by Barbara Lopi
Women in SADC member states will continue to be marginalised, if their plight is not made known and information on their status is not presented in a factual and consistent manner to concerned policy makers and donors.
Participants from 11 SADC countries attending a Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC) workshop in Harare, agreed to put in place a mechanism to address information
The participants noted that without such a mechanism, government policies will not give due importance to the empowerment and advancement of women. It is for this reason that SARDC initiated the Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness (WIDSAA) project, to make factual information on the plight of women available to policy makers and the public through the compilation of country profiles on the position of women in the sub region.
With the provision of information through the profile exercise it is hoped that awareness of the circumstances of women and their role in overall development of nations will bring positive change not only for women. But for society as a whole.
The SARDC- WIDSAA programme also provides a computerised database and a library consisting of a collection of materials on women’s issues from regional and international sources covering southern Africa. The library and database are accessible to the public and researchers who wish to do on-line literature searches and review materials.
The three-day workshop, attended by over 30 representatives of the WIDSAA national partners from 1.1 of the 12 SADC countries was held to review the outline, scope and structure of profiles and conceptualise a regional report. All national partner organisations were represented, except Swaziland.
The profile exercise is expected to provide information on the existing gender gaps and WID policies in respective member states in an analytical way to inspire action for socio-transformation toward gender equity and empowerment of women.
Monique Calon, the Sector Advisor for the Women in Development programme at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Lusaka, which funds the WIDSAA project, said the profiles will be used among other things, to identify gaps which donors can include in their programmes relating to gender issues.
The workshop agreed that the profiles should look at such indicators as the economy, power and politics, Social structures, education and media, environment, health, violence and conflicts, and how they relate to women and gender relations.
Since the exercise is being done following the Beijing conference, it was resolved that the 12 critical areas from the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA) which include ensuring gender equality and equity, should be incorporated into the profiles.
Lack of a strong “voice” to advocate for women’s’ emancipation at national and regional levels and poor networking on issues relating to gender and empowerment of women in the sub-region, were some of the issues noted as setbacks in efforts to promote women’s advancement and general development
Paul Kakhongwe from the Centre for Social Research (CSR) of the University of Malawi, for instance, said his country has very scant information on the plight of women and that networking of women’s organisations was very weak because “gender issues are still a new concept in Malawi”.
Henda Andrade from Development Workshop in Angola also said her country has very little information on women. The workshop heard that out of the 15 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Angola, none of them exclusively deals with women’s’ issues. The only women’s’ organisation in the country is a government department
Some participants, however, argued that even in circumstances where information was available, some governments and policy makers were reluctant to design-gender balanced policies because they did not understand the concept of gender equity and hence did not see the need.
“A lot, if not all of our governments are gender blind in their designing of development policies. They design development policies as though women do not exist it is, therefore, our duty to bring out the real situation of women in our countries,” said Professor Majorie Mbilinyi, the Coordinator of the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TONP).
Roy Clark, a consultant and member of the Zambia Association for Research and Development (ZARD), noted that for the country profiles to carry more weight to capture government’s immediate attention, issues of major concern in the’ respective countries should be given prominence, with proposals on possible solutions to the existing gender gaps.
Emphasis was made on the need for individual countries to present their profiles in a user friendly way to inspire the target group to read the information. The Head of Programme for WIDSAA, Bookie Kethusegile, also emphasised the need for partner NOOs to network with other organisations and government departments dealing with women’s’ issues.
“Networking is very important to enable general acceptability of the country profiles and the regional report it avoids duplication of work and encourages liaison and communication which fosters dialogue for positive policy change with all relevant parties,” Kethusegile said.
Once documented, the material would be available to governments, policy makers, NGOs, media and the donor community in the hope that these will, among other things, assist governments and other policy planners to ensure that promises made at Beijing and other UN conferences on the issues pertaining to gender equity and development are fulfilled.
After the country profiles are compiled and published, a regional report outlining the status of women in the SADC region will be produced. The regional report is intended to strengthen regional networking and serve as a powerful lobbying tool to governments, NOOs, the donor community and other parties that have an influence in policy planning.
To strengthen networking at the national level, the workshop resolved that seminars should be held in respective countries during which strategies on how to advocate for the general acceptability of the country profiles should be designed. (SARDC)
