gender and economic empowerment in africa: evidence and policy

Gender and Economic Empowermentin Africa: Evidence and PolicyNaomi Netsayi Wekwete*University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe

* Corresponding author: Naomi Netsayi Wekwete. E-mail: [email protected];[email protected]; [email protected]

Abstract

Gender inequality continues to be a major challenge in Africa. Although pro-gress has been made by ratification of international and regional conventionsand commitments by African countries, gender inequality is still prevalent inall sectors of the economy, including the labour market. The majority ofwomen are working in the informal sector or on small pieces of land andare engaged in care work, where the work is invisible and unpaid. Women’slabour force participation rates are lower than those for men. More menthan women work in the formal sector where the work is paid and supportedby all the national policies. Women contribute immensely to the country’seconomy. Despite their contribution, gender inequality still prevails.Women have limited access to credit, land, agricultural inputs, equipmentand extension services, and markets for their produce. They spend moretime in care and domestic work than men. Some of the inequities are embed-ded in the deep-rooted cultural norms and beliefs in the societies. Theseinequalities can only be addressed by removal of policies that reinforcegender inequalities as well as formulating and enforcing laws that seekto improve women’s economic empowerment. Initiatives identified toimprove women’s economic empowerment include revision of regulationsto increase women’s participation in the labour market, skills training,policy reforms on regulations that hinder women’s empowerment, settingup of micro-credit schemes, use of technology to access markets such asmobile phones to release women’s time in caring and domestic work, foster-ing of partnership by providing funding towomen, cash transfers and welfare

# The author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for theStudy of African Economies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected]

Journal of African Economies, Vol. 23, AERC Supplement 1, pp. i87–i127doi:10.1093/jae/ejt022

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fund, subsidised or publicly provided child care and skill training as well as im-proving infrastructure services such as water and electricity.

JEL classification: Z13

1. Introduction

Africa is characterised by gender inequality in many areas including econom-ic participation. According to the World Bank (2012a), gender equality andempowerment on the continent have been uneven. Women have been mar-ginalised in all sectors of the economy including the labour market, trainingand education. Women dominate the informal sector where they are morelikely to be own account workers, working on small pieces of land if it is agri-culture, and are over-represented in the care economy. Unfortunately, theirwork is usually unpaid and excluded from national accounts. In the agricul-ture sector, where the majority of the women work as unpaid labour, theirprogress in empowerment is hampered by bottlenecks related to land owner-ship, lack of access to agricultural inputs and extension services and lack ofcredit facilities in the businesses they run. Hence, women’s care work andactivities engaged in the informal and agricultural sectors are not officiallyrecognised, they are invisible. Few women are employed in the formalsector, yet earning an income can increase women’s autonomy and canenhance their economic and social status. For the women employed in theformal sector, most occupy low-status jobs. The wage gaps and discrimin-ation in the formal sector have limited women’s participation in this sector.

These inequalities can be addressed by women’s economic empowerment,which is the capacity of women and men to participate in, contribute to andbenefit from growth processes in ways which recognise the value of theircontributions, respect their dignity and make it possible to negotiate a fairerdistribution of the benefits of growth (Eyben et al., 2008). More so, women’seconomic empowerment is central to the achievement of gender equalityand the implementation of international commitments (OECD, 2012).Economic empowerment increases women’s access to economic resourcesand opportunities including jobs, financial services, property and other pro-ductive assets, skills development and market information (OECD, 2012).Therefore, there is a need for economic empowerment, especially amongwomen. It is widely accepted that gender equality and women’s empowermentare fundamental cornerstones for achieving development results.

The disempowerment of women is looked from three angles, i.e., at indi-vidual, public and global level. Africa is largely more complex due to the

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socio-cultural contexts which are anchored in beliefs, norms and practices thatresult in discrimination and feminised poverty (APF, 2007). The gender differ-entials aligned to these roles and responsibilities are patriarchal by nature anddetermine the power custodians in society. Some of these practices continue tothrive and widen the gender gap between men and women all over the world,and particularly in Africa. There is growing concern that the numbers ofwomen in Africa living in poverty have increased disproportionately to thatof men. Women’s poverty, due in part to their economic self-sufficiency, hasbeen recognised as one of the impediments in the empowerment of womenin Africa (Julia, 1999). States have also played their part in either reducing orreinforce gender inequity in various sectors of the economy.

