development. Of the limited resources available, little is directly allocated to women. In addition, structural adjustment policies pursued for nearly two decades by African governments in conjunction with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have had important gender consequences. Governments' macroeconomic policies do not incorporate gender perspectives in their design and ignore the structure of households in Africa and the social relations that influence women's roles in production.
I. African women in their societies
Among the majority of rural and low-income urban dwellers, women perform all domestic tasks, while many also farm and trade. They are responsible for the care of children, the sick and the elderly, in addition to performing essential social functions within their communities. They seek to manage the environment, although their struggle for survival often results in environmental damage from activities such as fuel-wood collection.
Many rural and urban women belong to women-only mutual-aid societies, benevolent groups in churches, cooperatives and market women's groups. Some of these groups allow women to pool resources to reduce their workload and to invest in savings societies or cooperative ventures. Cooperative societies have provided women access to resources, for example, the Corn Mill societies in Cameroon, the "Six S" associations in Burkina Faso and the General Union of Cooperatives in Mozambique, which supplies most of Maputo's fruits and vegetables. In Benin only 8 per cent of rural women belong to formal cooperatives, but an estimated 90 per cent participate in traditional women's savings and credit groups. Informal rotating credit associations in Ghana, Tanzania, Gambia and Zimbabwe have been used by the estimated 25 per cent of economically active women in the non-agricultural informal sector to invest in businesses and farms, home improvements and school costs for their children.
While today women rarely have the same access to resources as men, in the past some resources were available to them, especially land. Wives in many societies were not fully economically dependent upon their husbands. Women had their own age-grade associations and leaders and wielded power in spheres regarded as exclusively feminine, guaranteeing them some leverage in political processes and allowing them to negotiate with men. Through their involvement in the birth and care of children, some women developed extensive knowledge of herbs and healing powers and had important religious roles and achieved fame and recognition.
Women's power and spheres of influence largely disappeared under the impact of colonialism and external religions, which upset existing economic and social complementarity between the sexes. New "customary" laws on marriage created in response to men's anxieties about the independence of women transformed the previously fluid and negotiable relations between them into rigid duties and obligations of wives and women. Women came to be regarded as primarily dependent on men, making it unnecessary to plan and provide for their needs; they were to work in the fields and home to produce food and other crops to support their men, who worked in visible, documented activities. Finally, the introduction of new forms of marriage that granted enhanced property and inheritance rights to a minority, increased the dependence of the majority of African women on men.
Women shared initially in the promises of independence and saw gains in their access to education, formal sector employment, health care and nutritional profiles; their life expectancy at birth rose from 37 to 50 years by the end of the 1960s. But development plans continued to be formulated and implemented without an adequate understanding of women's contributions to African economies. Women were also absent from formal positions of decision-making and power. Even in countries like Zimbabwe and Guinea-Bissau, where women had participated in armed struggles for national liberation, they have tended to be marginalized and few have attained formal positions of power or gained rights to land and resources in their own names.
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A health clinic in Benin: maternal and infant mortality rates in Africa remain the highest in the world
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Causes of deterioration
Women's lives in most countries have been profoundly affected by three main developments since the onset of economic and social decline in the 1970s and 1980s:
First, the structural adjustment programmes implemented in many countries across Africa since the early 1980s have emphasized demand management and supply-oriented measures narrowly focused on export-led growth and efficiency, often to the detriment of social welfare. They also have introduced liberalization of trade regimes and of the financial sector, as well as privatization and reduction in the role of the state in economic life. Because of their specific roles and position within society, women have been among the worst affected by cuts in social sector spending, where substantial costs have been shifted from the state to the household. As a consequence, women have been forced to take on an increasing burden of unpaid work in caring for the sick, obtaining food and ensuring the survival of their families more generally.
Second, there has been increased civil strife and conflict. The majority of the estimated 8.1 million refugees, displaced persons and post-conflict returnees in Africa in 1997 were women and children. War and conflict have increased violence against women and worsened the social and economic conditions under which they live.
Third, many African countries are grappling with the AIDS crisis, high and increasing rates of HIV infection and the costs in human lives. Just over half of the estimated 20 million cases of HIV in Africa are female. In Africa the main route for infection is through heterosexual intercourse and through the placenta from an infected mother to her unborn child. Women and girls are particularly vulnerable because of their lack of power over their sexuality and reproductive functions.
Marriage, households and women's welfare
About 50 per cent of women in Africa are married by age 18 and one in three women is in a polygamous marriage. Estimates of average total fertility rates in Africa were 5.7 children per woman in 1995, although some Southern African countries, as well as Kenya and Mauritius, have begun to see declines. High fertility arises from the economic value of children, high infant mortality and low levels of contraceptive use. Children's labour is crucial inside and outside the home and has increased with ongoing economic crisis and environmental change. Also, it is as mothers that women secure claims in their marital homes and to their husband's assets.
While married, women may still live with their kin groups or in conjugal domestic units. Women head about 31 per cent of households in urban and rural areas across Africa, often with no working resident males.
In many rural areas, women contribute unpaid labour to the household's agricultural production and spend up to 50 hours a week on domestic labour and subsistence food production, with little sharing of tasks by spouses or sons in the household. Studies have documented that women work 12-13 hours a week more than men, as the prevalent economic and environmental crises have increased the working hours of the poorest women.
In some areas, women may have separate access to land and work independently in farming or in some other income-generating activity. But in general they have fewer opportunities to earn income. They combine their unpaid labour with independent production to meet the needs of their families and to attain some measure of autonomy and self-reliance. Their income is indispensable for family survival regardless of the presence of men, since the system of allocation and distribution within many African households usually imposes individual responsibilities on men and women to meet their personal needs. Women are expected to actively generate the means to meet the daily expenses for themselves and their children, but also may receive loans or advances from their husbands to set up petty trading operations.
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Because of cuts in social sector spending, women have been forced to take on an increasing burden of unpaid work in caring for the sick, obtaining food and ensuring the survival of their families.
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With the decline of national and local economies, many men have been unable or have refused to contribute their share of household expenses. This has increased household pressures on women, raising the numbers of women living in poverty and the numbers of households in the poorest categories headed by women.
For women's welfare and production to be improved, planners and funding agencies need to pry open what has been called the "black box" of the household, by taking into account intra-household differences in resource use and control. While men may control more resources and earn higher incomes, this does not translate into improved family or household welfare. Rather, women's incomes and spending patterns are better indicators of the welfare of household members, since women spend more of their increased earnings on food, medicine and education for their children and other dependents. Improving women's incomes becomes both a matter of equity and a prerequisite for child survival and welfare.
II. Women in economic life
A. Mainstay of rural production
Women provide the backbone of the rural economy in much of sub-Saharan Africa. About 80 per cent of the economically active female labour force is employed in agriculture and women comprise about 47 per cent of the total agricultural labour force. Food production is the major activity of rural women and their responsibilities and labour inputs often exceed those of men in most areas in Africa. Women also provide much of the labour for men's cultivation of export crops, from which women derive little direct benefit. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found, in a survey of nine African countries in 1996, that women's contribution to the production of food crops ranges from 30 per cent in Sudan to 80 per cent in the Republic of Congo, with estimates for other countries tending toward the higher end of the scale. Women are responsible for 70 per cent of food production, 50 per cent of domestic food storage, 100 per cent of food processing, 50 per cent of animal husbandry and 60 per cent of agricultural marketing.
Women also have taken advantage of new opportunities to produce vegetables for urban markets on fringe land using highly labour-intensive practices. Where social practices of female seclusion prevent them from working outside the home, as in parts of Nigeria and Ethiopia, they engage in food processing and trade with the assistance of young girls.
Women have benefitted from technological advances in food processing, such as cassava processors, fish smokers and oil pressers. Cassava processors, introduced by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in some Nigerian villages, have reduced labour time through more efficient processing, bringing gains in women's incomes. According to Dr. Lukas Brader, Director-General of the IITA, "If Africa is to develop a more productive, sustainable, and equitable agricultural sector, it cannot afford to neglect women." Moreover, he adds, the constraints that women face must be addressed if agriculture is to be the engine of economic growth.
Access to land
The first of these constraints is access to land. Across Africa, agricultural intensification, population growth and economic change have led to substantive shifts from common property systems of tenure towards more centralized resource control. In the process, women and poorer people generally have lost out. An FAO "synthesis report" on nine countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Congo, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Sudan, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) showed that women rarely own land and when they do, their holdings tend to be smaller and less fertile than those of men.
Where land reform schemes have been introduced, they often have displaced complex systems of land use and tenure in which women had certain rights in common law and local practice, if not in legislation. New land titles usually have been registered in the name of a male household head, regardless of women's economic contribution to the household, their customary rights or the increasing number of female-headed households.
As a result of "women in development" and NGO activities, some women have been granted land to start communal gardens from which they generate income. When these gardens are visibly remunerative, women's continued access rights become vulnerable and subject to encroachment by male landowners. In parts of northern Ghana, land that women have carefully tended has been taken away, leaving them with less fertile and more distant plots. The low incomes and increased uncertainties and risks that women face in their production activities, compounded by the lack of access to land, is pushing many of them out of traditional agriculture.
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Food production is the major activity of rural women and their responsibilities and labour inputs often exceed those of men in most areas in Africa.
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The labour bottleneck
Labour is also a bottleneck for female farmers, as men have left rural economies in search of more viable livelihoods and women have lost access to male help on farms or the money they may have previously provided. In countries like Lesotho, Botswana and Burkina Faso, the out-migration of adult males is very high, influencing the sexual division of labour for those left behind. The only means for most women to increase their yields is through even harder work, using more labour-intensive methods to maintain soil regeneration and fertility. Where technical innovations such as irrigation techniques have made more than one cropping season possible, as in many parts of the Sahel, increased women's labour has been crucial in meeting the intensified work demands.
But women have not simply accepted increasing demands on their labour time. As examples from rice development schemes in Gambia, Cameroon and Nigeria have shown, women often have bargained with men to increase what they get in exchange for the labour they expend on family fields.
Credit and other inputs
In addition to land and labour, women face problems of access to other inputs, including credit, technology, extension services and agricultural training and marketing. Many credit associations and export-crop marketing cooperatives limit membership to household heads in many countries, thereby excluding most married and unmarried women. Banks demand collateral in the form of landed property and male approval before making loans to women, while men often have been reluctant to support women's applications. Most resources and technical assistance have been channeled to men growing export crops, with improved seeds and tools going to larger commercial farmers, almost invariably men. Only 5 per cent of the resources provided through extension services in Africa are available to women, "although, in some cases, particularly in food production, African women handled 80 per cent of the work. Of total extension agents at work in Africa today, only 17 per cent are women," notes Ms. Marie Randriamamonjy, director of the Women in Development Service of the FAO.
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Women are the backbone of Africa's rural economy, accounting for 70 per cent of food production.
