Economic Commission for Africa ECA

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Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)
Promoting Gender Equality andWomens Empowerment
in Africa
Introducing the General Debate
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1. Introduction

• Major Achievements
• Unresolved/ emerging issues
• Remaining Challenges
• Key questions 2

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2. Overview of Achievements
and Challenges

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a.   Globalisation

• Progress
• Improved information and communication
  technologies have increased opportunities for
  international trade
• Some African countries have benefited from
  increased trade and preferential treatment in
  trade
• Some African market women travel across
  continents to purchase competitively priced goods
  for sale.
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• Challenges
• In 2003, global unemployment reached a record
  high of over 185 million people.
• There are deep-seated and persistent imbalances
  in the current governance of the global economy
• The present form of Globalisation has failed of
  to tackle the problems of unemployment and
  widespread poverty
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• The globalisation process has further
  marginalized women by not taking gender concerns
  into account.
• There is no gender balance in the structures and
  processes that make decisions on the distribution
  of global capital and assets.
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b. Socio-economic Indicators

• Progress
• A number of African countries realised sustained
  economic growth rates of close to 7 per year in
  the last decade
• There were reduction in infant mortality in more
  than 20 countries in Africa 7

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• Challenges
• Levels of Poverty increasedfrom 42 in 1990 to
  47 in 2000 to 49 in 2002
• By 2002, 58 of population had no access to safe
  drinking water
• Increase in womens poverty has been systemic
• Strategies to reduce poverty have not been gender
  sensitive 8

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c. HIV/AIDS and Health

• Africa is home to 70 of adults and 80 of
  children living with HIV in the world.
• In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)the rates of infection
  among women are increasing more rapidly than
  among men
• In SSA 57 of people living with HIV and 75 of
  all the young people living with HIV are female
• In Southern Africa women and girls constitute 54
  of the deaths related to AIDS
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• Difficulties of health service delivery have been
  greatly exacerbated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic
• In 2002 over half a million women died of
  complications of pregnancy and childbirth
  worldwide
• 50 of them were in sub-Saharan Africa
• the risk of dying in childbirth in SSA is as high
  as 1 in 6 10

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 d. Conflict, peace and Security

• Progress
• a) Wangari Maathai, of Kenya was awarded the
  Nobel Price for Peace in 2004 for contributing to
  sustainable development, democracy and peace
• b) There have been many initiatives in conflict
  resolution and peace building in Africa in the
  last decade
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• c. Women have lobbied extensively for space in
  peace-building initiatives
• d. The creation of AWCPD in 1998 was embraced
  by many African womens groups and other
  stakeholders
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• Challenges
• Of the 28 current UN peacekeeping operations
  globally, 12 are in Africa
• Over 5 million Africans have lost their lives in
  wars and armed conflict in the last decade
• Decisions on going to war continue to be made by
  male leaders
• Peace missions continue to be male-dominated.
• Women are either absent or at the periphery of
  peace negotiations.
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e. Human Rights

• Progress
• The 1990s was a decade for human rights.
• Conferences put human rights on the agendas of
  governments, inter-governmental and civil society
  organisations
• The Vienna Conference of 1993 came out with a
  consensus that womens rights are human rights

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• AU has established the African Court on Human and
  People's Rights and adopted the Protocol on the
  Rights of Women in Africa.
• 51 of the 53 countries of Africa have ratified
  CEDAW.
• 31 countries have signed, but only four have
  ratified the Protocol on the Rights of Women in
  Africa

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Challenges

• There have been increases in extreme forms of
  human rights violations
• trafficking especially in women and children
• new and extreme forms of gender based violence
• rape continues to be used as a weapon of war
• increased religious fundamentalism and
  intolerance.