Initiatives have been taken at global level to reduce the gender inequalitiesbetween men and women. These include the Convention on the Eliminationof all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) 1991, the GlobalPlatform for Action and the Beijing Declaration (1995). The Platform forAction and the Beijing Declaration declare the United Nation’s determin-ation to ‘intensify efforts to ensure equal enjoyment of all human rightsand fundamental freedoms for all women and girls who face multiple barriersto their empowerment and advancement because of such factors as their race,age, language, culture, religion or disability or because they are indigenouspeople’ (United Nations, 1985, para 32). The Millennium DevelopmentGoal 3 aims at achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. At re-gional level, the African Union protocol on the Rights of Women in Africawas adopted in 2005 to protect women’s economic and social rights. TheUnited Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) proposes toreduce gender disparities on the African continent. The 1994 InternationalConference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo alsocalled for women’s empowerment. Most of the African Countries have for-mulated policies and legislations in an effort to attain gender equality.

However, while these developments have been achieved in terms of legis-lation and legal reforms, it has been realised that the issue on gender equalityand empowerment has not been fully integrated into policy formulation.Gender gaps still exist between men and women in economic opportunities.Using the available data, the paper examines gender inequities between menand women in Africa, highlighting the determinants of the gender differen-tials. It also discusses the progress made in promoting women’s economicempowerment in Africa by giving evidence to that effect. The paper isdivided into four parts, the first part is the introduction, followed by the con-ceptualisation of gender and economic empowerment, where the differentapproaches to gender and economic empowerment are discussed. Third, it

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examines gender gaps in various areas that include employment, access toproperty, inputs and services and time use, highlighting the challenges ofpromoting women’s economic empowerment. The fourth part discussesthe policies, regulations and legal instruments that reinforce or enhancewomen’s empowerment. Evidence is given on the policy reforms adoptedin some of the countries that have helped to improve women’s economic em-powerment. Finally, it provides key recommendations for action by govern-ments and development partners that can help achieve women’s economicempowerment.

2. Theoretical/conceptual framework for a gender analysisof economic empowerment

The conceptual framework regarding gender and economic empowermenttends to be guided by several perspectives that include the Marxist, themodernisation-neoclassical, women in development (WID), gender anddevelopment (GAD) and empowerment, gender and development. Theapproaches have been observed in the ‘women and development’ discoursesince the 1950’s with the exception of the Marxist perspective which startedearlier in the 1940s. These will be discussed in detail under this section.

2.1 Marxist and modernisation-neoclassical perspectives

The debate on development started in the 1940’s as a top-down affair wheredevelopment was regarded as a technical problem that could be solved bytransferring knowledge from the north (developed world) to the south(less developed world) (Rai et al., 2007). However, this notion was under-mined by the failure of development projects to alleviate or underminepoverty. Some economists in the south blamed underdevelopment in theless developed world on capitalism. They argued that the North deliberatelykept the South underdeveloped in order for the region to supply them withraw materials and markets for their manufactured goods. In this case, powerwas seen as residing in the North, with no interest in sharing the bounty ofcapitalist development (Rai et al., 2007).

Most critiques have maintained this perspective towards development inthe North. They call for a new approach to development, ‘one that advocatescollaboration and partnership between the North and the South, as well asattention to local knowledge and accumulated wisdom in the periphery’(Friedmann, 1992; Crush, 1995).



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Several studies within the cross-national and development literature haveindicated that gender inequalities are likely to decline with industrialisationor economic growth (Weiss et al., 1976; Clark, 1991; Clark et al., 1991;Charles, 1992). According to the Modernisation-neoclassical perspective,as the economy experiences growth and expansion of markets, the inequal-ities that result from discriminatory practices are likely to be undermined.This approach acknowledges that a share of the existing gaps in wages or em-ployment, as a result of differentials in education, skills and expected labour-force participation, might be attributed to the persistence of discrimination.