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Food security in Africa cannot be assured without improving the situation of women producers. Women have shown themselves to be ready to take advantage of new opportunities. Evidence from a World Bank study in Kenya suggests that if women had the same human capital endowments and used the same production factors and inputs as men, the value of their output would increase by some 22 per cent. Given women's key roles in food production, if these results from Kenya hold for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, then simply raising the productivity of women to the same level as that of men would increase total production by 10-15 per cent, eliminating a key constraint to food security.
Unfortunately, some of the obstacles that women farmers confront have been worsened by the impact of structural adjustment programmes. By placing greater emphasis on export crops, which usually are grown by men, the domestic terms of trade have tended to shift against food production, where women predominate. Few women farmers market enough of their own produce to benefit from higher producer prices, while the increased acreage devoted to export and other cash crops also has increased labour demands on women.
B. Women's employment
Analysis of women's employment in Africa is constrained by unreliable data, as well as by problems in defining what constitutes economic activity for women, particularly in the agricultural and informal sectors. Ongoing economic crises and the gulf between job creation and the growth in the numbers of job seekers have worsened the employment situation for women and men alike. But women face greater vulnerabilities in the labour market because of their relative lack of education and training, the tendency to channel women into certain occupations, and the continuous heavy burdens of unpaid domestic work, child-bearing and child-care, which restrict the time and energy available for income-earning activities.
The formal sector
According to UNDP, women are two-thirds less likely than men to get waged employment, while only 3 out of 10 women in the labour force in sub-Saharan Africa are paid employees. In 1990, about 5 per cent of the female labour force worked in industry, 20 per cent in services, 23 per cent in sales, and only 6 per cent in professional, technical, administrative or managerial positions.
Employees in both the public and private sectors earn steady, albeit low, incomes. They also work to predictable schedules, in contrast to the self-employed, who are more insecure and who often must make substantial investments in time and energy. Despite International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, to which many African countries are signatories, there are significant income disparities, with women earning half or less of the incomes of men in some countries. Many women also do not benefit in practice from formal laws and policies guaranteeing maternity protection or equal pay for equal work.
Data from the ILO and other sources suggest that women's formal sector participation rates dropped from 57 per cent in 1970 to 53 per cent in 1990, with 2.5 million women losing their jobs between 1985 and 1990. In Benin, to cite just one example, women accounted for 26 per cent of retrenched workers, although they were only 6 per cent of formal sector workers; women had predominated in the lower echelons of the social services sector, which faced the heaviest budget cuts. Many of such retrenched women have relocated to the informal sector.
The informal sector
The non-agricultural informal sector employs about 25 per cent of the female labour force, mainly in petty trading and home-based processing and manufacturing, where they have little access to official sources of credit or information. Congestion and lack of water and sanitation create a hazardous environment for both the women and the children they must take with them to work (because no other childcare is available). These women workers also do not benefit from minimum wage and social security provisions and have to provide for their own health and retirement needs. Many are subject to harassment and exploitation from municipal authorities.
With the contraction of formal sector jobs, the informal sector has become a "safe haven" for both men and women because of its low capital requirements and ease of entry. For the majority of women, participation in the informal sector is a survival strategy as they take over aspects of household maintenance that men can no longer afford, although they tend to face stiff competition from new entrants, including men who have lost or cannot obtain formal sector employment. Many girls have been withdrawn from school to assist their mothers or guardians in informal sector activities.
The informal sector has shown some dynamism in creating new jobs. In Zimbabwe, for example, it is estimated that job creation in the informal sector may average 25,000 to 35,000 a year. The sector also provides needed linkages among small-scale manufacturers, promotes labour-intensive production processes and integrates local and regional markets. Informal sector workers have built associations to protect their interests and mobilized traditional savings and credit schemes to offer sources of capital for women. In Nairobi, Kisangani and Accra, rich women traders have used their profits to build houses to rent out; a few have crossed over into the formal sector, in importing, manufacturing and commerce.
In general, however, women's lack of access to affordable credit, information, technical advice and services prevents them from expanding their enterprises. The sector is characterized by low productivity and disguised unemployment.
Providing credit, information, services and infrastructure to the informal sector would enhance its productivity, thus supporting women's efforts to maintain their families and provide services to farmers, artisans and other producers.
III. Women and social services
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A women's literacy class in Mali: education for women advances their economic empowerment, and also promotes development more generally.
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A. Education and training
Lack of access to formal education and training has been identified as a key barrier to women's employment and advancement in society. In Africa, female illiteracy rates were over 60 per cent in 1996, compared to 41 per cent for men. Certain countries have extremely high rates: Burkina Faso at 91.1 per cent, Sierra Leone at 88.7 per cent, Chad at 82.1 per cent and Guinea at 86.6 per cent. Literacy classes for women appear to have limited impact, while programmes linked to income generating activities have been most successful.
In many African countries, parents still prefer to send boys to school, seeing little need for education for girls. In addition, factors such as adolescent pregnancy, early marriage and girls' greater burden of household labour act as obstacles to their schooling.
While most girls do not go beyond primary education, school curricula have not been guided by this reality and their content is not geared to helping girls acquire basic life skills. The curriculum also is suffused with gender biases and leads girls into stereotypical "feminine" jobs in teaching, nursing and clerical work. Few women are found in scientific or technical education where they could develop better skills to secure better paying jobs.
There have been improvements in the net enrolment of girls at primary levels, but disparities persist in comparison with the enrolment of boys. Female enrolment numbers decrease as girls move up the education ladder (see table). Exceptionally, in Southern Africa, the out-migration of men has led to a very different pattern of gender representation in the education system. Lesotho provides the most striking case, with females accounting for more than 75 per cent of students, even in higher education.
Prospects for increasing the access of women and girls to education have been undermined by economic crisis, budgetary cuts, and debt servicing burdens. Average per capita education spending declined from $41 in 1980 to only $26 in 1985 and was $25 in 1995. Meanwhile the proportion of foreign aid allocated to education declined from 17 per cent in 1975 to 9.8 per cent in 1990, increasing slightly to 10.7 percent in 1994.
Cuts in state spending on education have led to a slower rate of increase in gross enrolment rates, while drop-out rates for girls have risen as they have been withdrawn from school in response to new fees and "user charges," and other economic factors. In 1993, only about 40 per cent of school-age girls were enrolled in primary or secondary school.
The teaching profession shows a similar level of female participation. In 1993, women accounted for 30 per cent or less of primary teaching staff in 13 African countries, while their proportions in secondary schools remained at 33 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa between 1985 and 1994. Women are largely absent in technical fields, with the exception of home economics and secretarial courses, depriving girls of needed role models.
Studies have shown that a woman's education beyond primary school is a reliable route to economic empowerment and long-term change in the status quo, as well as a determinant of a family's health and nutrition. Education beyond ten or more years of school is also a reliable predictor of lower fertility, improved infant survival, reduced maternal mortality and enhanced levels of infant and child development and educational attainment. However, the current economic and policy situation, combined with socio-cultural factors, threaten any real advances in the education of women and girls. New administrative arrangements and partners must be found to support their education and make it more consistent with their needs.
Training programmes are needed to help women develop their technical competence, argues Ms. Ba of Women's Development Enterprise in Africa, "to enable them to be better informed, better infiltrate the political and economic structures....and help them gain the maximum competence and means."
B. Health and sanitation
For women, as for men, inadequate potable water, sanitation and waste disposal in urban and rural areas in Africa leave populations vulnerable to water-borne and other environmental diseases. Malaria, lung and other respiratory diseases are still major killers in Africa.
These conditions are compounded for women by some unhelpful or even dangerous religious norms and practices centred on their reproductive and productive functions, their heavy workloads, high birth rates and socio-cultural factors that limit their dietary intake. Maternal and infant mortality remain high. Up to 40 per cent of pregnant women in many countries have no access to antenatal care, while the percentage of births attended by trained personnel has declined. Benin, Botswana, Lesotho and Mauritania have recorded some improvements as a result of maternal and child health programmes, while Ghana recently announced that free health care for pregnant women is to be introduced in an attempt to reduce the current high maternal mortality rates of 214 per 100,000 births.
In 1994 the infant mortality rate in Africa was estimated at 92 deaths per thousand. High infant mortality, the opposition of male partners and religious and cultural factors result in levels of contraceptive use of only around 15 per cent.
The health of women and girl-children is also jeopardized by female genital mutilation (FGM). It is estimated that about 2 million girls are subjected to the practice each year, with over 80 per cent of women in Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone undergoing different forms. Besides the immediate pain and trauma FGM inflicts on its victims, it can result in infertility, incontinence, painful sexual intercourse and obstructed labour, in addition to severe psychological trauma. Groups such as Mali's Association pour le progrès et la défense des femmes, and others in Sierra Leone and Niger, have carried out intensive campaigns in cities and villages against the practice of excision.
The high and growing incidence of AIDS also highlights women's lack of power over their own sexuality. Research in West and Central Africa has shown that because of cultural and economic reasons, many women feel unable to refuse the sexual advances of partners even when they know they risk infection. Poverty has pushed some young women between the ages of 15 and 25 into sex work, and many new cases are being reported from this group. In 1992, HIV prevalence rates of 15 to 20 per cent were reported for female sex workers in Nigeria. In Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, rates were between 10 and 15 per cent among women attending prenatal clinic.
HIV/AIDS infection is on the rise among women of childbearing age who also are vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases. In Uganda and Zambia, the average life expectancy of both women and men has already declined because of the disease, and eight other countries are beginning to see similar effects. Women and girls bear the burden of caring for infected family members and for orphans and abandoned children, at the same time as governments have reduced expenditure for the health sector.
While reproductive health issues are important, there is also a need to focus on women's general well-being. For instance, infertility is a problem in parts of Central and East Africa, where 20 per cent of women aged 45-49 are estimated to be childless. Insufficient housekeeping money, desertions and divorce, stress and the insecurities of daily life also threaten women's mental health.
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'Women of all ages may be victims of violence in conflict, but adolescent girls are particularly at risk.'
-- Ms. Graça Machel, Mozambique
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Issues of rape, sexual assault and domestic violence also are beginning to receive due attention in discussions of women's health. Among other groups, Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF), with chapters in Uganda, Ghana, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, is documenting the prevalence of violence against women. In Namibia and South Africa, women's groups are organizing around the issue of rape and demanding that offenders be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. They have called for action against the gender insensitivity that is often displayed by police officers and prosecutors and the courts in handling cases of rape and domestic violence.
In situations of conflict, refugee and displaced women and girls often have been sexually assaulted. In Liberia and Rwanda, rape and torture were used as weapons of war. During the long war in Mozambique, women and girls faced extreme violence, including exposure to landmines and the severe dismemberment that resulted. Some women in refugee camps have been pushed into prostitution, while the conditions in and around camps have contributed to the spread of AIDS and tuberculosis. Health education, screening and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and culturally appropriate services for survivors of rape and torture generally have not been available.
"Women of all ages may be victims of violence in conflict, but adolescent girls are particularly at risk for a range of reasons, including size and vulnerability," noted Ms. Graça Machel of Mozambique in her 1996 report to the UN General Assembly, The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children. She recommended, among other things, that clear and accessible systems should be established for reporting sexual abuse, that rape be punished, and that camps for refugees and displaced persons be designed to improve security for women and girls.
