Big men and little women: the politics of gender in Africa
More countries have understood that women’s equality is a prerequisite for development. (Kofi Annan, seventh secretary-general of the United Nations, 2001)
It would be presumptuous to assume that is it possible to generalize about gender in Africa, as the process of becoming, and the experience of being, male or female, man or woman, varies across the continent. Being an ‘African woman’ or an ‘African man’ cannot be reduced to a set of characteristics. However, it is possible to trace a political discourse of gender. It is very clear that women on the continent are statistically poorer and less educated; more often victims of sexual violence and HIV infection; and restricted in terms of ownership of land and other productive assets. This chapter focuses mainly on the position of women, but also on the broader theme of inequality. We acknowledge that in understanding gender, it is necessary to also consider issues of men and masculinity. They are the other side of the same coin, and it is often the structural manifestations of patriarchal societies which trap women in poverty and ignorance. However, neither should we pretend that gendered identities are necessarily pre-eminent or all-encompassing or the only line of cleavage in relation to structural inequalities. We might equally explore disability, for example. Gender also interacts with other aspects of identity – religion, nationality, ethnicity – and some aspects of these have been explored in other chapters. Further, both age and wealth also shape the gendered identity and experience. A girl born into a wealthy family in a capital city will have a very different life experience from one born to a poor family in a remote rural area. Young people of both genders may find their voices unheard in family and political arenas, since the views of elders hold greater value and respect, and it is disrespectful for the young to challenge them. Ideas of how to be a proper ‘man’ or a proper ‘woman’ in society will certainly shape the activities, actions and possibilities of individuals of both genders.
In this chapter we discuss a number of themes that frame the politics of gender relations in Africa. First, the history of gender as a construct and theme in the discourse of state and nation, and specifically the adoption of formal ‘rights’ for women as defined by international conventions and agreements. This includes comment on their adoption and application within Africa. Second, the chapter goes on to analyse the construction of women’s livelihoods, issues of access to education and political representation for women. In all sections we are keen to compare an often positive rhetorical commitment to gender equality with lived realities and structural inequality. This uncomfortably also sets the scene for the following chapter on the politics of health in Africa, in which gender inequalities, contextualized by poverty, lead to ‘ideal’ conditions for the HIV/AIDS pandemic to take root and spread.
In many African countries, it is clear that constitutionally, and in political rhetoric, the equal rights of men and women are well recognized. This chapter opens with an overview of international agreements on gender and approaches to women’s development by external agencies and women’s movements, which have all contributed to the shaping of African political discourse on gender, as have multiple and diverse ethnic conceptions of gender, and the more monolithic ‘modernizing’ influences of colonialism and missionary religion.
Women’s livelihoods in Africa are still largely tied to the reproductive space of the home, working the land or within the informal economy, yet their ownership of land and access to credit often restricts their ability to expand and develop. The benefits of educating women are proven both in terms of economic output and in controlling fertility. However, in many countries women’s access to education remains restricted, partial and of poor quality and relevance. Nevertheless, in many countries girls are now schooled in comparable proportions to their male counterparts. An increase in the political presence of women on the continent is also visible in some countries. However, this is still exceptional, and many women in political office also come from the more wealthy and influential families. Women and girls account for 60 per cent of the HIV-infected population in Africa, and they also bear the heavy burden of caring for the sick and orphans which the disease has created. Recent research suggests that HIV prevalence relates directly to national measures of gender equity.
Many of the arguments on the vulnerable position of African women are not new and are covered comprehensively in a broad literature and in the campaigns of active women’s movements across the continent. We do not wish to offer a picture of misery without hope for all the women of Africa, and we should also look more positively at the continent. Sub-Saharan Africa performs far better on many measures of gender empowerment than does South Asia or North Africa. While we do not deny that there are significant areas of structural inequality between men and women on the continent, these are not as institutionalized through religion and politics as in other parts of the world. Instead, in this chapter and the one that follows we argue that it is the vulnerability of productive livelihoods and lack of access to decent basic services, rather than the structural inequality of genders, which is most significant.