This approach can be linked to sociological theoretical perspectivesemphasising the gradual erosion of social inequalities rooted in ascribedcharacteristics (Forsythe et al., 2000). The expansion of markets is accom-panied by greater reliance on achievement as a basis for allocating resourcesand organising the division of labour (Weber, 1978). Hence, this approachportrays gender inequalities as a remnant of traditional structures organisedaround ascribed status and thus processes of economic growth which resultin urbanisation can be expected to reduce the inequalities. Organisationssuch as the World Bank have taken this view, although they have acknowl-edged that ‘economic growth has proved a slow instrument of change inthe status of women’ (Forsythe et al., 2000). The authors further state thatpublic policies may have a significant role to play in breaking down institu-tional and cultural mechanisms of discrimination against women. Insummary, the modernisation-neoclassical approach has had a significantimpact on policy making. The public intervention to remove discriminatorybarriers is critical to any strategies in narrowing existing gaps between menand women.

2.2 The Boserup thesis and WID approach

The WID approach writers, beginning with Boserup, have demonstrated thatthe processes of economic modernisation in the Third World are marginalis-ing women, both economically and socially. Ester Boserup’s study on‘Women’s Role in Economic Development’ in 1970 and the inaugurationof the United Nations Decade for Women in 1975 were the key points inthe evolution of the WID approach (Bandarage, 1984). The traditionalmale approaches to economic modernisation and social welfare in theWest and Third World neglected the specific contributions and concerns ofwomen (ibid). Boserup, in her 1970 study, came up with an alternative inter-pretation of empowerment, arguing that Western-led development reducedthe status of and opportunities for women. Boserup’s approach showed that



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during the 1960s and 1970s, women were discriminated against at all levels ofthe development process.

Boserup (1970) argues that there is a curvilinear relationship between eco-nomic growth and the gender gap between men and women. According toBoserup, during the initial stages of development, modernisation enlargedthe gap as a result of the economic changes that disintegrated household rela-tionships. However, this gap is subsequently narrowed or closed once coun-tries develop beyond a certain threshold, especially owing to increased women’seducation, supporting the modern-neoclassical approach. According toBoserup’s interpretation, productivity differentials between men and women,prior to urbanisation and the growth of a market economy, lead to ‘the polar-isation and hierachazation of men’s and women’s work roles’. Most researches,women academics, various United Nations (UN) agencies, the World Bank andnon-governmental organisations (NGOs) draw attention to this component ofWID. However, Boserup cautions this approach by emphasising that economicgrowth is not the sole variable shaping women’s participation in labour force.

The WID approach did not reject the modernisation effort but argued forwomen to be made an explicit part of the development programme, whilepaying attention to cultural variations regarding women’s productive roles.This approach calls for greater attention in development policy and practice,and emphasises the need to integrate women into the development process.Boserup and her WID followers have produced a substantial body of infor-mation on women’s economic contributions and conditions in the ThirdWorld. It is from their studies that there is body of knowledge which confirmsthat women form the majority of the world’s food producers and that most ofthe women are found in the household and informal sector. As a result, muchof their work is not recognised in the national economic accounting systems.

The WID school describes women’s distinctive roles in Third World econ-omies and criticises established male perspectives, either for ignoring thesexual dimensions of social change in the third World or for simply assertingthat economic modernisation and westernisation will liberate women (Tiano,1982 in Bandarage, 1984). Feminists also argue that women’s traditional work(childcare and caring for the ill) and occupations (e.g., nursing, teaching) aresystematically undervalued with respect to that of men. Some feminists arguethat women’s rights and genderequality must take precedence overculture andtradition because culture is patriarchal (Bunch, 1993).

However, the weakness with the WID approach is that it focused primarilyon women, without considering their relationship to men and how develop-ment initiatives would affect both men and women in society. The failure ofthis approach to improve women’s position in the South as well as the North,



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led for calls by other feminists for new ways of thinking to improve women’sstatus. WID consists of three approaches: the equity approach; the anti-poverty approach; and the efficiency approach (Tasli, 2007).

2.3 Gender and development approach

The weakness with the WID approach is that it focused primarily on womenwithout considering their relationship to men and how development initia-tives would affect both men and women in society. The WID’s top-down ap-proach was aimed at improving women’s status on selected measuresdetermined by policy makers (Forsythe et al., 2000). This approach was chal-lenged by scholars and women’s organisations who argued that the culturalassumptions and practices defining women and men’s roles often impededwomen’s development (Sen and Grown, 1988; Young, 1993). The GADconcept emerged in the 1980s out of the criticisms of the WID approach.This approach looks at the issue in terms of ‘social relations of gender’.This approach shifts the focus from ‘women’ to ‘gender’ as it looks atwomen and men in their relative positions within the socio-economic, pol-itical and cultural structures (Hirshman, 1995; Tasli, 2007). It takes intoaccount all spheres of women’s lives and seeks to bring gender analysis intothe core of development policy (Manuh, 1998)’. It urges for a gender-sensitivetransformation of these structures through top-down interventions (Tasli,2007). According to Tasli (2007), the main instrument of the GAD is the‘gender-mainstreaming’, which demands giving a higher priority to women’sconcerns in the design and implementation of socio-economic and politicalinterventions.