Overall, there has been slow progress in improving the health of African women. Programmes to promote the health of mothers through maternal and childcare services and family planning services have been undercut by reductions in government expenditure in the health sector, shortages of drugs, scarcity of medical personnel and inadequate health infrastructure. Deteriorating environmental and economic conditions, the resurgence of old diseases (for example, yaws), and the rising incidence of AIDS could reverse the modest gains in women's health.
IV. Women's legal rights and political participation
Many governments have ratified conventions and international legal instruments on women's rights. Often, however, these have not been enacted into national law. Moreover, many women are ignorant of the existence of laws that recognize their rights and can be invoked for their protection. Various systems of customary law, religious ideologies and cultural stereotyping have been used to treat women as minors in the law and household, with few women able to inherit property in their own names or have equal access to political offices and positions. Socialization and educational processes reinforce this situation; women are raised to believe that they are inferior to men.
Traditional women leaders have not been given the same recognition as male chiefs who have been coopted into new positions of power in their societies. In Ghana, attempts to admit queen-mothers into the National House of Chiefs have been repulsed by powerful chiefs and their allies. But some women have fought back. In South Africa, the first woman Zulu chief in the province of KwaZulu/Natal won Supreme Court backing to defeat a challenge to her appointment. "She told us," remarked Acting Judge Navanetham Pillay, "that in African traditional practice, women keep their eyes lowered demurely. This is what she was doing, although she was the chief and men were [among] her subjects. One day she looked them in the eye, and never looked back."
Traditional practices and attitudes toward women have carried over into public life. Women are under-represented in high offices of state and positions of decision-making in government, the military, central banks, finance and planning ministries and African regional organizations.
Average female representation in parliaments is less than 8 per cent in Africa, and many of the women are nominated, not elected. In only two countries, the Seychelles and South Africa, are women more than 25 per cent of elected members in parliament or in ministerial positions, thus approaching the 30 per cent minimum threshold in decision-making for women recommended in UNDP's 1995 Human Development Report. Although they are active in community affairs, women also are not adequately represented in regional and local structures, except where conscious efforts have been made to guarantee a quota for them, as in Uganda, Ghana and Namibia.
Women's representation in judicial systems has improved through the growth in numbers of new female lawyers, but the proportions still tend to be low. In Kenya, females were 8.1 per cent of high court judges and 23 per cent of chief magistrates in 1992, while in Zambia, women were 11 per cent of the judiciary and 20 per cent of magistrates in 1993. In Uganda, women comprised 17 per cent of judges and 23 per cent of chief magistrates in 1994. Despite the presence of some women in judicial and parliamentary systems and in top ministerial and decision-making positions, their low numbers hamper their effectiveness in initiating change for women.
In the public service, women's representation at the highest levels of decision-making was 4.6 per cent in Kenya in 1992, 5.4 per cent in Swaziland in 1989, 4.6 per cent in Cote d'Ivoire in 1990, 12 per cent in Zambia in 1991 and 10 per cent in Senegal in 1993. In contrast, women in the Seychelles were 40 per cent of principal secretaries, director generals and deputy directors in the public service in 1994, thanks to affirmative action strategies for women.
Another important area for a greater presence of women is in the media. Females are about 45 per cent of students in third-level mass communication and documentation studies, and data from nine SADC countries shows that women are 27 per cent of the personnel in broadcasting and the press. Given the role of the media in influencing people's opinions and attitudes, the increased participation of women, coupled with gender-sensitive education, can lead to more positive portrayals of women, their activities and their capabilities.
V. Women's responses
Since the start of the 1990s, many more women's associations have been formed or revitalized, and the quality of their work has improved significantly. Operating at both grassroots and national levels, these groups have taken advantage of new political openings in many countries to raise issues in new ways and to form alliances with other civil society groups to advance women's rights. While many of the associations receive external funding, a number seek to stress internal responsibility, African agenda-setting, and the development of organizational potential. African women and gender studies programmes also have been set up in many universities, both to teach and to engage in fundamental and applied research to improve the conditions of women in Africa.
In contrast to the "development discourse" of the 1970s and 1980s, issues affecting women now are discussed most often within the framework of rights. Women have entered into debates and action on gender concerns that formerly were perceived as divisive and unpopular, such as violence against women, sexual harassment, female genital mutilation and condom use by men, in addition to economic, political, legal and cultural issues.
Women have formed national committees on AIDS, health and harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation and domestic violence. For example, The AIDS Support Organization (TASO), created in Uganda in 1987, has built a network of educators, counselling centres and support systems. It has established day-care centres, vocational training and community education to change the attitudes of health workers and community leaders, stressing safe sex and condom use among single and HIV-positive people.
Sub-regional and regional affiliations of women also have emerged and have identified key areas for action. They include the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), the Association of African Women Entrepreneurs (AFWE), the Federation of African Women Educators (FAWE), and WILDAF. They act as pressure groups, network with each other, form regional and global alliances and aim to direct resources and attention to women and the issues that concern them.
Women's World Banking and AFWE are active in many countries. They address the lack of credit for women entrepreneurs by acting as collateral grantees and providing matching funds to give poor women better credit access. Women's World Banking advocates the establishment of a continental bank for women.
FAWE brings together female ministers in charge of education, university chancellors, permanent secretaries and other influential women to work towards increasing girls' access to education in Africa. It also presses for implementation at national level of the strategies for educators and policy-makers contained in the Ouagadougou Declaration and UNESCO's Priority African Programme, which call for a regional consensus on girls' education as a priority for development, outline a regional framework for action to improve girls' educational opportunities and seek to mobilize new resources and partners to support these goals.
Groups such as Emang Basadi in Botswana, the Forum for Women and Democracy in Uganda, the National Women's Lobby Group in Zambia and the Women's National Coalition in South Africa have all forced changes in political participation and the rights of women in their countries. The Women's National Coalition drew up a "Women's Charter" on gender equality, which has been enshrined in the new South African constitution. The Women's Caucus in Uganda developed gender dialogues as a lobbying tool and has worked with other groups to form an Equal Opportunity Commission and to push for implementation of affirmative action programmes. These groups have held consultations with other women's groups from around Africa to share experiences, both of the obstacles that women face in politics and of successful strategies that might be replicated.
Women also are organizing on the issue of peace. They are demanding resources and legal recognition to rebuild their lives, as well as participation in peace-building, conflict-resolution and early warning mechanisms, citing both their traditional peace-making roles and their right to equal involvement. "Women can be peacemakers in our community not by standing with a gun, but by teaching peace," says Ms. Rebecca Akwaci, an organizer of the Sudan Women's Voice for Peace. "We can be on the borders, encouraging peace, talking about reconciliation instead of revenge."
The Federation of African Women's Networks -- which groups women from Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mozambique, Angola, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, Congo, Mali and South Africa -- stresses the missing social dimension in mechanisms for conflict-resolution, which currently emphasize more technical aspects over consultation with the people and communal action.
It is such growing organizations of women that are making a push for systemic changes in women's lives. Governments, bilateral and multilateral agencies and other NGOs must cooperate with them for meaningful change to occur, in the lives of women themselves and in society as a whole.
VI. The way forward
It is critically important for policy-makers to listen to and work with women to improve their positions and thereby accelerate Africa's development. A comprehensive approach must be taken by governments -- in conjunction with development agencies and women themselves -- to remove the social, economic and legal constraints on women.
Regional actions on the model of those initiated by the Southern African Development Community are needed for implementing the African Common Position for the Advancement of Women and the Platform of Action adopted in Beijing. National action plans must be designed in broad consultation with women's groups to complement regional initiatives. These must be adequately funded and staffed, however. Commenting on SADC's new institutional framework for gender, Ms. Gertrude Mongella of Tanzania, who served as Secretary-General for the Fourth World's Women Conference in Beijing, expressed the hope that it will be allocated sufficient resources, because "all too often, similar institutions have been marginalized, under-resourced and used as a dumping ground for gender issues."
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Women's institutions in the community, market places and trades must be recognized and utilized to increase women's participation and decision-making in society.
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An important issue raised in the Beijing Platform for Action is equality of responsibility between men and women for gender equality to become a reality. In order for more women to reach the same high positions as men in various fields, more focused education and socialization are needed for better burden-sharing and a fairer division of labour between the sexes in the home and society. Not only should governments' macroeconomic policies incorporate gender perspectives in their design, they also need to take into account intra-household differences in resource use and control, recognizing that improvements in women's incomes promote equity as well as child welfare.
Most economic programmes in Africa tend to overlook the unpaid economy, where women predominate. They also assume that males and females respond to incentives in the same way, thereby ignoring gender and power relations within households and communities. But gender biases and rigidities may strongly affect women's access to productive resources and markets, ultimately frustrating economic reform policies. It therefore makes economic sense to take into account gender biases and tailor planned interventions to improve women's ability to take advantage of incentives, thus enhancing overall economic efficiency.
Access to resources
Governments and local authorities must demonstrate commitment to removing legal impediments and socio-cultural obstacles against women, especially in the rural areas where the majority of women live and are economically active. The constraints on women's access to land, credit, extension services, inputs and new technologies must be removed, and opportunities should be created for their enterprise. Measures to improve women's access through institutional reforms must be pursued and monitored for effectiveness.
Governments must build partnerships with the emerging associations of women bankers and entrepreneurs to create an enabling policy environment. This should include making credit available to women at affordable rates, with the private sector assisting government efforts to get credit to women.
Reducing labour time
Appropriate technologies for household chores, food processing, preservation and storage are needed, as are farm tools that are appropriate for women, including small transportation equipment that will free women from head loading. The increased provision of potable water and cheap and reliable energy sources are also needed to reduce the long hours that women work and to remove the drudgery from their lives.
Improving education and health
Gender biases in the educational system, training and employment must be consistently attacked to give women new opportunities for achievement, while school curricula must incorporate concepts of gender equality and peace at all levels, so that students will incorporate them throughout their lives. Young women need role models to motivate them and must be given a usable education and skills to play meaningful roles in society and to safeguard them from harmful practices which mortgage their health and lives.
It is clear that there are interconnections between women's precarious health status, their susceptibility to AIDS, inequitable gender relations, and women's poverty and powerlessness in society. Without a frontal assault on all of these issues, medical solutions alone can have little effect. As Dr. Eka Esu Williams of Nigeria puts it, "To enable women to protect themselves there are three issues at stake: improving their social and economic status; providing a method over which they have sufficient control; or getting more men to adopt safe sex. This is not an academic exercise in setting priorities, but a question of life and death for many women."
Women's leadership and organization
Finally, women's leadership skills in their communities, groups and associations need to be harnessed and formalized to give them political and decision-making power. Women's commitment to their households, to local and national food security, local production and the environment should be reflected in equitable representation on all bodies that make decisions in these areas, as well as in broader economic programmes that affect women's lives.