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• 2. Domestic violence, the most pervasive of all
  forms of gender violence, is on the increase.
• 3. Adverse economic conditions make economically
  vulnerable women continue to live in abusive
  relationships
• 4. Women continue to be vulnerable to harmful
  traditional practices such as FGM and cleansing
  rituals on widows
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f. Governance

• Progress
• Commitment to good governance became one of the
  hallmarks of the last decade
• the consolidation of democracy, increasing number
  of countries held peaceful democratic elections
• Creation of mechanisms for accountability such as
  the NEPAD African Peer Review Mechanism
• Increase in the proportion of women in
  representative decision-making bodies

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• commitment towards gender-balanced development at
  sub-regional levels
• Emphasis on gender-balanced development in the
  Constitutive Act of the AU enabling gender
  equality in the Unions policies and programmes
• Implementation of gender parity in the selection
  of AU Commissioners
• Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa
  by AU Heads of States in July 2004
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• Challenges
• 1. Some persistent signs of poor governance
• lack of accountability and mismanagement of
  public resources,
• corruption and lack of transparency,
• violation of human rights especially of
  disadvantaged groups,
• political intolerance and persecution of those
  with divergent views
• All these have negative effects on womens
  advancement
• 2. Women who constitute 52 of populations
  continue to be under-represented in most
  structures of power and decision-making
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ADF IV Governance for a Progressing Africa

• ECA is hosting the 4th African Development Forum
  (ADF IV) on the theme of "Governance for a
  Progressing Africa."
• Good governance essential in transforming
  Africas economies
• Gender equality is one of the main building
  blocks for democracy. 21

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3. Main Gender Issues in Africa

• Invisibility of Women in the Economy
• Difficult to explicitly identify gender
  disparities because of inadequate
  gender-disaggregated data
• Contribution of the household economy, which
  provides more than 70 of food in Africa not
  counted in national statistics
• Less than 10 African countries conduct systematic
  time-use or house-hold surveys

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In response ECA has developed

• The African Gender and Development Index (AGDI)
• The Gender-aware Macro-economic Model
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b. Questioning Commitments to Gender Equality

• There are clear gender imbalances in the
  allocation of national resources.
• Resources for national programmes for the
  advancement of women come mainly from external
  partners.
• Lack of effective action plans, accountability
  measures and monitoring mechanisms for the
  achievement of gender equality
• There has not been widespread sensitization on
  the content of the BPFA
• Well-meant gender declarations and policies have
  not been translated into actionable,
  well-resourced measures
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c. The Gender Agenda in Africa

• The gender agenda seen as a responsibility of
  womens ministries, gender focal points and
  womens NGOs
• Other stakeholders do not feel they have a
  responsibility to champion the gender agenda.
• Womens human rights issues are discredited as
  being un-African and against our culture.
• Womens rights activists are seen as being
  aligned to opposition 25

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• Women activists and NGOs are often divided along
  political lines
• Yet in political parties women do not hold
  powerful decision-making positions
• they are discriminated against in selection of
  candidates for high political office.
• Solidarity among women is low
• The womens movement tends to be issue-based
• Donor-dependency threatens its sustainability
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4. Major Challenges to Achievement of Gender
Equality

• Need for demonstrated political will to translate
  political commitments into actionable measures
  for achieving gender equality
• Need to adhere to democratic principles, thus
  recognizing the capacity of women and men to take
  part in decision-making at local, national and
  regional levels 27

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• c. Bringing civil society together women and
  men- to keep gender equality on the international
  agenda
• d. Keeping the womens movement alive and
  mentoring the youth into activism to change
  gender-biased attitudes and gender stereotypes
• e. Changing of attitude of women, men boys and
  girls so that they act on the principle of all
  people being born equal in dignity and rights
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Technical challenges

• a. How to effectively mainstream gender concerns
  into all policies, programmes and daily
  activities of all institutions, including all
  civil society organizations and the private
  sector
•  b  To ensure that all data for use in designing,
  planning, monitoring and evaluating gender
  sensitivity of programmes and for accountability
  is disaggregated by sex
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• c. Strengthening the capacity of monitoring
  institutions and mechanisms
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5. The Way Forward Key Questions

• a. Recognising that there is no democracy
  without gender equality, how can we ensure that
  democratisation takes into account gender
  equality principles?
• b. How can we ensure that gender analysis is
  consistently mainstreamed into poverty reduction
  strategies in our countries?   
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•    c. How can we ensure that womens
  participation and gender issues are
  systematically mainstreamed into processes and
  the agendas of all regional and international
  conferences and reports on issues such as trade,
  agriculture, energy, debt and technology?
• d. How can we make our cultures and
  traditions respond to demands of universal gender
  equality standards (dignity, equality, respect
  and participation)?
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