People-centred socio-economic development emphasises the need tostrengthen and support the capacity and self-reliance of women. The oppor-tunity for advancement of economic power can facilitate and result in em-powerment and a sense of self-worth brought by economic self-sufficiencyand self-reliance, ‘under conditions that give people both the opportunityand incentive to mobilise and manage resources in the service of themselvesand their communities’ (Korten, 1987, p. 147). The GAD approach viewswomen as agents of change rather than as passive recipients of developmentefforts and puts a strong emphasis on women’s emancipation. Within theGAD approach, there are two views on the ongoing and increased vulnerabil-ity of women over the course of economic development (Forsythe et al.,2000). One group argues that inequalities between men and women areshaped by institutional arrangements, such as patriarchal family structuresand discriminatory labour practices as well as property laws that are relatively



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inflexible to the process of economic growth (Forsythe et al., 2000). Anothergroup argues that sex discrimination is itself more likely in nations that arecharacterised by high levels of inequality between households (Semyonov,1980). For example, some argue that the structure of households, familiesand kinship systems are of greater relevance than levels of economic develop-ment for understanding differences in rates of labour-force participationacross the developing world. Thus, the GAD approach urges for a gender-sensitive transformation of these structures through top-down interven-tions. The main instrument being the ‘gender-mainstreaming’ thatdemands giving a higher priority to women’s concerns in the design and im-plementation of socio-economic and political interventions (Tasli, 2007).

The term ‘gender gap’ refers to the difference between men and women inaccess to and control over resources. This is largely attributable to the fact thatoften women lack access to resources, have little or no decision-makingpower and have secondary status to men. According to this approach, sus-tainable development is impossible unless the women’s situation isimproved, thereby reducing the gender gap. The GAD approach thereforeemphasises the reduction of the gap between women and men in order toachieve gender-balanced development, by improving women’s situation.

2.4 Empowerment, gender and development

The empowerment approach, developed in the mid-1980’s, is a relatively newapproach in women and development discourse. It approaches the matterfrom the standpoint of the Third World women and urges a gender-sensitivetransformation of the structures inwhichwomen’s subordination is embedded(Tasli, 2007). In contrast to other approaches discussed earlier, ‘the origins ofthe empowerment approach are derived less from the research of the FirstWorld women and more from the emergent feminist writings and grassrootsorganisational experience of Third World women’ (Moser, 1993, p. 74).

Women’s economic empowerment was identified at the fourth UN confer-ence on women in 1995 as one of the strategies for advancing gender equality.Empowerment has been used to represent a wide range of concepts and todescribe a proliferation of outcomes (Siwal, 2009). Generally, empowermentis perceived as a process or as an outcome/goal and can take place at differentlevels (individual and community).World Bank defines empowerment as theexpansion of freedom of choice and actions and increasing one’s authorityand control over the resources and decisions that affects one’s life (WorldBank, 2001). Similarly, Kabeer (1999) sees women’s empowerment as pro-cesses through which women gain the ability to take ownership and



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control of their lives. Alsop and Heinson (2005) define empowerment as en-hancing an individual’s or group’s capacity to make choices and transformthose choices into desired actions and outcomes. The key elements in allthese definitions are expansion of choices and the ability to make strategiclife choices. The empowerment approach points to the existing structuresin societies as sources of women’s subordination, and puts a strong emphasison the necessity of challenging them in all areas and at all levels. Change has totake place in the structures and legal frameworks (family laws, propertyrights, etc.) in order to make the self-transformation process of empower-ment sustainable (Kabeer, 2001). UN Women considers that women’s eco-nomic empowerment is essential for any strategy of poverty alleviation anddefines this as ‘having access to and control over the means to make aliving on a sustainable and long term basis, and receiving the material bene-fits of this access and control’ (Carr, 2000; Mosedale, 2005). Thus, the term‘empowerment’ is commonly used to indicate both a process (of empoweringgroups or individuals) and an outcome (a person or group is empowered)(Rai et al., 2007). People are empowered or disempowered, relative toothers or relative to themselves at a previous time (Mosedale, 2005; Siwal,2009). Such a definition is a familiar term within the development agencies.

