by Patience Zirima – SANF 08 No 10
The provision of financial resources to implement programmes and projects towards the empowerment of women will be the focus in commemorations of International Women’s Day in southern Africa this month.
The global theme “Investing in Women and Girls” is particularly relevant for southern Africa as gendered inequalities persist in economic empowerment, caused by the absence of economic opportunities for women, lack of access to economic resources and lack of access to education and support services.
Despite these challenges however, Laeticia Mukurasi, the African Development Bank (AfDB) Gender Specialist, highlighted in an interview for the 8 March International Women’s Day that “southern Africa is by far the best performer” in Africa on Goal Three of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to promote gender equality and empower women. North Africa and East Africa follow.
With a goal to encourage financing for gender equality, the Zimbabwe Gender Forum agreed to commemorate International Women’s Day on 14 March under the theme “Gender budgeting for women’s empowerment”.
Gender budgeting is among initiatives in southern Africa to address poverty and enable the effective participation of women in national economies.
Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zimbabwe are among countries in the region that have introduced programmes to engender national budgets.
Gender budgeting involves assessing the national budget from a gender perspective and seeks to mainstream gender into budgetary processes by examining the impact of national budgets.
Southern Africa will commemorate International Women’s Day at a time of national consultations on the Southern African Development Community (SADC)’s draft Protocol on Gender, a key document aimed at enhancing progress to achieve gender equality.
The draft Protocol addresses a wide range of issues that affect women in SADC, setting time-bound commitments to achieving key strategic objectives, including targets on productive resources and employment, which will mark the end of an era of commitments and introduce direct initiatives towards implementation.
The gender protocol is a progressive instrument that brings together in one legally binding regional instrument all the commitments to gender equality that countries in the region are party to.
These include provisions in the SADC Declaration on Gender and Development 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 life.
The draft Protocol is under review after the 2007 Summit of Heads of State and Government referred it back to SADC ministers responsible for gender to allow for further national consultations.
Consultations will be undertaken in the first half of 2008 so the protocol can be finalized and submitted to Summit in August.
The immediate activity to be taken by the SADC Gender Unit towards reaching a consensus on the draft protocol will be to finalize the roadmap for national activities, including specific activities that will be undertaken, what partnerships will be entered into, and which stakeholders to consult, as well as setting timeframes for all the activities to be agreed on to ensure sufficiently wide consultations.
Magdeline Mathiba-Madibela, the Head of the SADC Gender Unit, underscored the importance of reviewing the draft so as to reach a consensus before it is resubmitted to Summit in 2008. She stressed that it is important to have a draft with a “high level of clarity, consciousness, and focus.”
In a positive move to boost gender equality, more than 30 percent of candidates for the 2008 harmonised elections in Zimbabwe are women, and this may increase the number of women voted into Parliament.
Ensuring equal representation of women in decision-making positions is important to economic empowerment as women are best placed to articulate their own needs and concerns.
Over 150 female candidates filed nomination papers for the elections, marking an increase in female participation from the 2000 election where only 55 women stood in the polls.
