Women’s rights bodies must fight to overhaul gender bias

Women's rights activists protest before the final court hearing in the trial of evangelical pastor Juan Gregorio Rocha, for the murder of Vilma Trujillo Garcia, who was burnt on a bonfire after he accused her of being "possessed" by a demon, in Managua on April 25, 2017. PHOTO | INTI OCON | AFP

What you need to know:

  • Today, women in Africa are finding themselves struggling to re-define struggles and re-invigorate efforts to end them at a time when the world should have bridged the gaps and realised gender equality.
  • It is even embarrassing that we are still pushing governments, to provide sanitary towels to needy girls so that they do not have to skip school because of a purely biological process.
  • Statistics still display a blotch of progress on women’s rights and gender equality.

It will be extremely disheartening if 15 years from today, African women and girls will still find themselves agitating for equality and justice.

It will be an enormous generational betrayal and catastrophic global failure if 10 years from now, Africa’s women and girls are still pursuing basic rights.

Today, like three decades ago, women in Africa, in particular, and in the world, in general, are finding themselves struggling to re-define struggles and re-invigorate efforts to end them at a time when the world should have bridged the gaps and realised gender equality.

Increasing threats to women’s bodily integrity and autonomy, denial of access to productive resources, including land, the rise of religious fundamentalism, morality legislation, escalating military spending and democratic deficits as well as dwindling resources for women’s rights organisations, especially in the global South have all exacerbated gender inequalities.

ENDEMIC CONFLICTS

Twenty two years since the Beijing Platform for Action was adopted and 14 years after our own homegrown Women’s Rights Instrument - the Maputo Protocol, there are still serious challenges in making the rights contained in these instruments accessible to women and girls.

Where endemic conflicts had begun waning in the past few years, it seems that a few have suddenly become more potent and women and girls continue to bear the brunt with intensity.

The suffering women in the South Sudan conflict and Democratic Republic of Congo can attest to this.

Today, we are still agitating for an end to harmful practices such as female genital mutilation, forced marriages and widow cleansing rituals.

It is even embarrassing that we are still pushing governments, to provide sanitary towels to needy girls so that they do not have to skip school because of a purely biological process. It is an outrage that this still happens today!

GENDER EQUALITY

That post-colonial Africa has made considerable development cannot be disputed. Some countries have moved into the middle income category.

Statistics still display a blotch of progress on women’s rights and gender equality.

This despite the McKinsey Global Institute report attesting that $12 trillion could be added to global GDP by 2025 by advancing gender equality.

The Inter-Parliamentary Union states that only two women are presidents in Africa’s 54 countries.

There have been only seven female presidents in Africa’s “entire history”. With the exception of Rwanda, women’s representation in Parliament in all the African countries is below the AU’s threshold of 50 per cent.

RELIGIOUS CHALLENGES

They are still below the UN’s threshold of 30 per cent. With 28 per cent parliamentary representation, it is evident that despite the patriarchal, cultural, social and religious challenges that have barred women from these spaces, the push to overturn the tables exists.

Statistics from the International Labour Laws and UN-Women indicate that in developing countries, women work for about 50 minutes longer than men.

Some 74 per cent of women in Africa are in informal employment. African women are far more likely than men to be in vulnerable employment.

African women contribute 50 per cent of the agricultural workforce but own one per cent of land and have less control over land, inputs, seeds and credit.

In 25 sub-Saharan African countries, women spend 16 million hours a day collecting drinking water, men 6 million hours; and children, 4 million hours.

SMALL SCALE FARMING

In most of Africa’s rural areas, many women derive their livelihoods from small-scale farming.

This takes the form of informal and unpaid work. However, even in the formal sector, women still earn on average only 60 to 75 per cent of men’s wages.

The list of discrepancies is endless and extremely disturbing, especially when the world should be bridging the gaps of inequalities.

With the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDGs) setting the agenda for ending poverty, promoting equalities and improving the quality of life for the world’s 6 billion + people, Africa must not be left behind, especially in uplifting the status of women and girls.

As women’s rights organisations, we continue to amplify our voices through landmark processes such as adaptation and implementation of the Convention to end all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Platform for Action, the Cairo Conference and the Maputo Protocol.

MORE VIGILANT

Now, the SDGs 2030 and the African Agenda 2063 are also beckoning us to reinvigorate our efforts and push our governments to remain fully committed to their implementation.

Women’s rights organisations are, despite the many rising challenges we face today, called upon to remain even more vigilant than ever.

This is why this week in Nairobi from today to May 5, the African Women’s Development & Communications Network (FEMNET) will convene a Pan-African conference of over 150 women’s right organisations to deliberate on these issues and strategise on how to hold governments and other stakeholders accountable.

Where governments have become averse to prioritising issues of equality and rights for women and girls, we must steadily push them to redefine their priorities and focus on these rights.

CREDIBLE BUDGETS

Where governments have failed to allocate credible budgets to ensure that gender equality and women’s emancipation become a reality, we must interrogate their financial plans and ensure there is budgetary allocation.

Where decision making processes are devoid of women’s representation, we must tear through the status quo and force inclusivity.

This is largely what the Pan-African Women’s Conference with the theme, ‘Safeguarding our gains: African Women collective action on defining the pathway to achieve Sustainable Development’ is determined to achieve.

The rights and equality terrain for Africa’s women and girls must be positively transformed.

This is a vision that we must pursue with intense urgency if we want to see tangible change in the coming years.

Ms Musindarwezo is the Executive Director of the African Women’s Development & Communications Network, Femnet. [email protected]