The empowerment approach argues that this transformation should startat grassroots level, in a ‘bottom-up’ manner in that women increase theirsocio-economic and political powers. Scholars such as Kabeer (1994) andBatliwala (1993) have emphasised on local, grassroots community basedmovements and initiatives as alternative approaches to development (Raiet al., 2007). Awareness raising, political mobilisation and networking aresome of the instruments of this approach (Tasli, 2007). The ‘DevelopmentAlternatives with Women for a New Era’, a network of activists, researchersand policymakers from the Third World, had an important contributionto the emergence and development of this approach.

Women’s economic empowerment is recognised as one means for reducingpoverty and economic growth. This is because empowerment is linked topoverty. Although the process of empowerment depends on women them-selves involving consciousness raising, participation, and organising them-selves, it can also be facilitated through education, capacity building,training and other measures. Cagatay (1998) argues that from a humanpoverty or capabilities (education and health) perspective, women arepoorer in many societies. Gender inequalities in access to and control over pro-ductive assets such as land, labour and credits, earned income as well as genderbiases in the labour market drive women into poverty. Women tend to be moretime poor because of the differentials in gender division of labour in the



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household and their increased responsibilities for domestic and productivework (Dejene, 2007). They are also poor due to the type of employmentthey are engaged in, with the majority engaged in informal employment.Women play a significant role in African economies and are highly representedin the micro and macro enterprises. The majority of them are engaged in thesmall income generating self-employment in agriculture and non-agriculturalactivities with low prospect of growth.

As mentioned earlier, empowerment is perceived as a process or as anoutcome and can take place at different levels, i.e., individual and commu-nity. At the individual level, empowerment is both a means and an end(Sen, 1995). It is a process of developing individual capabilities throughgaining education, skills, etc., in order to improve the life chances ofindividuals and empower them so they can have a better quality of life(Sen, 1995). The author argues that poverty is an indication of the inabilityof people to meet basic needs, which are both physical as well as tangible.Sen argues that women face social as well as physical problems and the ‘rem-edies sought have to take note of the nature of the constraints involved andthe extent to which they can be removed’ (Dreze and Sen, 1989 cited inDejene, 2007). His focus on capabilities provides a framework for thestudy of empowerment. Sen (1989) stresses the need to focus on the processesof development as well as the goals and outcomes. He acknowledges theimportance of participation and assumes that human development is bestcarried out at the local, specific sites where most people live their lives(Dejene, 2007).

‘The failure of the state-led development in the South has reinforced theassertions of neo-classical economists that states should be reduced both insize and function, and that development should be left to the wisdom ofthe market forces’ (Dejene, 2007). Also there has been growing doubtsabout state capacity and development goals and thus a call for collaborationwith states be hedged round with the demands for good governance, democ-racy and economic liberalisation, which are seen as requiring institutionalreform (Dejene, 2007). Dejene states further that development agencies haveadopted the language of participation and development and that eachproject has to prove its sensitivity to community concerns and its willingnessto collaborate and cooperate with the poor (Dejene, 2007). Thus, the terms‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘partnership’ should be considered whendealing with small-scale communities.

Economic empowerment is an approach which has been used extensivelywith women. The empowerment approach ‘goes beyond the short term goalsof increasing women’s access to income, by looking at longer term benefits in



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terms of changes to laws and policies that constrain women’s participation,and in terms of power relations at the household, community and marketlevels’ (Carr, 2000, p. 2). Given these different perspectives, this paperlooks at gender and empowerment, taking the empowerment approachthat incorporates the following issues: social structures, gender relations,partnership between states and development partners, as well as the trans-formation of the structures.

The differences in the meaning of empowerment stated earlier may lie inthe term ‘power’. To empower implies the ability to ‘exert power over’, tomake things happen (Rai et al., 2007). It has the message to transform orability to change the world, often for the better. In the 1970s, a morecomplex nuanced notion of power began to emerge (ibid). Some have chal-lenged the notion that power is determined by whether one has control overinstitutions and resources. Rather, power exists and is expressed in the every-day relationships of people, individually and institutions (Rai et al., 2007). Itis therefore an important insight for feminist analyses of power and em-powerment.