Implementation mechanisms must harness women's own energies, through their associations. Technical units in government departments and ministries should be established, along with data banks and resource centres at local, regional and national levels to support actions on behalf of women -- and they should be adequately funded and staffed. The viability of women's institutions and mechanisms for decision-making in the community, market places and trades must be recognized, and they should be utilized to increase women's participation and decision-making power in society. "If you want to develop Africa," affirms Ms. Soukeyna Ba of Senegal, "you must develop the leadership of African women."
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**Takyiwaa Manuh is a Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of African Studies, at the University of Ghana, Legon.
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source:un.org
Number 11, April 1998
Women in Africa's development
Overcoming obstacles, pushing for progress
By Takyiwaa Manuh**
African women's fundamental contributions in their households, food production systems and national economies are increasingly acknowledged, within Africa and by the international community. This is due, in no small part, to African women's own energetic efforts to organize, articulate their concerns and make their voices heard. At both grassroots and national levels, more women's associations have been formed during the 1990s, taking advantage of the new political openings to assert their leadership roles. They are also pressing for an expansion of women's economic and social opportunities, and the advancement of women's rights. By improving their own positions, they are simultaneously strengthening African society as a whole, as well as enhancing the continent's broader development prospects.
But women in Africa continue to face enormous obstacles. The growing recognition of their contributions has not translated into significantly improved access to resources or increased decision-making powers. Neither has the dynamism that women display in the economic, cultural and social lives of their communities through their associations and informal networks been channeled into creating new models of participation and leadership.
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Rebuilding in South Africa: women's contributions to African economies are increasingly recognized, but more opportunities are needed for women to fully develop their leadership roles.
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"Africa is overflowing with women leaders," notes Ms. Soukeyna Ndiaye Ba, President of Women's Development Enterprise in Africa, a Dakar-based non-governmental organization (NGO). "They lack only the training and the means to bloom." This highlights the next big step needed for advancing the position of women in Africa: strengthening their capacities and skills and expanding the opportunities for women to more fully develop their leadership roles.
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'If you want to develop Africa, you must develop the leadership of African women.'
-- Ms. Soukeyna Ba, Senegal
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Beyond such political challenges, the material conditions under which most women live and work continue to deteriorate in many countries due to economic and social decline, wars and conflict, and the spread of AIDS. Women constitute the majority of the poor and the illiterate in both urban and rural areas in Africa and many young women between the ages of 15 and 25 have been pushed into sex work and face the risk of HIV/AIDS infection.
Against this background, over 3,000 women converged on Dakar in 1994 to attend the African Women's Preparatory Conference. They came to articulate an African position for the Beijing Fourth Women's World Conference. The resulting African Platform for Action identified several priorities. These included combatting the increasing poverty of African women; improving women's access to education and health services, with a special focus on reproductive health; addressing women's relationship to the environment; increasing the involvement of women in the peace process; advancing the legal and human rights of women; highlighting the special concerns of the girl-child; and "mainstreaming" gender concerns within economic and development policy-making by disaggregating data along gender lines. The Dakar conference also noted the emergence of numerous women's groups and NGOs in Africa and the increasingly concrete expression of their organizational potential.
The Beijing conference that followed in 1995 stressed the empowerment of women as one of the central development goals of the 21st century. It adopted a Platform for Action which called for the mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the design, implementation and monitoring of all policies and programmes, including development programmes. It committed countries to design their own specific programmes and activities in consultation with women's groups and other NGOs to implement the Beijing Platform for Action.
A March 1997 survey by the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) found that only 10 African countries had drawn up action plans. A more hopeful indication was the September 1997 signing of a Gender Declaration by the leaders of the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) at their meeting in Malawi. The declaration commits member states to eradicate gender inequalities in the region; mainstream gender in all SADC activities; create a standing committee of ministers responsible for gender affairs; and set up focal points dealing with gender in all sector coordinating units as well as a gender unit in the SADC Secretariat.
Despite such positive moves, there has been insufficient political will and sustained commitment to meeting the needs and interests of women by local authorities and governments. While many countries have ratified UN agreements such as the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which guarantees women equal rights and protection from discrimination, these have not informed policy-making or translated into better living and working conditions for women. This hampers Africa's development by excluding the perspectives, skills and dynamism of half the population. Without meaningful commitment in the form of policy changes and the provision of resources to deal with the root causes of women's conditions, Africa cannot hope to see a breakthrough in its development and renewal.
Within the international development community, there has been a shift in thinking from the initial "women in development" (WID) approach, which focused narrowly on women's productive roles, to a broader "gender and development" perspective, which takes into account all spheres of women's lives and seeks to bring gender analysis into the core of development policy (see box "Shifting views of women and development").
UN agencies such as the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) and UN Development Programme (UNDP) support gender awareness training for policy-makers in Africa, provide technical assistance and build strong gender components into their own programming and projects. Similarly, the Commonwealth Secretariat has commissioned several studies on gender and economic policy-making and applies a gender perspective to analyze the effectiveness of governmental policies and public services. The World Bank also emphasizes the developmental costs of ignoring women and denying them access to key resources, and urges countries to draw up gender action plans.
However, the severe economic constraints that African countries face tend to undercut these new emphases and shifts in approach. The continuing poverty of the majority of African countries, declining terms of trade and the burden of external debt create an unfavourable environment for development. Of the limited resources available, little is directly allocated to women. In addition, structural adjustment policies pursued for nearly two decades by African governments in conjunction with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have had important gender consequences. Governments' macroeconomic policies do not incorporate gender perspectives in their design and ignore the structure of households in Africa and the social relations that influence women's roles in production.
I. African women in their societies
Among the majority of rural and low-income urban dwellers, women perform all domestic tasks, while many also farm and trade. They are responsible for the care of children, the sick and the elderly, in addition to performing essential social functions within their communities. They seek to manage the environment, although their struggle for survival often results in environmental damage from activities such as fuel-wood collection.
Many rural and urban women belong to women-only mutual-aid societies, benevolent groups in churches, cooperatives and market women's groups. Some of these groups allow women to pool resources to reduce their workload and to invest in savings societies or cooperative ventures. Cooperative societies have provided women access to resources, for example, the Corn Mill societies in Cameroon, the "Six S" associations in Burkina Faso and the General Union of Cooperatives in Mozambique, which supplies most of Maputo's fruits and vegetables. In Benin only 8 per cent of rural women belong to formal cooperatives, but an estimated 90 per cent participate in traditional women's savings and credit groups. Informal rotating credit associations in Ghana, Tanzania, Gambia and Zimbabwe have been used by the estimated 25 per cent of economically active women in the non-agricultural informal sector to invest in businesses and farms, home improvements and school costs for their children.
While today women rarely have the same access to resources as men, in the past some resources were available to them, especially land. Wives in many societies were not fully economically dependent upon their husbands. Women had their own age-grade associations and leaders and wielded power in spheres regarded as exclusively feminine, guaranteeing them some leverage in political processes and allowing them to negotiate with men. Through their involvement in the birth and care of children, some women developed extensive knowledge of herbs and healing powers and had important religious roles and achieved fame and recognition.
Women's power and spheres of influence largely disappeared under the impact of colonialism and external religions, which upset existing economic and social complementarity between the sexes. New "customary" laws on marriage created in response to men's anxieties about the independence of women transformed the previously fluid and negotiable relations between them into rigid duties and obligations of wives and women. Women came to be regarded as primarily dependent on men, making it unnecessary to plan and provide for their needs; they were to work in the fields and home to produce food and other crops to support their men, who worked in visible, documented activities. Finally, the introduction of new forms of marriage that granted enhanced property and inheritance rights to a minority, increased the dependence of the majority of African women on men.
Women shared initially in the promises of independence and saw gains in their access to education, formal sector employment, health care and nutritional profiles; their life expectancy at birth rose from 37 to 50 years by the end of the 1960s. But development plans continued to be formulated and implemented without an adequate understanding of women's contributions to African economies. Women were also absent from formal positions of decision-making and power. Even in countries like Zimbabwe and Guinea-Bissau, where women had participated in armed struggles for national liberation, they have tended to be marginalized and few have attained formal positions of power or gained rights to land and resources in their own names.
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A health clinic in Benin: maternal and infant mortality rates in Africa remain the highest in the world
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Causes of deterioration
Women's lives in most countries have been profoundly affected by three main developments since the onset of economic and social decline in the 1970s and 1980s:
First, the structural adjustment programmes implemented in many countries across Africa since the early 1980s have emphasized demand management and supply-oriented measures narrowly focused on export-led growth and efficiency, often to the detriment of social welfare. They also have introduced liberalization of trade regimes and of the financial sector, as well as privatization and reduction in the role of the state in economic life. Because of their specific roles and position within society, women have been among the worst affected by cuts in social sector spending, where substantial costs have been shifted from the state to the household. As a consequence, women have been forced to take on an increasing burden of unpaid work in caring for the sick, obtaining food and ensuring the survival of their families more generally.
Second, there has been increased civil strife and conflict. The majority of the estimated 8.1 million refugees, displaced persons and post-conflict returnees in Africa in 1997 were women and children. War and conflict have increased violence against women and worsened the social and economic conditions under which they live.
Third, many African countries are grappling with the AIDS crisis, high and increasing rates of HIV infection and the costs in human lives. Just over half of the estimated 20 million cases of HIV in Africa are female. In Africa the main route for infection is through heterosexual intercourse and through the placenta from an infected mother to her unborn child. Women and girls are particularly vulnerable because of their lack of power over their sexuality and reproductive functions.
Marriage, households and women's welfare
About 50 per cent of women in Africa are married by age 18 and one in three women is in a polygamous marriage. Estimates of average total fertility rates in Africa were 5.7 children per woman in 1995, although some Southern African countries, as well as Kenya and Mauritius, have begun to see declines. High fertility arises from the economic value of children, high infant mortality and low levels of contraceptive use. Children's labour is crucial inside and outside the home and has increased with ongoing economic crisis and environmental change. Also, it is as mothers that women secure claims in their marital homes and to their husband's assets.
While married, women may still live with their kin groups or in conjugal domestic units. Women head about 31 per cent of households in urban and rural areas across Africa, often with no working resident males.
In many rural areas, women contribute unpaid labour to the household's agricultural production and spend up to 50 hours a week on domestic labour and subsistence food production, with little sharing of tasks by spouses or sons in the household. Studies have documented that women work 12-13 hours a week more than men, as the prevalent economic and environmental crises have increased the working hours of the poorest women.
In some areas, women may have separate access to land and work independently in farming or in some other income-generating activity. But in general they have fewer opportunities to earn income. They combine their unpaid labour with independent production to meet the needs of their families and to attain some measure of autonomy and self-reliance. Their income is indispensable for family survival regardless of the presence of men, since the system of allocation and distribution within many African households usually imposes individual responsibilities on men and women to meet their personal needs. Women are expected to actively generate the means to meet the daily expenses for themselves and their children, but also may receive loans or advances from their husbands to set up petty trading operations.
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Because of cuts in social sector spending, women have been forced to take on an increasing burden of unpaid work in caring for the sick, obtaining food and ensuring the survival of their families.
