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Towards economic empowerment of women in southern Africa
Saeanna Chingamuka, Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness (WIDSAA)
Extracted from Gender and Development Exchange Quarterly Newsletter Issue 39 (July-September 2006)
August 30, 2006

http://www.sardc.net/widsaa/gad/view.asp?vol=48&pubno=39

Are governments, the private sector and development non-governmental organisations in southern Africa doing enough to empower women economically and thus speed the process of alleviating poverty in the region

Heads of State and Government in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) made a commitment to facilitate women's economic empowe rment by signing the 1997 SADC Declaration on Gender and Development.

In particular, section H (iii) of the SADC Declaration on Gender and Development mandates leaders to promote women's full access to, and control over, productive resources such as land, livestock, markets, credit, modern technology, formal employment, and a good quality of life in order to reduce the level of poverty among women.

The SADC region also identified the need to eliminate "inequalities in access to economic structures, policies and all forms of productive resources and activities at all levels," among its regional critical areas of concern. Governments and states in the region are therefore obliged to ensure that their countries realise the commitments related to women's economic empowerment.

An audit undertaken in 2005 by the Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness (Widsaa) 5 programme on the extent to which provisions related to women's economic empowerment in the SADC Declaration on Gender and Development are being implemented, revealed that:

• Although most SADC member states have policies, legal instruments, non-discriminatory legislation based on sex, and programmes to promote access to and control over productive resources such as land, live stock, markets, credit, modern technology, formal employment, and a good quality of life, economic inequalities remain in existence with more women than men living in abject poverty.
  
• There are no laws in any SADC country that prohibit women from acquiring loans from banks or other financial institutions in their own name and right, but the pattern is similar in the region for many commercial lending institutions to insist on a male guarantor, usually a husband, if the woman has no sufficient collateral.
  
• Access to credit remains a serious challenge to women, and by and large, the majority of women remain vulnerable to exploitation, in their attempts to access credit. In order to start small businesses women usually rely on family and/or community solidarity.
  
• Women, especially those in rural areas, lack control over means of production and experience limited access to credit, capital and land.
  
• Women, more than men, rely on borrowing money from moneylenders who demand high interest.
  
• There are limited gove rnment programmes to strengthen activities of women's small and medium enterprises thro u g hout the region, although women entrepreneurs in most countries continue to rely on government, rather than the private sector for assistance in advancing their businesses.
  
• In all countries in the region women constitute the highest number of unemployed persons in the formal sector, while those employed are concentrated in low-paying, middlemanagement positions.
  
• Few countries have programmes to support women in the informal sector, yet this is one sector where women dominate.

To boost the efforts by governments, the private sector and development NGOs in the region in addressing commitments aimed at empowering women economically, the audit outlined various recommendations, including the need to:

• Establish practical mechanisms to help to detect, control and prevent discriminatory action between the sexes that may occur in a society;
  
• Establish more programmes that promote economic literacy targeted at women to increase their ability to understand and think critically about how trade and economic policies impact on their daily lives;
  
• Establish special and substantial funds for women's economic initiatives and promote strengthening of micro-enterprise and activities in the informal sector that should aim at facilitating the transition from informal to formal sector;
  
• Enact and enforce laws that guarantee that women form no less than 50 percent of the beneficiaries of land redistribution schemes and have access to, control over and ownership of land in their own right;
  
• Devise mechanisms to include women's unremunerated work in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP); and
  
• Develop tools for budgetary monitoring and provision of expertise on gender responsive budgeting to all stakeholders including policy makers, principal secretaries, heads of departments and planners for effective implementation.

Glossary

Economic empowerment
Economic empowerment means having access to finances, credit, productive assets, land, water, markets, and technologies. Empowerment can take place at a hierarchy of different levels "individual, household, community and societal" and is facilitated by providing encouraging factors such as exposure to new activities which can build capacities, and removing inhibiting factors such as lack of resources and skills.

hese programmes should target key ministries to facilitate the introduction of gender-sensitive budgeting as a way of engendering the national budget.

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