2.5 Agency and opportunity structures

While the analysis of powerand empowerment is an important insight for fem-inist analyses, it is equally important to focus on the relationship betweenstructures and agency. A person is considered to be empowered if one possessesthe capacity to make effective choices, that is, to translate their choices intodesired actions and outcomes (Alsop and Heinson, 2005). The capacity tomake an effective choice is influenced mainly by two factors, i.e., agency andopportunity structure. ‘Agency’ is the actor’s ability to make meaningfulchoices whereas ‘opportunity structure’ is defined as ‘the formal and informalcontexts within which actors operate’ (Alsop and Heinson, 2005). These twogive rise to different levels of empowerment. This allows the incorporationof notions of power that recognise the importance of individual understand-ing/consciousness (power within), which can lead to collective action (powerwith) in order to challenge gender hierarchies and improve women’s lives(power to) (Rai et al., 2007).

Asset endowments are used as indicators of agency. These can be psycho-logical, informational, organisational, material, social, financial or human(Alsop and Heinson, 2005). However, the same authors acknowledge thatunderstanding the complex interaction among assets may also present pro-blems. They argue that ‘endowments of a single asset, such as ownership ofland, can affect a person’s ability to make meaningful choices, and that an



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actor’s command over one asset can affect the endowment of another asset’Alsop and Heinson, 2005). The authors give an example of education (ahuman asset) which often gives a person greater access to information (anasset) and thereby improving the capacity to see alternative options (a psy-chological asset). According to the authors, all three assets will contributeto one’s capacity to make meaningful choices.

Opportunity structure is shaped by the presence of formal and informalinstitutions (Alsop and Heihnson, 2005). These institutions include laws,regulatory frameworks and norms governing people’s behaviour. The pres-ence and operation of the laws, regulations, norms and customs determinewhether one has access to assets and whether one can use the assets toachieve desired outcomes (ibid). This involves interaction among assets,just like the assets.

The agency and the opportunity structure are associated with the degree ofempowerment. Thus, analysis of agency and the opportunity structure helpsto explain why an actor is empowered to one degree or another. Simply, itmeans that agency and opportunity structure determine the level of em-powerment. Although there is dearth on data to show the relationshipbetween empowerment and development outcomes, there is evidence toshow the association between intermediary indicators of empowerment(agency and opportunity structure) and development outcomes (Alsopand Heihnson, 2005).

UNICEF states that, for economic empowerment, changes should benoted over time and these include the following:

(i) Changes in employment/unemployment rates of women and men;(ii) Changes in time use in selected activities, particularly greater sharing by

household members of unpaid housework and child-care;(iii) Salary/wage differentials between women and men;(iv) Changes in percentage of property owned and controlled by women

and men (land, houses, livestock), across socio-economic and ethnicgroups;

(v) Average household expenditure of female/male households on educa-tion/ health; ability to make small or large purchases independently;

(vi) Percentage of available credit, financial and technical support servicesgoing to women/men from government/non-government sources.

Thus, these changes, with the exception of the fourth bulletin, will be adoptedto show the gender gaps in these areas.



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2.6 Summary

In summary, each of the approaches reviewed in this section has a different setof expectations regarding the impact of economic growth on inequalitiesbetween men and women. The neo-classical and modernisation approachargues that economic growth is likely to promote greater equality betweenmen and women. The WID approach denotes that economic growth willonly promote gender equality after policy-makers’ intervention to correctthe gender imbalances that accompany the initial stages of development,such as promoting greater education among women, eliminating labourmarket distortions and altering property laws. In both the modernisationand WID approaches, however, reductions in equality between men andwomen are assumed to follow improvements in women’s status. In theGAD approach, growth has a more complicated effect on gender inequalitieswhere improvements in select measures of women’s status cannot be assumedto translate into reductions in inequalities between men and women. Suchinequalities might remain or become even more pronounced over theprocess of economic growth. The Gender and Empowerment Approachgoes beyond the short-term goals of increasing women’s access to income,by advocating for changes to laws, regulations and policies that constrainwomen’s economic participation and in terms of power relations at thehousehold, community and market.