The international discourse of gender
Since 1945 the United Nations (UN) has, in general, addressed itself to people’s civil and legal rights and those of specific groups (United Nations 1996). The UN has also energized the global women’s movement by proclaiming the 1975 International Women’s Year and organizing the first conference on women, in Mexico, to assess the situation, highlighting strategies and goals for women’s advancement. The conference plan of action – ‘Equality, development and peace’ – reflected the broad interests of Northern, Southern and Eastern Bloc women. It also focused on women’s access to education, employment, political participation, healthcare services, housing, nutrition and family planning. The years between 1975 and 1985 were designated the Decade for Women. In 1981, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was adopted. The Convention was implemented in 1979 and by 2010 had been ratified by 185 countries (including 51 of the 53 African countries – the exceptions being Sudan and Somalia). CEDAW provides international standards for protecting and promoting women’s political, social, economic, legal and cultural rights. It established a woman’s right to vote, hold public office, be employed and establish contractual relations to reproduce by choice and to determine the nationality of her children. Progress in global gender equality is slow because, among all human rights instruments negotiated under the auspices of the UN, CEDAW has provoked the highest expressed reservations among governments (ibid.: 72).
CEDAW articles acknowledge that social and economic norms that deny women equal rights with men also render women more vulnerable to physical, sexual and mental abuse. Although CEDAW has been ratified by the majority of African countries, a number of countries, including Senegal and Tanzania, have been very slow to fully implement the legal changes required, owing often to cultural and religious misgivings (Ijeoma and Nkiru 2008). Systemic and structural barriers remain very real obstacles to the realization of women’s human rights, though reformed and effective legal systems are able to challenge such barriers in some individual cases. For example, Ijeoma and Nkiru (ibid.) cite a case in Tanzania upholding the right of a widow to inherit land in the face of customary inheritance through the male line.
UN proposals for the advancement of women were restated at the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights. The UN and governments were urged to ensure the full participation of women ‘as both agents and beneficiaries of development’, in addition to affording them ‘the full and equal enjoyment’ of human rights (United Nations 1996: 60). Women’s rights and gender equality in development have, since the UN Women’s Decade (1975–85), been emphasized by the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development, the 1992 Copenhagen World Summit for Social Development and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. The implementation of CEDAW principles requires regular reporting of sex-disaggregated data on many indicators. Progress is monitored using the UN Gender-related Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM).
The June 2000 UN General Assembly New York Conference on Women 2000: Gender, Equality, Development and Peace in the 21st Century assessed the progress and readopted areas of concern from the Nairobi and Beijing platforms: poverty, environment, conflict migration and empowerment. Highlighted as areas of focus were the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality and demands for greater access to HIV/AIDS treatment by women and girls.
UN General Assembly conferences have an atmosphere of pomp and circumstance that forces attending government officials and delegates to sign empty commitments. The damning proof is that after several official recommitments in 2000, the UN Commission on the Status of Women’s 2005 report on the progress of the Beijing platform revealed that there had been little progress in twelve critical areas, including poverty and economic empowerment, human rights, health and violence. These conclusions formed the background theme to the annual March 8th International Women’s Day, in 2005: ‘The role of women in wealth creation at the household level’.
Development agencies support educational reforms because of the influence they have on family size and health, as well as children’s learning. Children of literate mothers are more likely to attend school. Thus, while women’s contribution to agriculture is not in doubt, their exclusion from rights to property such as land, limited access to loan schemes and limited education mean they are generally unable to access knowledge of improved agricultural methods. Yet when female farmers do have access to microcredit schemes (which do not charge high interest rates) or have some education and access to agricultural inputs, not only do they raise yields, but the well-being of the family improves because they invest in better nutrition, education and health. Education fights poverty by empowering women in many other areas. Even in countries with universal primary education, there is a need for gender-aware affirmative action policies to improve enrolment, retention and quality of education for girls. Educating women helps to make societies and communities healthier, wealthier and humane (Gizelis 2009).
The African Union (AU) is committed to not only achieving but exceeding the targets set by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to a review of the African Union Commission (African Union 2005). The AU is further committed to the principle of gender equality and equity. It was formed on a 50/50 gender parity basis. One in every five national members of its parliament is a woman, including its first speaker. In 2004 the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights of Women in Africa was adopted by heads of states and seventeen countries signed it. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is expected to enhance women’s human rights through the social development indicators included in its African leaders’ Peer Review Mechanism.