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With the decline of national and local economies, many men have been unable or have refused to contribute their share of household expenses. This has increased household pressures on women, raising the numbers of women living in poverty and the numbers of households in the poorest categories headed by women.
For women's welfare and production to be improved, planners and funding agencies need to pry open what has been called the "black box" of the household, by taking into account intra-household differences in resource use and control. While men may control more resources and earn higher incomes, this does not translate into improved family or household welfare. Rather, women's incomes and spending patterns are better indicators of the welfare of household members, since women spend more of their increased earnings on food, medicine and education for their children and other dependents. Improving women's incomes becomes both a matter of equity and a prerequisite for child survival and welfare.
II. Women in economic life
A. Mainstay of rural production
Women provide the backbone of the rural economy in much of sub-Saharan Africa. About 80 per cent of the economically active female labour force is employed in agriculture and women comprise about 47 per cent of the total agricultural labour force. Food production is the major activity of rural women and their responsibilities and labour inputs often exceed those of men in most areas in Africa. Women also provide much of the labour for men's cultivation of export crops, from which women derive little direct benefit. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found, in a survey of nine African countries in 1996, that women's contribution to the production of food crops ranges from 30 per cent in Sudan to 80 per cent in the Republic of Congo, with estimates for other countries tending toward the higher end of the scale. Women are responsible for 70 per cent of food production, 50 per cent of domestic food storage, 100 per cent of food processing, 50 per cent of animal husbandry and 60 per cent of agricultural marketing.
Women also have taken advantage of new opportunities to produce vegetables for urban markets on fringe land using highly labour-intensive practices. Where social practices of female seclusion prevent them from working outside the home, as in parts of Nigeria and Ethiopia, they engage in food processing and trade with the assistance of young girls.
Women have benefitted from technological advances in food processing, such as cassava processors, fish smokers and oil pressers. Cassava processors, introduced by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in some Nigerian villages, have reduced labour time through more efficient processing, bringing gains in women's incomes. According to Dr. Lukas Brader, Director-General of the IITA, "If Africa is to develop a more productive, sustainable, and equitable agricultural sector, it cannot afford to neglect women." Moreover, he adds, the constraints that women face must be addressed if agriculture is to be the engine of economic growth.
Access to land
The first of these constraints is access to land. Across Africa, agricultural intensification, population growth and economic change have led to substantive shifts from common property systems of tenure towards more centralized resource control. In the process, women and poorer people generally have lost out. An FAO "synthesis report" on nine countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Congo, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Sudan, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) showed that women rarely own land and when they do, their holdings tend to be smaller and less fertile than those of men.
Where land reform schemes have been introduced, they often have displaced complex systems of land use and tenure in which women had certain rights in common law and local practice, if not in legislation. New land titles usually have been registered in the name of a male household head, regardless of women's economic contribution to the household, their customary rights or the increasing number of female-headed households.
As a result of "women in development" and NGO activities, some women have been granted land to start communal gardens from which they generate income. When these gardens are visibly remunerative, women's continued access rights become vulnerable and subject to encroachment by male landowners. In parts of northern Ghana, land that women have carefully tended has been taken away, leaving them with less fertile and more distant plots. The low incomes and increased uncertainties and risks that women face in their production activities, compounded by the lack of access to land, is pushing many of them out of traditional agriculture.
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Food production is the major activity of rural women and their responsibilities and labour inputs often exceed those of men in most areas in Africa.
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The labour bottleneck
Labour is also a bottleneck for female farmers, as men have left rural economies in search of more viable livelihoods and women have lost access to male help on farms or the money they may have previously provided. In countries like Lesotho, Botswana and Burkina Faso, the out-migration of adult males is very high, influencing the sexual division of labour for those left behind. The only means for most women to increase their yields is through even harder work, using more labour-intensive methods to maintain soil regeneration and fertility. Where technical innovations such as irrigation techniques have made more than one cropping season possible, as in many parts of the Sahel, increased women's labour has been crucial in meeting the intensified work demands.
But women have not simply accepted increasing demands on their labour time. As examples from rice development schemes in Gambia, Cameroon and Nigeria have shown, women often have bargained with men to increase what they get in exchange for the labour they expend on family fields.
Credit and other inputs
In addition to land and labour, women face problems of access to other inputs, including credit, technology, extension services and agricultural training and marketing. Many credit associations and export-crop marketing cooperatives limit membership to household heads in many countries, thereby excluding most married and unmarried women. Banks demand collateral in the form of landed property and male approval before making loans to women, while men often have been reluctant to support women's applications. Most resources and technical assistance have been channeled to men growing export crops, with improved seeds and tools going to larger commercial farmers, almost invariably men. Only 5 per cent of the resources provided through extension services in Africa are available to women, "although, in some cases, particularly in food production, African women handled 80 per cent of the work. Of total extension agents at work in Africa today, only 17 per cent are women," notes Ms. Marie Randriamamonjy, director of the Women in Development Service of the FAO.
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Women are the backbone of Africa's rural economy, accounting for 70 per cent of food production.
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Food security in Africa cannot be assured without improving the situation of women producers. Women have shown themselves to be ready to take advantage of new opportunities. Evidence from a World Bank study in Kenya suggests that if women had the same human capital endowments and used the same production factors and inputs as men, the value of their output would increase by some 22 per cent. Given women's key roles in food production, if these results from Kenya hold for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, then simply raising the productivity of women to the same level as that of men would increase total production by 10-15 per cent, eliminating a key constraint to food security.
Unfortunately, some of the obstacles that women farmers confront have been worsened by the impact of structural adjustment programmes. By placing greater emphasis on export crops, which usually are grown by men, the domestic terms of trade have tended to shift against food production, where women predominate. Few women farmers market enough of their own produce to benefit from higher producer prices, while the increased acreage devoted to export and other cash crops also has increased labour demands on women.
B. Women's employment
Analysis of women's employment in Africa is constrained by unreliable data, as well as by problems in defining what constitutes economic activity for women, particularly in the agricultural and informal sectors. Ongoing economic crises and the gulf between job creation and the growth in the numbers of job seekers have worsened the employment situation for women and men alike. But women face greater vulnerabilities in the labour market because of their relative lack of education and training, the tendency to channel women into certain occupations, and the continuous heavy burdens of unpaid domestic work, child-bearing and child-care, which restrict the time and energy available for income-earning activities.
The formal sector
According to UNDP, women are two-thirds less likely than men to get waged employment, while only 3 out of 10 women in the labour force in sub-Saharan Africa are paid employees. In 1990, about 5 per cent of the female labour force worked in industry, 20 per cent in services, 23 per cent in sales, and only 6 per cent in professional, technical, administrative or managerial positions.
Employees in both the public and private sectors earn steady, albeit low, incomes. They also work to predictable schedules, in contrast to the self-employed, who are more insecure and who often must make substantial investments in time and energy. Despite International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, to which many African countries are signatories, there are significant income disparities, with women earning half or less of the incomes of men in some countries. Many women also do not benefit in practice from formal laws and policies guaranteeing maternity protection or equal pay for equal work.
Data from the ILO and other sources suggest that women's formal sector participation rates dropped from 57 per cent in 1970 to 53 per cent in 1990, with 2.5 million women losing their jobs between 1985 and 1990. In Benin, to cite just one example, women accounted for 26 per cent of retrenched workers, although they were only 6 per cent of formal sector workers; women had predominated in the lower echelons of the social services sector, which faced the heaviest budget cuts. Many of such retrenched women have relocated to the informal sector.
The informal sector
The non-agricultural informal sector employs about 25 per cent of the female labour force, mainly in petty trading and home-based processing and manufacturing, where they have little access to official sources of credit or information. Congestion and lack of water and sanitation create a hazardous environment for both the women and the children they must take with them to work (because no other childcare is available). These women workers also do not benefit from minimum wage and social security provisions and have to provide for their own health and retirement needs. Many are subject to harassment and exploitation from municipal authorities.
With the contraction of formal sector jobs, the informal sector has become a "safe haven" for both men and women because of its low capital requirements and ease of entry. For the majority of women, participation in the informal sector is a survival strategy as they take over aspects of household maintenance that men can no longer afford, although they tend to face stiff competition from new entrants, including men who have lost or cannot obtain formal sector employment. Many girls have been withdrawn from school to assist their mothers or guardians in informal sector activities.
The informal sector has shown some dynamism in creating new jobs. In Zimbabwe, for example, it is estimated that job creation in the informal sector may average 25,000 to 35,000 a year. The sector also provides needed linkages among small-scale manufacturers, promotes labour-intensive production processes and integrates local and regional markets. Informal sector workers have built associations to protect their interests and mobilized traditional savings and credit schemes to offer sources of capital for women. In Nairobi, Kisangani and Accra, rich women traders have used their profits to build houses to rent out; a few have crossed over into the formal sector, in importing, manufacturing and commerce.
In general, however, women's lack of access to affordable credit, information, technical advice and services prevents them from expanding their enterprises. The sector is characterized by low productivity and disguised unemployment.
Providing credit, information, services and infrastructure to the informal sector would enhance its productivity, thus supporting women's efforts to maintain their families and provide services to farmers, artisans and other producers.
III. Women and social services
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A women's literacy class in Mali: education for women advances their economic empowerment, and also promotes development more generally.
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A. Education and training
Lack of access to formal education and training has been identified as a key barrier to women's employment and advancement in society. In Africa, female illiteracy rates were over 60 per cent in 1996, compared to 41 per cent for men. Certain countries have extremely high rates: Burkina Faso at 91.1 per cent, Sierra Leone at 88.7 per cent, Chad at 82.1 per cent and Guinea at 86.6 per cent. Literacy classes for women appear to have limited impact, while programmes linked to income generating activities have been most successful.
In many African countries, parents still prefer to send boys to school, seeing little need for education for girls. In addition, factors such as adolescent pregnancy, early marriage and girls' greater burden of household labour act as obstacles to their schooling.
While most girls do not go beyond primary education, school curricula have not been guided by this reality and their content is not geared to helping girls acquire basic life skills. The curriculum also is suffused with gender biases and leads girls into stereotypical "feminine" jobs in teaching, nursing and clerical work. Few women are found in scientific or technical education where they could develop better skills to secure better paying jobs.
There have been improvements in the net enrolment of girls at primary levels, but disparities persist in comparison with the enrolment of boys. Female enrolment numbers decrease as girls move up the education ladder (see table). Exceptionally, in Southern Africa, the out-migration of men has led to a very different pattern of gender representation in the education system. Lesotho provides the most striking case, with females accounting for more than 75 per cent of students, even in higher education.
Prospects for increasing the access of women and girls to education have been undermined by economic crisis, budgetary cuts, and debt servicing burdens. Average per capita education spending declined from $41 in 1980 to only $26 in 1985 and was $25 in 1995. Meanwhile the proportion of foreign aid allocated to education declined from 17 per cent in 1975 to 9.8 per cent in 1990, increasing slightly to 10.7 percent in 1994.