Since 2000 the Millennium Development Goals have shaped UN discourse in relation to gender. Goals three and five, specifically, target gender equality:
Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
The substance of Goal 3 is premised in targets that seek to achieve not only equality of access to education, but also access to waged employment and political representation. The Millenium Development Goals Report (United Nations 2008) shows that some progress has been made in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), with 89 girls in primary school for every 100 boys (rising from 83 in 1990). In 2005, 80 girls were attending secondary school for every 100 boys in SSA (but this is a small decline from 82 in 2000). This figure also disguises the fact that access to secondary school is highly constrained for both genders across the continent. Lloyd and Hewett (2009) argue that the picture across Africa is very diverse, with many countries having already achieved gender parity in education enrolment at the primary level, but with others, such as Niger, lagging behind. They also argue that completion rather than enrolment is a better measure of impact, and Africa has the lowest levels of primary school completion in the world, with great underlying diversity. Eight per cent of girls and 19 per cent of boys in Niger complete primary school in comparison with 90 per cent of girls and 86 per cent of boys completing in South Africa. Significantly, in a number of countries (including Tanzania and Zambia), the completion rates for boys have fallen. In relation to employment, 31 per cent of women in SSA are in waged (non-agricultural) employment (as compared to 25 per cent in 1990). However, studies show that a significant majority of such jobs are insecure and low paid.
Political representation of women has increased from 7.2 per cent in 1990 to 17.3 per cent in 2008, with Rwanda leading the world (ahead of Sweden) with 48.8 per cent of political representatives being female. Such gains have been achieved largely by quota systems, and later in this chapter we will discuss the politics of representation. So, the picture in SSA in relation to these measures is generally positive. It is likely that the continent as a whole will soon reach gender parity in access to and completion of primary school, and a number of pioneers led the way in the formal political representation of women. Shifting persistent structural inequalities takes generations, but perhaps such changes offer the possibility of a different future in relation to gender.
However, the picture for health, and in particular maternal mortality, is less positive. Maternal mortality in SSA has declined from 920 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 900 in 2006, and the UN admits that progress on this goal is ‘negligible’. Access to skilled medical assistance remains low in SSA (47 per cent of births in 2005 from 42 per cent in 1990), while progress is also slow in reducing adolescent pregnancies (118 per 1,000 women in 2005, from 130 in 1990) and in decreasing an unmet need for contraception (24 per cent in 2005, from 26 per cent in 1990). Clearly 2015 targets are unlikely to be reached (United Nations 2008).
While international agreements do direct some attention to issues of gender, the lack of progress in achieving the MDG targets suggests some deeper structural problems. Chant (2007) argues that the MDGs are inherently weak on robust measures on gender equality and that they do little to reorient the neoliberal orthodoxy that values women as ‘instruments’ rather than ‘agents’ of development. It is, therefore, to the issue of women’s role in both the productive and the reproductive spheres that we now turn.
Development discourses and women’s livelihoods
It has long been asserted that women’s livelihoods are undervalued and unrecognized in African development discourse and policy, and that in many contexts modernization, economic development and increasing religious fundamentalism (all supported by foreign aid in various forms) have in fact extended and entrenched the subordination of women (Berber and White 1999; Nnaemeka and Ezeilo 2005).
Boserup’s (1970) research and assertive conclusions that modernization had marginalized women have inspired considerable scholarship that exposed male domination (Elson 1991) and the fallacy of gender-neutral development to a recognition of the differential role of Women in Development (WID) (Buvinic et al. 1978; Staudt 1985; Tinker 1990). Planners were criticized for ignoring and undermining women by privileging male views on women’s activities and thereby overlooking considerations of time budgeting, local knowledge and the acceptability of projects to proposed beneficiaries. Earlier intensive, large-scale and infrastructural interventions had unintentionally harmed and sidelined women. The emphases on human capital, basic needs and technological development overlooked women’s need for appropriate technology that they could afford and operate (Dauber and Cain 1981; Stamp 1989). They also failed to address the pressing development issues that are viewed as having most relevance to women – for example, women’s health, education and employment. WID demanded separate projects to enable women to develop their human capital and to meet their basic needs.
Boserup had reported that the African farmer was not the ‘he’ of the official development policies, but a woman doing most of the agricultural work. She and others have argued that the work of African women (who constitute 60–80 per cent of agricultural workers) had been undercounted and undervalued in official demographic and economic statistics. Women’s work was a valuable resource, but wastefully rendered ‘invisible’ (Bay and Hafkin 1976; Denton 2002) by the twin forces of capitalism and colonialism. In Chapter 3 we considered the nature of rural livelihoods in Africa, which remain predominantly reliant on small-scale agriculture, and discussed how the burden of labour in such systems tends to fall most heavily on women. Boserup (and many others) further argued that the introduction of cash crops increased work burdens on food producers. Women worked and men, in their role as de jure household heads, appropriated the cash. More recent research shows that economic development in terms of increased cash income to a household tends to translate into improvements in family welfare when women have access to and control over cash income. Gehab et al. (2008), in a study of childhood malnutrition in fishing communities on Lake Victoria, examines how women identify children as their first spending priority, but they are not mentioned at all as a concern by most men. This is also noted in recent work on social protection in Africa, which shows better outcomes for family well-being when cash transfers are directed to women rather than men (Barrientos and De Jong 2006).
When women migrate to cities to escape the restrictive rural economic opportunities and the restrictive conventions of family life, their lack of schooling often qualifies them only for low-paid jobs and self-employment in the informal economy. Urban dwellers depend on women in their various capacities as food growers, traders, processors, hawkers, servants, domestic labour and municipal public workers. This is supported by the 2008 MDG report (United Nations 2008), which suggests that, in SSA, 80 per cent of women who are employed work in low-paid and low-skilled positions. However, recent research suggests that it is more educated women and women who have more individual autonomy who are able to migrate in the first place, with the majority remaining embedded in the patterns, practice and vulnerability of rural life (Gubhaju and De Jong 2009).
As previously discussed, agreements on human rights and increased women’s rights under the law have not easily matched women’s ability to exercise them in order to take more control of their livelihoods. This has continued to deny many women the incentive of improving and applying skills and knowledge (Rogers 1981), and has led to measures to integrate women into all areas of development interventions by according them rights to inheritance, children and control over property. However, international actions since then have not necessarily strengthened the relative position of all women, but those with the resources and individual agency to act have been offered new opportunities.
WID proposed ‘another development with women’ using organizational collective action in order to achieve the economic and political empowerment of women (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era 1985).
In the 1970s and 1980s development agencies incorporated WID in human capital development policies to provide training opportunities through either adding women-related components to existing projects or creating women’s projects. Women’s projects created additional unpaid work for women and, ironically, jobs for men. Women continued to do their domestic productive and reproductive work in addition to income-generating activities such as horticulture, animal husbandry, craft-making and cooperative labour at grain mills. However, because women lacked education and technical and marketing know-how, it was men who became empowered with marketing and managerial skills as they became project middlemen and salaried employees. Research demonstrates how frequently men came to occupy key positions within women’s groups. This has implications for control over resources in relation to economic development, and also in terms of the representation of women where this is measured by the number of ‘women’s’ groups. Helen Hambly Odame (2002) notes this in her research in western Kenya, as do Boesten et al. (2011) in their study of community-based workers in Tanzania.
WID research and interventions in Africa have successfully served as an antidote to gender-neutral policies and assumptions that men’s and women’s needs and responses to opportunities are identical. However, WID efforts to provide women with opportunities to participate in male-defined, male-dominated social and economic structures produced minimal changes in the conditions and situations of women. The prevailing cultural norms that privileged men with preferential treatment at the expense of women were an obstacle to changes promoted by WID. Objections to ‘women’s development exceptionalism’ became common and are still manifested in constant reminders that women’s human rights should not be achieved at ‘the expense of antagonising men’ (Cleaver 2003; Nyerere 1984; Ugandan AIDS Commission 2000).
When women-only projects are successful, families are fed and clothed, children are schooled and husbands’ social and business ventures supported. In some cases husbands abandon all economic responsibilities to women, but whether women’s projects are successful or not, they can invoke male jealousy and a backlash blamed for increasing violence against women (Obbo 2003; Momsen 2001). A number of authors also point to a crisis of masculinity caused by increasing opportunities for women in modern economies, which, it is suggested, undermines their previous position as economic providers (Cleaver 2003; Chant 2007). It is also argued that this increases domestic and sexual violence as men seek to prove their masculinity in the sexual rather than the productive sphere (Epstein 2007).
As WID had became synonymous with ‘women only’, a more holistic and reconciliatory approach, Gender and Development (GAD), came into use. GAD advocated the study and understanding of masculinities as a starting point for involving men in the development process. However, critics argued that this would undermine the struggle to achieve gender equality (Cornwall and White 2000). Tackling the problem of women’s exclusion from development in Africa required an analysis of the process of exclusion. This is an area that we will return to in Chapter 6, with specific emphasis on HIV/AIDS and reproductive rights.
Gender and Development became a new paradigm, advocating a holistic assessment of the needs and strategies of both women and men when planning and evaluating the success of development. GAD development interventions call for a fundamental reassessment of gender relations and ideology (Marchand and Parpart 1995; Cleaver 2003). Advocates assert that economic improvement is impossible without political empowerment and suggest policy solutions to the intractable unintended results of development, such as the ‘feminization of poverty’ particularly associated with female-headed households (FHH).