Cuts in state spending on education have led to a slower rate of increase in gross enrolment rates, while drop-out rates for girls have risen as they have been withdrawn from school in response to new fees and "user charges," and other economic factors. In 1993, only about 40 per cent of school-age girls were enrolled in primary or secondary school.
The teaching profession shows a similar level of female participation. In 1993, women accounted for 30 per cent or less of primary teaching staff in 13 African countries, while their proportions in secondary schools remained at 33 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa between 1985 and 1994. Women are largely absent in technical fields, with the exception of home economics and secretarial courses, depriving girls of needed role models.
Studies have shown that a woman's education beyond primary school is a reliable route to economic empowerment and long-term change in the status quo, as well as a determinant of a family's health and nutrition. Education beyond ten or more years of school is also a reliable predictor of lower fertility, improved infant survival, reduced maternal mortality and enhanced levels of infant and child development and educational attainment. However, the current economic and policy situation, combined with socio-cultural factors, threaten any real advances in the education of women and girls. New administrative arrangements and partners must be found to support their education and make it more consistent with their needs.
Training programmes are needed to help women develop their technical competence, argues Ms. Ba of Women's Development Enterprise in Africa, "to enable them to be better informed, better infiltrate the political and economic structures....and help them gain the maximum competence and means."
B. Health and sanitation
For women, as for men, inadequate potable water, sanitation and waste disposal in urban and rural areas in Africa leave populations vulnerable to water-borne and other environmental diseases. Malaria, lung and other respiratory diseases are still major killers in Africa.
These conditions are compounded for women by some unhelpful or even dangerous religious norms and practices centred on their reproductive and productive functions, their heavy workloads, high birth rates and socio-cultural factors that limit their dietary intake. Maternal and infant mortality remain high. Up to 40 per cent of pregnant women in many countries have no access to antenatal care, while the percentage of births attended by trained personnel has declined. Benin, Botswana, Lesotho and Mauritania have recorded some improvements as a result of maternal and child health programmes, while Ghana recently announced that free health care for pregnant women is to be introduced in an attempt to reduce the current high maternal mortality rates of 214 per 100,000 births.
In 1994 the infant mortality rate in Africa was estimated at 92 deaths per thousand. High infant mortality, the opposition of male partners and religious and cultural factors result in levels of contraceptive use of only around 15 per cent.
The health of women and girl-children is also jeopardized by female genital mutilation (FGM). It is estimated that about 2 million girls are subjected to the practice each year, with over 80 per cent of women in Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone undergoing different forms. Besides the immediate pain and trauma FGM inflicts on its victims, it can result in infertility, incontinence, painful sexual intercourse and obstructed labour, in addition to severe psychological trauma. Groups such as Mali's Association pour le progrès et la défense des femmes, and others in Sierra Leone and Niger, have carried out intensive campaigns in cities and villages against the practice of excision.
The high and growing incidence of AIDS also highlights women's lack of power over their own sexuality. Research in West and Central Africa has shown that because of cultural and economic reasons, many women feel unable to refuse the sexual advances of partners even when they know they risk infection. Poverty has pushed some young women between the ages of 15 and 25 into sex work, and many new cases are being reported from this group. In 1992, HIV prevalence rates of 15 to 20 per cent were reported for female sex workers in Nigeria. In Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, rates were between 10 and 15 per cent among women attending prenatal clinic.
HIV/AIDS infection is on the rise among women of childbearing age who also are vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases. In Uganda and Zambia, the average life expectancy of both women and men has already declined because of the disease, and eight other countries are beginning to see similar effects. Women and girls bear the burden of caring for infected family members and for orphans and abandoned children, at the same time as governments have reduced expenditure for the health sector.
While reproductive health issues are important, there is also a need to focus on women's general well-being. For instance, infertility is a problem in parts of Central and East Africa, where 20 per cent of women aged 45-49 are estimated to be childless. Insufficient housekeeping money, desertions and divorce, stress and the insecurities of daily life also threaten women's mental health.
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'Women of all ages may be victims of violence in conflict, but adolescent girls are particularly at risk.'
-- Ms. Graça Machel, Mozambique
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Issues of rape, sexual assault and domestic violence also are beginning to receive due attention in discussions of women's health. Among other groups, Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF), with chapters in Uganda, Ghana, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, is documenting the prevalence of violence against women. In Namibia and South Africa, women's groups are organizing around the issue of rape and demanding that offenders be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. They have called for action against the gender insensitivity that is often displayed by police officers and prosecutors and the courts in handling cases of rape and domestic violence.
In situations of conflict, refugee and displaced women and girls often have been sexually assaulted. In Liberia and Rwanda, rape and torture were used as weapons of war. During the long war in Mozambique, women and girls faced extreme violence, including exposure to landmines and the severe dismemberment that resulted. Some women in refugee camps have been pushed into prostitution, while the conditions in and around camps have contributed to the spread of AIDS and tuberculosis. Health education, screening and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and culturally appropriate services for survivors of rape and torture generally have not been available.
"Women of all ages may be victims of violence in conflict, but adolescent girls are particularly at risk for a range of reasons, including size and vulnerability," noted Ms. Graça Machel of Mozambique in her 1996 report to the UN General Assembly, The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children. She recommended, among other things, that clear and accessible systems should be established for reporting sexual abuse, that rape be punished, and that camps for refugees and displaced persons be designed to improve security for women and girls.
Overall, there has been slow progress in improving the health of African women. Programmes to promote the health of mothers through maternal and childcare services and family planning services have been undercut by reductions in government expenditure in the health sector, shortages of drugs, scarcity of medical personnel and inadequate health infrastructure. Deteriorating environmental and economic conditions, the resurgence of old diseases (for example, yaws), and the rising incidence of AIDS could reverse the modest gains in women's health.
IV. Women's legal rights and political participation
Many governments have ratified conventions and international legal instruments on women's rights. Often, however, these have not been enacted into national law. Moreover, many women are ignorant of the existence of laws that recognize their rights and can be invoked for their protection. Various systems of customary law, religious ideologies and cultural stereotyping have been used to treat women as minors in the law and household, with few women able to inherit property in their own names or have equal access to political offices and positions. Socialization and educational processes reinforce this situation; women are raised to believe that they are inferior to men.
Traditional women leaders have not been given the same recognition as male chiefs who have been coopted into new positions of power in their societies. In Ghana, attempts to admit queen-mothers into the National House of Chiefs have been repulsed by powerful chiefs and their allies. But some women have fought back. In South Africa, the first woman Zulu chief in the province of KwaZulu/Natal won Supreme Court backing to defeat a challenge to her appointment. "She told us," remarked Acting Judge Navanetham Pillay, "that in African traditional practice, women keep their eyes lowered demurely. This is what she was doing, although she was the chief and men were [among] her subjects. One day she looked them in the eye, and never looked back."
Traditional practices and attitudes toward women have carried over into public life. Women are under-represented in high offices of state and positions of decision-making in government, the military, central banks, finance and planning ministries and African regional organizations.
Average female representation in parliaments is less than 8 per cent in Africa, and many of the women are nominated, not elected. In only two countries, the Seychelles and South Africa, are women more than 25 per cent of elected members in parliament or in ministerial positions, thus approaching the 30 per cent minimum threshold in decision-making for women recommended in UNDP's 1995 Human Development Report. Although they are active in community affairs, women also are not adequately represented in regional and local structures, except where conscious efforts have been made to guarantee a quota for them, as in Uganda, Ghana and Namibia.
Women's representation in judicial systems has improved through the growth in numbers of new female lawyers, but the proportions still tend to be low. In Kenya, females were 8.1 per cent of high court judges and 23 per cent of chief magistrates in 1992, while in Zambia, women were 11 per cent of the judiciary and 20 per cent of magistrates in 1993. In Uganda, women comprised 17 per cent of judges and 23 per cent of chief magistrates in 1994. Despite the presence of some women in judicial and parliamentary systems and in top ministerial and decision-making positions, their low numbers hamper their effectiveness in initiating change for women.
In the public service, women's representation at the highest levels of decision-making was 4.6 per cent in Kenya in 1992, 5.4 per cent in Swaziland in 1989, 4.6 per cent in Cote d'Ivoire in 1990, 12 per cent in Zambia in 1991 and 10 per cent in Senegal in 1993. In contrast, women in the Seychelles were 40 per cent of principal secretaries, director generals and deputy directors in the public service in 1994, thanks to affirmative action strategies for women.
Another important area for a greater presence of women is in the media. Females are about 45 per cent of students in third-level mass communication and documentation studies, and data from nine SADC countries shows that women are 27 per cent of the personnel in broadcasting and the press. Given the role of the media in influencing people's opinions and attitudes, the increased participation of women, coupled with gender-sensitive education, can lead to more positive portrayals of women, their activities and their capabilities.
V. Women's responses
Since the start of the 1990s, many more women's associations have been formed or revitalized, and the quality of their work has improved significantly. Operating at both grassroots and national levels, these groups have taken advantage of new political openings in many countries to raise issues in new ways and to form alliances with other civil society groups to advance women's rights. While many of the associations receive external funding, a number seek to stress internal responsibility, African agenda-setting, and the development of organizational potential. African women and gender studies programmes also have been set up in many universities, both to teach and to engage in fundamental and applied research to improve the conditions of women in Africa.
In contrast to the "development discourse" of the 1970s and 1980s, issues affecting women now are discussed most often within the framework of rights. Women have entered into debates and action on gender concerns that formerly were perceived as divisive and unpopular, such as violence against women, sexual harassment, female genital mutilation and condom use by men, in addition to economic, political, legal and cultural issues.
Women have formed national committees on AIDS, health and harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation and domestic violence. For example, The AIDS Support Organization (TASO), created in Uganda in 1987, has built a network of educators, counselling centres and support systems. It has established day-care centres, vocational training and community education to change the attitudes of health workers and community leaders, stressing safe sex and condom use among single and HIV-positive people.
Sub-regional and regional affiliations of women also have emerged and have identified key areas for action. They include the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), the Association of African Women Entrepreneurs (AFWE), the Federation of African Women Educators (FAWE), and WILDAF. They act as pressure groups, network with each other, form regional and global alliances and aim to direct resources and attention to women and the issues that concern them.
Women's World Banking and AFWE are active in many countries. They address the lack of credit for women entrepreneurs by acting as collateral grantees and providing matching funds to give poor women better credit access. Women's World Banking advocates the establishment of a continental bank for women.
FAWE brings together female ministers in charge of education, university chancellors, permanent secretaries and other influential women to work towards increasing girls' access to education in Africa. It also presses for implementation at national level of the strategies for educators and policy-makers contained in the Ouagadougou Declaration and UNESCO's Priority African Programme, which call for a regional consensus on girls' education as a priority for development, outline a regional framework for action to improve girls' educational opportunities and seek to mobilize new resources and partners to support these goals.
Groups such as Emang Basadi in Botswana, the Forum for Women and Democracy in Uganda, the National Women's Lobby Group in Zambia and the Women's National Coalition in South Africa have all forced changes in political participation and the rights of women in their countries. The Women's National Coalition drew up a "Women's Charter" on gender equality, which has been enshrined in the new South African constitution. The Women's Caucus in Uganda developed gender dialogues as a lobbying tool and has worked with other groups to form an Equal Opportunity Commission and to push for implementation of affirmative action programmes. These groups have held consultations with other women's groups from around Africa to share experiences, both of the obstacles that women face in politics and of successful strategies that might be replicated.
Women also are organizing on the issue of peace. They are demanding resources and legal recognition to rebuild their lives, as well as participation in peace-building, conflict-resolution and early warning mechanisms, citing both their traditional peace-making roles and their right to equal involvement. "Women can be peacemakers in our community not by standing with a gun, but by teaching peace," says Ms. Rebecca Akwaci, an organizer of the Sudan Women's Voice for Peace. "We can be on the borders, encouraging peace, talking about reconciliation instead of revenge."
The Federation of African Women's Networks -- which groups women from Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mozambique, Angola, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, Congo, Mali and South Africa -- stresses the missing social dimension in mechanisms for conflict-resolution, which currently emphasize more technical aspects over consultation with the people and communal action.
It is such growing organizations of women that are making a push for systemic changes in women's lives. Governments, bilateral and multilateral agencies and other NGOs must cooperate with them for meaningful change to occur, in the lives of women themselves and in society as a whole.
VI. The way forward
It is critically important for policy-makers to listen to and work with women to improve their positions and thereby accelerate Africa's development. A comprehensive approach must be taken by governments -- in conjunction with development agencies and women themselves -- to remove the social, economic and legal constraints on women.
Regional actions on the model of those initiated by the Southern African Development Community are needed for implementing the African Common Position for the Advancement of Women and the Platform of Action adopted in Beijing. National action plans must be designed in broad consultation with women's groups to complement regional initiatives. These must be adequately funded and staffed, however. Commenting on SADC's new institutional framework for gender, Ms. Gertrude Mongella of Tanzania, who served as Secretary-General for the Fourth World's Women Conference in Beijing, expressed the hope that it will be allocated sufficient resources, because "all too often, similar institutions have been marginalized, under-resourced and used as a dumping ground for gender issues."
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Women's institutions in the community, market places and trades must be recognized and utilized to increase women's participation and decision-making in society.
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An important issue raised in the Beijing Platform for Action is equality of responsibility between men and women for gender equality to become a reality. In order for more women to reach the same high positions as men in various fields, more focused education and socialization are needed for better burden-sharing and a fairer division of labour between the sexes in the home and society. Not only should governments' macroeconomic policies incorporate gender perspectives in their design, they also need to take into account intra-household differences in resource use and control, recognizing that improvements in women's incomes promote equity as well as child welfare.
Most economic programmes in Africa tend to overlook the unpaid economy, where women predominate. They also assume that males and females respond to incentives in the same way, thereby ignoring gender and power relations within households and communities. But gender biases and rigidities may strongly affect women's access to productive resources and markets, ultimately frustrating economic reform policies. It therefore makes economic sense to take into account gender biases and tailor planned interventions to improve women's ability to take advantage of incentives, thus enhancing overall economic efficiency.
Access to resources
Governments and local authorities must demonstrate commitment to removing legal impediments and socio-cultural obstacles against women, especially in the rural areas where the majority of women live and are economically active. The constraints on women's access to land, credit, extension services, inputs and new technologies must be removed, and opportunities should be created for their enterprise. Measures to improve women's access through institutional reforms must be pursued and monitored for effectiveness.
Governments must build partnerships with the emerging associations of women bankers and entrepreneurs to create an enabling policy environment. This should include making credit available to women at affordable rates, with the private sector assisting government efforts to get credit to women.
Reducing labour time
Appropriate technologies for household chores, food processing, preservation and storage are needed, as are farm tools that are appropriate for women, including small transportation equipment that will free women from head loading. The increased provision of potable water and cheap and reliable energy sources are also needed to reduce the long hours that women work and to remove the drudgery from their lives.
Improving education and health
Gender biases in the educational system, training and employment must be consistently attacked to give women new opportunities for achievement, while school curricula must incorporate concepts of gender equality and peace at all levels, so that students will incorporate them throughout their lives. Young women need role models to motivate them and must be given a usable education and skills to play meaningful roles in society and to safeguard them from harmful practices which mortgage their health and lives.
It is clear that there are interconnections between women's precarious health status, their susceptibility to AIDS, inequitable gender relations, and women's poverty and powerlessness in society. Without a frontal assault on all of these issues, medical solutions alone can have little effect. As Dr. Eka Esu Williams of Nigeria puts it, "To enable women to protect themselves there are three issues at stake: improving their social and economic status; providing a method over which they have sufficient control; or getting more men to adopt safe sex. This is not an academic exercise in setting priorities, but a question of life and death for many women."
Women's leadership and organization
Finally, women's leadership skills in their communities, groups and associations need to be harnessed and formalized to give them political and decision-making power. Women's commitment to their households, to local and national food security, local production and the environment should be reflected in equitable representation on all bodies that make decisions in these areas, as well as in broader economic programmes that affect women's lives.
Implementation mechanisms must harness women's own energies, through their associations. Technical units in government departments and ministries should be established, along with data banks and resource centres at local, regional and national levels to support actions on behalf of women -- and they should be adequately funded and staffed. The viability of women's institutions and mechanisms for decision-making in the community, market places and trades must be recognized, and they should be utilized to increase women's participation and decision-making power in society. "If you want to develop Africa," affirms Ms. Soukeyna Ba of Senegal, "you must develop the leadership of African women."
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**Takyiwaa Manuh is a Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of African Studies, at the University of Ghana, Legon.
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source:un.org
Thursday, May 6, 2010
GCAP launches Coalition of Climate Communities during the People's World Summit on Climate Change in Bolivia
As 20,000 people from all parts of the world gathered in Bolivia to attend the People’s World Summit on Climate Change, GCAP launched a Coalition of Climate Communities in a side event during the summit.
“Communities who are living with the affects of Climate Change should not be seen as victims,” said Chrisitan Mamai, a representative of the community of Yakupacha in Cochabamba, Bolivia, “We are agents of change. Our traditional knowledge, our history of living in harmony with forests and nature means we have a significant contribution to make to combating climate change.”
The Coalition will work to mobilise communities around the issue of climate change at both local, national and international level, to lobby for their voices to be a key part of the debate around climate justice.
Recognising that in many cases women are more dependent on natural resources for their subsistence and as a result, have been more severely impacted by climate change, the GCAP event started with a presentation of the Women and Climate Change Tribunals organised by the Feminist Task Force (FTF) in November 2009. Ana Agostino, Co-Convenor of the FTF gave an overview of some of the testimonies and conclusions of the Tribunals which took place in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria and Brazil while Anita Nayar from DAWN made an overall presentation of the structural causes of climate change from a feminist perspective and Gabriela Segura Cárdenas, from GCAP Mexico, presented experiences of the tribunal in Mexico with special emphasis on the situation of women.
This was followed by a more general discussion around the Coalition of Climate Communities starting with presentations from a panel of GCAP representatives - Rocio Valdevellano (Peru), Patricio Larribe (Chile), Gabriela Segura Cardenas (Mexico) as well as two community leaders, Christian Mamani and Rita Bustamente, from the province of Cochabamba where the summit took place.
The panellists spoke of successful actions that had been taken by communities as agents for change in the debate around climate change. This included: a media campaign in Peru on “The Voices of Climate Change” which worked to raise awareness through the mainstream media on the reality of climate change in the country and the need to take urgent and concrete action to combat it ; a decision by the community of Yakyupacha in Bolivia to took legal action against the local government for the pollution of their land with the case leading to a declaration in favour of the community from the Bolivian Supreme Court and the forming of a youth network in Mexico to mobilise young people and work together and participate in local actions around climate change.
A draft strategy for the Coalition of Climate Communities was developed which focused on three key issues – 1) the systematisation of information that emerged from the GCAP Climate Justice Tribunals in 2009 to identify key and cross cutting issues to develop a global campaign, 2) the continuation of events such as the Tribunals or Hearings to develop a space for the communities to share information and develop action plans and 3) Media strategies to raise awareness of the role of Climate Communities. The document and video of the event will be available soon.
GCAP also participated in the broader events related to the climate summit including the 17 working groups which came together to draft recommendations to world leaders around key issues such as Adaptation, Mitigation, Climate Debt, Kyoto Protocol, the development of an International Climate Crimes Tribunal, Indigenous People and Climate change and Action Strategies towards COP16 in Mexico. The results will be presented to all 192 Governments participating in the UNFCC process.
The summit represented an unprecedented coming together of civil society representatives, scientists and a number of government delegates to discuss and reach consensus around key issus related to climate change. Over 20,000 people participated over the three days The Declaration was launched in an event in the city of Cochabamba with over 50,000 people gathering to listen to the results as well as the rousing speeches from Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela who called on leaders of the world to listen to the voices of civil society who had come together during the summit. “The only way to get climate negotiations back on track, not just for Bolivia or other countries, but for all of life, biodiversity, our Mother Earth, is to put civil society back into the process. The only thing that can save mankind from a climate tragedy is the exercise of global democracy," said President Evo Morales, “Here in Cochabamba there were no secret discussions behind closed doors as there were in Copenhagen. The debate and the proposals have been led by communities on the frontlines of climate change.”
“Communities who are living with the affects of Climate Change should not be seen as victims,” said Chrisitan Mamai, a representative of the community of Yakupacha in Cochabamba, Bolivia, “We are agents of change. Our traditional knowledge, our history of living in harmony with forests and nature means we have a significant contribution to make to combating climate change.”
The Coalition will work to mobilise communities around the issue of climate change at both local, national and international level, to lobby for their voices to be a key part of the debate around climate justice.
Recognising that in many cases women are more dependent on natural resources for their subsistence and as a result, have been more severely impacted by climate change, the GCAP event started with a presentation of the Women and Climate Change Tribunals organised by the Feminist Task Force (FTF) in November 2009. Ana Agostino, Co-Convenor of the FTF gave an overview of some of the testimonies and conclusions of the Tribunals which took place in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria and Brazil while Anita Nayar from DAWN made an overall presentation of the structural causes of climate change from a feminist perspective and Gabriela Segura Cárdenas, from GCAP Mexico, presented experiences of the tribunal in Mexico with special emphasis on the situation of women.
This was followed by a more general discussion around the Coalition of Climate Communities starting with presentations from a panel of GCAP representatives - Rocio Valdevellano (Peru), Patricio Larribe (Chile), Gabriela Segura Cardenas (Mexico) as well as two community leaders, Christian Mamani and Rita Bustamente, from the province of Cochabamba where the summit took place.
The panellists spoke of successful actions that had been taken by communities as agents for change in the debate around climate change. This included: a media campaign in Peru on “The Voices of Climate Change” which worked to raise awareness through the mainstream media on the reality of climate change in the country and the need to take urgent and concrete action to combat it ; a decision by the community of Yakyupacha in Bolivia to took legal action against the local government for the pollution of their land with the case leading to a declaration in favour of the community from the Bolivian Supreme Court and the forming of a youth network in Mexico to mobilise young people and work together and participate in local actions around climate change.