Chant (2007) argues that the consensus view is that FHH are disproportionately concentrated among low-income groups and tend to suffer extremes of poverty compared to their male-headed counterparts. FHH are often thought to be the result of the predominance of men in rural–urban migration, male desertion, divorces and wars. Chant (ibid.) cautions that some FHH may exist through choice and are a result of the increasing agency of women. She also cites research that suggests that children brought up in such households may actually be better off in terms of nutrition, education and health. This can be seen as linked to control over assets (cash and non-cash), which women will tend to direct towards children (Gehab et al. 2008), as previously alluded to. Chant (2007) also argues that to some extent there has been a ‘feminization’ of labour through increased female wage employment, which exacerbates declining employment for men at the lower end of the societal hierarchy and increases women’s responsibilities and male resentment.
A GAD approach focuses on the ‘condition’ and ‘situation’ of women in the development process. The condition of women is defined by their legal and economic statuses, which determine their access to health, education, technology and credit. The position of women pertains to the power-driven social relations between men and women (Young et al. 1981; Rathgeber 1995: 206). Thus, informed policies on gender cannot ignore the multiple power relationships in households and between social groups. GAD advocates the creation of a change-enabling environment through gender empowerment and mainstreaming. Empowerment entails the accessing and exercising of power by marginalized peoples. However, it is right to caution that overly individualized notions and expressions of women’s rights may not be an appropriate and acceptable endpoint. Nzenza-Shand (2005) argues passionately for specifically African conceptions of women’s empowerment, which would draw on the collective foundations of many African societies and would, for instance, accommodate polygamous marriage.
The 1986 UN World Survey on the Role of Women in the global economy and the 1989 update both recorded limited progress during the Decade for Women, and in Africa noted the negative impact of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) on women. Under SAPs, women have borne increasing workloads and their unpaid labour has heavily subsidized cuts in social services and civil service retrenchment (Staudt 1985; World Bank 1989). Twenty years later, the 2009 version of the same report does not detail substantial progress for African women in this regard, arguing that the continuing neoliberal focus on cost recovery and privatization of basic services such as healthcare and water provision tend to disproportionately disadvantage women. Rightly, a new appetite for strengthening accessible and public provision of health and education in a number of African countries, such as Ghana, Tanzania and Malawi, is highlighted as a potential means of stemming this continual decline. The positive impacts of social protection mechanisms such as basic income grants and pensions in South Africa are clearly seen to have a beneficial impact on reducing household poverty, particularly for women and girls (United Nations 2009: 79). An increasing focus on social protection measures such as cash transfers combined with investment in basic services in primary education and healthcare has considerable potential to ease the dual burden of women as caregivers and producers.
Women, microfinance and entrepreneurship
One of the most popular and widely promulgated ‘solutions’ for the marginalized position of African women is microfinance and small enterprise. Among a plethora of donors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Dambisa Moyo (2009), while heavily critiquing government-to-government aid, also falls under the illusory spell of the promise of microfinance.
New stereotypes and simplifications are created in the process. The discourse that this has created tends to promote the constrained and latent agency of female entrepreneurship, which might be released by access to reliable sources of credit. NGOs and donor agencies often present case studies of the success stories – women who have started businesses and are now able to create better livelihoods and support their children to attend school.
However, microcredit is no silver bullet. The Grameen Bank model of group lending has not necessarily provided the assets required for sustainable businesses to thrive and to grow. Interest rates are excessively high and group lending creates social pressures that tend to exclude the poorest. Many such groups also do not inherently know how to run a business and receive little support (Rugimbana and Spring 2009).
Further claims are made for values-based business and livelihoods in transforming gender relations and livelihoods; for instance, Bassett (2010) argues that the production of Fairtrade Cotton in Mali and Burkina Faso brought in regulations that required female ownership of land. In reality, men used their wives to front businesses that they controlled.
Also, the organic agriculture championed in the previous chapter is claimed by the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) to be more favourable to woman owing to lower use of harmful chemicals. However, it is said by others to potentially increase women’s burden of work as methods are more labour intensive.
There are further barriers to women as entrepreneurs that impede the dream outlined above. Hampel-Milagrosa and Frickenstein (2008) argue that in southern Africa three times more women than men are working in the informal economy, as they face far greater barriers in formalizing and growing their businesses. Legal and customary restrictions on women entering financial agreements, especially with regard to land and property ownership, impede many women in attempting to enter into formal business arrangements. The colonial periods in many countries also marginalized women’s political power and reconfigured gender relations, compared with the pre-colonial period. Further policy reforms that promote private ownership often reinforce and extend such inequality. In particular, Hampel-Milagrosa and Frickenstein argue that World Bank efforts to promote business expansion through increased credit tied to individual private asset ownership result in women largely becoming trapped in an ineffective and low-level microcredit cycle, as they are not able to access sufficient private assets.
Therefore it is clear that while broad-brush generalizations are possible concerning the livelihoods of women in Africa, we should be cautious of considering these in isolation, as to simply consider the oppositional relationship of man and woman is mistaken. The extended family may here be key as it is the most influential factor in shaping the formation and progress of enterprise in Africa (Smith 2009). Such a conclusion throws up a far wider and more complex set of relational processes, relating to trust, representation, voice and social capital in wider society.
The power to be heard: representation and voice
The preceding section highlights how the contribution of women to the economy, both productively and reproductively, is undervalued in Africa (as it continues to be globally). It is evident that efforts to increase women’s economic development are often only marginally successful given the structural inequalities that exist between men and women, but also the positions those men and women occupy in wider society. It is key to the analysis of gender in Africa that, in terms of development outcomes, what matters alongside the overall poverty level of a household are the access and control that those members have over assets and resources. The same point can be made for any household within a society. In this section we examine processes of representation and voice in the political process in Africa, which are vital in understanding power and control over resources at both the micro level of the household and the macro level of the state.
In 1993, an internal World Bank evaluation of WID programmes (World Bank 1993) observed that most staff were convinced that if integrating women’s concerns into programme delivery makes projects more economically efficient, then ultimately they will be included without special effort or manipulation (Rathgeber 1995: 210). However, this rather rationalist and utilitarian argument overlooks the fact that, routinely, donor agencies as ‘brokers’ of development and modernization have served the priorities of male-dominated host governments. Therefore, agencies’ capacities to effect societal change in recipient countries are limited by the constraints of their governments’ policies and their dependence on the cooperation of local officials. The sexual division of labour and the social relations of gender, with all the in-built power and economic inequalities, are ‘reified as culture and placed out of the mandate of development’ (Marchand and Parpart 1995: 228; Goetz 1991; Stamp 1989). Sovereign rights are sacred and social transformation is not a development issue (Young et al. 1981; Marchand and Parpart 1995: 235). This reasoning finds resonance in the attitudes of local male leaders who are offended by the suggestions of women’s development (World Bank 1989), as is also demonstrated in the weak implementation of CEDAW in many African states. Development interventions that attempt to operate outside mainstream government positions are doomed to failure. GAD campaigns have sought to influence the agenda of institutions both in donor and recipient countries. In Africa, GAD advocates seized the historical ‘moment’ in the 1990s to push the agenda of ‘mainstreaming’ women after SAPs made politics and development openly intertwined. Donors were insisting upon political reform as a condition for receiving funding. Reforms included democratic elections and transparency and accountability in public actions. Donors promoted ‘civil society’ development to monitor the actions of states. A number of governments in SSA have also experimented with gender budgeting in relation to public services delivery, most notably South Africa.
In Africa, NGOs mushroomed to campaign for debt relief, women’s political participation, women’s property rights, human rights, and girls’ education. The conditions seemed right for the GAD agenda to become a reality, with women’s organizations pressuring for social and political change; the universities providing research support for policy planning in gender; parliamentary women working for legislative reform; and women lawyers defending the civil and human rights of women (Chant 2007). However, the proliferation of women’s groups, rather than strengthening efforts at forging strong national feminist movements, may have undermined them. Elite women spoke for, and not with, the ordinary women, and often reflected the concerns of their class and ethnicity rather than gender (Nnaemeka and Ezeilo 2005; Chant 2007; Orock 2007). The exception to this might be South Africa, where women’s role in the struggle meant that they played an important role in the African National Congress (ANC) (such as Winnie Mandela), and they were successful post-1994 in ensuring that the new South African constitution did not incorporate and formalize customary law (against opposition) that would have sanctioned the marginalization of women, although the realities of modern South Africa’s poverty, HIV and inequality make the lived reality very different for most women (Waylen 2006).