A draft strategy for the Coalition of Climate Communities was developed which focused on three key issues – 1) the systematisation of information that emerged from the GCAP Climate Justice Tribunals in 2009 to identify key and cross cutting issues to develop a global campaign, 2) the continuation of events such as the Tribunals or Hearings to develop a space for the communities to share information and develop action plans and 3) Media strategies to raise awareness of the role of Climate Communities. The document and video of the event will be available soon.
GCAP also participated in the broader events related to the climate summit including the 17 working groups which came together to draft recommendations to world leaders around key issues such as Adaptation, Mitigation, Climate Debt, Kyoto Protocol, the development of an International Climate Crimes Tribunal, Indigenous People and Climate change and Action Strategies towards COP16 in Mexico. The results will be presented to all 192 Governments participating in the UNFCC process.
The summit represented an unprecedented coming together of civil society representatives, scientists and a number of government delegates to discuss and reach consensus around key issus related to climate change. Over 20,000 people participated over the three days The Declaration was launched in an event in the city of Cochabamba with over 50,000 people gathering to listen to the results as well as the rousing speeches from Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela who called on leaders of the world to listen to the voices of civil society who had come together during the summit. “The only way to get climate negotiations back on track, not just for Bolivia or other countries, but for all of life, biodiversity, our Mother Earth, is to put civil society back into the process. The only thing that can save mankind from a climate tragedy is the exercise of global democracy," said President Evo Morales, “Here in Cochabamba there were no secret discussions behind closed doors as there were in Copenhagen. The debate and the proposals have been led by communities on the frontlines of climate change.”
Cops: Women stop attacker in campus stabbing
5 Maine students, including one trained in self defense, jump to aid of peer
Husson University junior Jesse Hladik, 21, right, speaks, as Heather Mann looks on Wednesday in Bangor, Maine. Faced with an assailant stabbing a woman, Hladik lunged for the hand holding the knife, while fellow students grabbed the man's other limbs and wrestled him to the ground.
BANGOR, Maine - Five female students, including one who'd recently completed a self-defense class, jumped to the aid of a fellow student, grabbing her knife-wielding attacker and holding him until police officers arrived at Husson University, officials said Wednesday.
Jesse Hladik put her new skills to work when she lunged for the hand holding a knife, while fellow students grabbed the man's other limbs and wrestled him to the ground. Hladik, 21, of Buckfield, said she knew the pressure points to make him drop the knife, thanks to the class.
"It was really scary, but I'm glad we got involved," said student Heather Mann, 18, of Rochester, N.H. "Because I really think he would have killed her."
Officers responding to the report of a domestic fight at 7:40 a.m. arrived to find 45-year-old Horst Wolk of Bangor subdued on the pavement. A campus officer cuffed him, and city police hauled him away.
John Michaud, professor of legal studies, heard the commotion and saw a pile of people on the pavement, while more women stood by, ready to jump in, if necessary.
"I was very impressed by the students," Michaud said. "How many times do you hear about people walking by incidents like this? These young ladies weren't going to walk by this incident." He said the young women disarmed the suspect and "had the situation well in hand."
Wolk has been charged with attempted murder, elevated aggravated assault, aggravated assault and violating a protection order, said Bangor Police Sgt. Paul Edwards. He remained jailed Wednesday afternoon on $25,000 bail. There was no indication whether he had an attorney.
The incident unfolded in a parking lot next to Husson's O'Donnell Commons. Wolk, who isn't a student, rammed the victim's vehicle after she pulled into a parking space at 7:40 a.m., then jumped out of his vehicle with a knife in his hand, said Julie Green, Husson spokeswoman.
The injured woman, who was not identified, was treated at a local hospital and released.
Edwards said officers generally don't want bystanders to put themselves in harm's way.
Husson University junior Jesse Hladik, 21, right, speaks, as Heather Mann looks on Wednesday in Bangor, Maine. Faced with an assailant stabbing a woman, Hladik lunged for the hand holding the knife, while fellow students grabbed the man's other limbs and wrestled him to the ground.
BANGOR, Maine - Five female students, including one who'd recently completed a self-defense class, jumped to the aid of a fellow student, grabbing her knife-wielding attacker and holding him until police officers arrived at Husson University, officials said Wednesday.
Jesse Hladik put her new skills to work when she lunged for the hand holding a knife, while fellow students grabbed the man's other limbs and wrestled him to the ground. Hladik, 21, of Buckfield, said she knew the pressure points to make him drop the knife, thanks to the class.
"It was really scary, but I'm glad we got involved," said student Heather Mann, 18, of Rochester, N.H. "Because I really think he would have killed her."
Officers responding to the report of a domestic fight at 7:40 a.m. arrived to find 45-year-old Horst Wolk of Bangor subdued on the pavement. A campus officer cuffed him, and city police hauled him away.
John Michaud, professor of legal studies, heard the commotion and saw a pile of people on the pavement, while more women stood by, ready to jump in, if necessary.
"I was very impressed by the students," Michaud said. "How many times do you hear about people walking by incidents like this? These young ladies weren't going to walk by this incident." He said the young women disarmed the suspect and "had the situation well in hand."
Wolk has been charged with attempted murder, elevated aggravated assault, aggravated assault and violating a protection order, said Bangor Police Sgt. Paul Edwards. He remained jailed Wednesday afternoon on $25,000 bail. There was no indication whether he had an attorney.
The incident unfolded in a parking lot next to Husson's O'Donnell Commons. Wolk, who isn't a student, rammed the victim's vehicle after she pulled into a parking space at 7:40 a.m., then jumped out of his vehicle with a knife in his hand, said Julie Green, Husson spokeswoman.
The injured woman, who was not identified, was treated at a local hospital and released.
Edwards said officers generally don't want bystanders to put themselves in harm's way.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
10-year-old's pregnancy fuels Mexican abortion debate
Mexico City, Mexico (CNN) -- A pregnant 10-year-old, allegedly raped by her stepfather, has become the latest lightning rod in the country's heated abortion debate.
The girl's stepfather has been arrested. But advocates on both sides of the issue say their battle is just beginning.
"This girl is much more than an isolated case," said Adriana Ortiz-Ortega, a researcher at Mexico's National Autonomous University who has written two books on abortion in Mexico, "and there is much more influence now from conservative groups that are trying to prevent the legalization of abortion."
Read more at CNN Mexico
Abortion is legal in Mexico's capital city, but prohibited or significantly restricted in most of the country's states. The girl's home state of Quintana Roo, on the Yucatan peninsula, allows abortion in cases of rape during the first 90 days of the pregnancy. But the 10-year-old girl is at 17½ weeks, nearly a month past that limit.
Advocacy groups are calling for federal officials and the United Nations to investigate Quintana Roo's handling of the matter, claiming officials did not inform her of her abortion rights.
"We don't know what is happening, and the institution that is supposed to provide support and care for these minors hasn't been transparent. We're really asking for accountability," said Maria Luisa Sanchez Fuentes, director of the Information Group on Reproductive Choice.
State Attorney General Francisco Alor Quezada said he did not know whether officials had told the girl she had the option of pursuing an abortion, and he did not know how far the girl was into her pregnancy when her mother reported the assault to authorities last month.
He said the girl is in the custody of state protective services, and officials are closely monitoring her physical and psychological care.
"I do not think there is another instance in which the girl could be in better hands," he said Monday.
Child protective services officials in Quintana Roo said in a statement last week that the girl and the fetus were in good health.
But Quintana Roo state legislator Maria Hadad said the girl's doctors aren't telling the whole story. She said continuing the pregnancy could cause severe mental and physical health problems for the girl.
"It's not just a high-risk pregnancy. It's a pregnancy that puts the girl at risk," Hadad told Mexican broadcaster Channel 10 in Chetumal, Mexico.
The Roman Catholic Church vocally opposes abortion in Mexico, and the topic has long been controversial there. The debate has been particularly heated since 2007, when the nation's more liberal capital city approved a law legalizing abortion during the first three months of pregnancy with no restrictions. That decision was challenged and ultimately upheld by the country's Supreme Court in 2008.
Since 2007, 17 states have passed laws "protecting life beginning at conception," according to the Information Group on Reproductive Choice. Legislators in Quintana Roo, which is also is home to the popular resort city of Cancun, approved such changes to its constitution last year
CNN's Nadia Sanders and Krupskaia Alis in Mexico City, and Catherine E. Shoichet and Rafael Romo in Atlanta contributed to this report.
source:cnn.com
The girl's stepfather has been arrested. But advocates on both sides of the issue say their battle is just beginning.
"This girl is much more than an isolated case," said Adriana Ortiz-Ortega, a researcher at Mexico's National Autonomous University who has written two books on abortion in Mexico, "and there is much more influence now from conservative groups that are trying to prevent the legalization of abortion."
Read more at CNN Mexico
Abortion is legal in Mexico's capital city, but prohibited or significantly restricted in most of the country's states. The girl's home state of Quintana Roo, on the Yucatan peninsula, allows abortion in cases of rape during the first 90 days of the pregnancy. But the 10-year-old girl is at 17½ weeks, nearly a month past that limit.
Advocacy groups are calling for federal officials and the United Nations to investigate Quintana Roo's handling of the matter, claiming officials did not inform her of her abortion rights.
"We don't know what is happening, and the institution that is supposed to provide support and care for these minors hasn't been transparent. We're really asking for accountability," said Maria Luisa Sanchez Fuentes, director of the Information Group on Reproductive Choice.
State Attorney General Francisco Alor Quezada said he did not know whether officials had told the girl she had the option of pursuing an abortion, and he did not know how far the girl was into her pregnancy when her mother reported the assault to authorities last month.
He said the girl is in the custody of state protective services, and officials are closely monitoring her physical and psychological care.
"I do not think there is another instance in which the girl could be in better hands," he said Monday.
Child protective services officials in Quintana Roo said in a statement last week that the girl and the fetus were in good health.
But Quintana Roo state legislator Maria Hadad said the girl's doctors aren't telling the whole story. She said continuing the pregnancy could cause severe mental and physical health problems for the girl.
"It's not just a high-risk pregnancy. It's a pregnancy that puts the girl at risk," Hadad told Mexican broadcaster Channel 10 in Chetumal, Mexico.
The Roman Catholic Church vocally opposes abortion in Mexico, and the topic has long been controversial there. The debate has been particularly heated since 2007, when the nation's more liberal capital city approved a law legalizing abortion during the first three months of pregnancy with no restrictions. That decision was challenged and ultimately upheld by the country's Supreme Court in 2008.
Since 2007, 17 states have passed laws "protecting life beginning at conception," according to the Information Group on Reproductive Choice. Legislators in Quintana Roo, which is also is home to the popular resort city of Cancun, approved such changes to its constitution last year
CNN's Nadia Sanders and Krupskaia Alis in Mexico City, and Catherine E. Shoichet and Rafael Romo in Atlanta contributed to this report.
source:cnn.com
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