Official measures of gender empowerment such as the UN Gender Empowerment Measure use data on the representation of women in parliament, ratios of male and female salaries and the proportion of women in professional, managerial and technical employment to attempt to quantify the level of ‘agency’ that women have within particular states. However, we need to be cautious about their use in SSA as the exclude the vast majority of women who work in the informal sector and, again, potentially only highlight the empowerment of elite women (Chant 2007). Many African nations are not able to provide the required data for inclusion in the GEM (United Nations Development Programme 2009). Of those that do, South Africa is ranked at 26 (of 109), Uganda at 49 and Ethiopia at 85. Many of the Arab states and South Asian countries perform far more poorly than SSA on this measure.
Constitutional affirmative action, including allocating parliamentary seats to women, has been adopted in a number of African parliaments, including Burkina Faso, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa. An increasing number of women are also successfully competing for parliamentary seats, and Rwanda has a total of 48.8 per cent of women in parliament (both as quota members of parliament, but also freely elected), leading the world on this particular ranking (ibid.). This might be explained, to some degree, as a consequence of the 1994 genocide, which left 30 per cent of households with a female head, and their subsequent role in the post-conflict reconstruction, but also on the current Rwandan government’s view of women as the conduit of development. The outcome of this level of female representation (achieved largely through the reservation of seats for women) is yet to be fully analysed in terms of its wider impact on gender inequalities in Rwandan society (Matume 2004).
However, some accuse women parliamentarians of failing to articulate the interests of women and merely of looking pretty and doing nothing. Tamale (2000), writing about Uganda, and Geisler (2000), writing about South Africa, both argue that the incorporation of women into mainstream politics has in effect co-opted and constrained more radical women’s movements and that women in parliament rarely have the institutional support to shift structural inequalities. The press, colleagues and electorates also tend to reinforce the message to women that their place is at home bearing children and cooking for their husbands. This is recognized by Morna (2007), who argues that an increasing voice for women in the media is required to combat negative stereotypes of women. It is argued by some that in fact women who make it to the top are not emancipated and lack the support of other women. Further, that women need to organize themselves, independently of the state, to increase their own self-reliance, to assert their independent right to make choices and to control resources that they need to eliminate their subordination (Keller and Mbwewe 1991). This line of thought assumes that grass-roots-based women’s movements are needed to put more women in politics in order to achieve the critical mass that will make them an effective empowered voice and force for demanding governments’ commitment to development, empowerment, human rights and political participation (Orock 2007). Many view the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia in 2006 as confirmation of progress in this area, considering her to be an intellectual, bureaucratic and activist president. However, her biography is typical of the elite in Africa, irrespective of her gender (Johnson-Sirleaf 2009). While the percentage of female politicians is relatively easy to ascertain, a tiny proportion of the population will attain such a role, and in weak states government and state services may have little direct impact on the everyday lives of the population.
In relation to the micro level, many see an answer to problems of political representation in community-led or community-based planning and management of resources. Such systems are often seen as being potentially beneficial and empowering to women. In reality, the benefits of participation in development activity often do not reach the poorest or address structural inequalities. Marginalized groups (including women) tend to be structurally excluded (by barriers of time, health, money) or self-excluded (through fear of speaking in public, perceived lack of education) (Cleaver 2005).
In addition, the local ownership that is often quoted as a means by which communities gain the power to shape and to use services (World Bank 2002) can in practice lead to small groups of middle- to high-wealth individuals within communities increasing their own strategic and political agency through controlling resources. Furthermore, local management does not necessarily guarantee access by excluded groups. Their problems are accessing a service that is not necessarily recognized as valid by community decision-makers. This is supported by evidence from Tanzania (Sokile et al. 2003; Cleaver and Toner 2006).
There is growing evidence that current participatory mechanisms can often reaffirm existing social inequalities as participation requires the possession of a certain level of assets (be they social, human or financial), and the poorest may not possess the resources to enable them to participate at all (Mercer 2002), let alone sufficient political and strategic agency with which to challenge existing power structures. Differential opportunities for the participation of men and women have been a particular area of focus in this regard. Cornwall (2003) argues that efforts to promote participation can be shaped by ‘gendered’ interests, which often exclude women. As Cleaver (2005) also notes from her research in Tanzania and Zimbabwe, women may not feel able to speak out in public spaces and may not be represented in institutional arrangements. This has been widely recognized in efforts to create participatory spaces with women – in particular, being excluded by lack of political voice, cultural and religious ideas of proper behaviour and existing institutional structures (Cornwall 2003; Hickey and Mohan 2004; Wordofa 2004; Coles and Wallace 2005; Kabeer 2005).
Kabeer (2005) and Cornwall (2003) both note that efforts to create and increase the political or organizational participation of women at the local level have tended to favour the participation of ‘elite’ women who are no more likely to represent the interests of poor women just by the fact of their being female. Kabeer (2005: 17) analyses different quota systems for promoting women’s political participation and argues that such attempts to redress imbalances in women’s political participation are inadequate: ‘Women’s presence in the governance structures of society clearly carries the potential to change unjust practices, but if the women continue to be drawn from a narrow elite, if they have been invited rather than elected, and if they have no grassroots community to answer to, their presence will be only a token one.’
Capture of collective community processes by elite groups (whether founded on wealth, ethnicity or caste) is a significant criticism of efforts to promote collective community action as a means of driving local development. Elite groups position themselves to maintain control over authoritative and allocative resources entering the community (Mosse 2001; Platteau and Gaspart 2003; Platteau 2004). These dominant and influential actors are able to refashion external interventions in ways they deem appropriate. Cleaver (2005) argues that the chronically poorest are excluded from participation in collective life through the multiple dimensions of their poverty, such as ill health and lack of education. It is important to recognize that participation and the opportunity to exercise active agency in collective spaces will not be determined by a single factor, but will be the result of complex and interlocking individual and collective forces. Another group that are often unable to use their active agency in collective spaces are children and youth. Again, as with gender, local norms of appropriate behaviour for the young may result in them having little or no voice (Gosling and Cohen 2007).
The power of stereotypes
Ideals and stereotypes of male and female identity are important contributing factors to the nature and structure of gender relationships and therefore to expectations of behaviour of men and women, which can include how each gender can represent themselves in the public sphere, and also how they shape acceptable norms of behaviour in society. Dolan (2003) considers how norms of masculinity are exacerbated in conflict situations through a consideration of the use of rape in northern Uganda. Aid and development interventions may inadvertently reinforce these oppositions; for example, Denov (2006) discusses how post-conflict reconstruction can reinforce gender stereotypes, with women being seen not as combatants but simply as ‘camp followers’. Hence they have not benefited from cash payments made to their male counterparts, although they may have had very similar experiences. Gizelis (2009) and Jacobson (2006) both further argue that women should play a greater and more institutionalized role in post-conflict reconstruction as a means of broadening debates and offering alternative conversations in society, although they rightly do not assume that women are automatically and necessarily peacemakers.
This reaffirms the gender and development perspective that ideals of men and masculinity must be addressed. This is not only for the sake of women, but also for those men who also find themselves marginalized by such ideals. For example, homosexual men and women in Africa find themselves in highly vulnerable positions. Homosexual relations are illegal across the continent (except in South Africa, but considerable discrimination remains) and in some countries there are currently attempts to strengthen the law yet further. For example, Uganda is attempting to introduce the death penalty for homosexual acts that result in the transmission of HIV/AIDS. While there is often a deeply held indigenous intolerance of homosexuality, this has been reinforced by the religious institutions that find fertile soil in Africa (Bujra 2003).
Conclusion
This chapter does not pretend to offer an all-encompassing analysis of gender in Africa, but provides an overview of some of the central debates and policy discourse over recent decades. It has highlighted the fact that women remain significantly marginalized in Africa both in terms of the capacity to construct sustainable and productive livelihoods in their access to adequate education and healthcare, and, as the next chapter will show, in their vulnerability to sexual and domestic violence. Yet we have noted that across the continent government commitment to gender equality is strong and that women’s political representation in some countries outstrips that in the rest of the world. Significant progress has also been made on gender parity in access to primary school. However, as we have discussed, this has not yet led to a structural transformation for women as a whole, and perhaps this is because this is not about gender equality alone.
It is argued that the success of gender mainstreaming crucially depends on educating women and men to be committed to changing gender relations and the structures that maintain them. Women must get involved in the interpretation of cultural practices, since they play a big role in the socializing of children. It is argued that women whose consciousness has been raised in participatory debates on governance and development analysis processes will lose their current voicelessness and be ready to demand their human rights to education, health (including sexual and reproductive health) and political leadership. However, the same could be said of men who are trapped by poverty. They may have more power in the domain of the household or within their immediate community, but it is likely that they are only a little more empowered or emancipated than their wives. The conclusions are not straightforward. In purely developmental terms, a society clearly benefits from having a population of educated and healthy women. Men and women will always exist in relation to each other and so any structural transformation that is likely to occur would need to be rooted in a change in the expectations of society on the roles played by men and women, but also in the structure of the extended family and wider society. That said, it is also essential that we look beyond narrow arguments on gender to a broader recognition that the growing inequality in Africa is not only gendered, but more fundamentally material in origin.