Therefore, the analysis assists in identifying concepts/areas for discussionunder gender and economic empowerment. From the foregoing discussion,the issues identified under economic empowerment in this paper will includeagency and opportunity structures. Agency will cover access to property andresources, as well as differentials in economic participation. The norms willalso be discussed as determinants of gender inequality. These are the onescovered in this paper. The opportunity structures will include the policiesand regulations both at national and international levels, and domestic pol-icies that have formulated to attain gender.

3. Gender and economic empowerment: evidence

Gender inequities exist between women and men in economic participation.The gender gaps exist in economic participation, access to property, inputsand services, and time use. These differentials are due to the socio-culturalbeliefs, norms and practices. This section discusses these gender gaps, theirdeterminants and the progress that has been made in promoting women’seconomic empowerment, giving evidence.



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3.1 Gender and economic participation

Women play a significant role in African economies, yet they continue to bemarginalised from macro- and microeconomics and excluded from econom-ic policy. Women and men tend to work in very different parts of the ‘eco-nomic space’, with little change over time. Men still dominate the formalsector, which is the focus of all economic and development policies, whilewomen dominate the informal sector, a sector that plays a huge contributionto sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies (Hobson, 2011). Women dominatethe informal economy, which has been given different names because of theuniformity of the conditions and outcomes in this sector, ranging fromthe ‘underground economy’ by Tanzi (1982), ‘the parallel economy’ by DelBoca and Forte (1982) and ‘the second economy’ by Maliyamkon andBagachwa (1990). The informal sector employs 72% of the non-agriculturalemployment in SSA and 48% in North Africa (Dejene, 2007). One of thereasons of a high share in informal sector is the inability of the formalsector to absorb the growing labour force (ibid).

Men tend dominate the paid formal labour market and are generallylocated in high or semi-skilled, high paying and high status occupations.As a result, they have social security benefits and opportunities for training,retraining and promotion. While men focus on wage or salaried work awayfrom home, women are usually confined to ‘unpaid work’ in and aroundthe household, and for those in the formal sector; they tend to be engagedin lowly skilled and poorly remunerated jobs compared with their malecounterparts.

The informal economy is an important source of employment and incomefor women in Africa. More women are either own account workers or con-tributing family workers compared with their male counterparts. As aresult, women are likely to have no social benefits and less opportunity tocapacity build themselves. Table 1 gives a summary of the women and menin the economy. The contribution of women is therefore, either undervaluedor simply not counted at all. The argument always given is that it is difficult tomeasure activities of the informal economy.

In SSA, 84% of women are informally employed, as compared with 63% ofmen. The SSA region SA has the highest share of women employed in the in-formal sector compared with the rest of developing countries (60%) andNorth Africa (43%). Women are far more likely to be engaged in vulnerableemployment than men because of their dominance in the informal sector,where there are informal working arrangements and without adequatesocial protection (ILO, 2013). Vulnerable employment is defined as the



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sum of the percentages of unpaid family workers and own-account workersin total employment (United Nations, 2012). The employment in the infor-mal economy is considered vulnerable because workers lack adequate socialprotection and suffer from low incomes. In North Africa, more than half offemale workers (61.2%) are invulnerable employment compared with slight-ly more than one out of three men one (ILO, 2013). In SSA, in 2012, 85% ofwomen and 69% of men were engaged in vulnerable employment. Thegender gap in vulnerable employment in SSA has widened during the pasttwo decades. In 1991, 89.4% of women and 78.5% of men were in vulnerableemployment. However, the gender gap increased from 11% points to 14%points by 2012 (84.9% and 70.6%, respectively) (ILO, 2013). For bothsexes, the major shift has been within the vulnerable employment category,from contributing family workers to own-account workers, which reflectsthe increased share of employment in services (ILO, 2013).

The informal economy is highly heterogeneous but also highly stratified(Kabeer, 2012). There is hierarchy in the informal economy, with informalemployers ranking at the top, followed by employees, own account operatorsand casual wage workers with predominantly home-based pieceworkers atthe bottom (Chen, 2008). Men tend to dominate the upper levels of the hier-archy while women are predominant in the lower levels. Women tend toengage in low productivity activities. A large proportion of women areworking as unpaid labour in family farms and enterprises with no access toincome, or work in the informal wage sector (Kabeer, 2012).

The majority of the workers in SSA are employed in the agriculture sector,constituting 62%, declining from 67.5% in 1991. SSA has the highest

Table 1: Women and Men in the Economy

Women in the economy Men in the economy

Generally located in the lowly skilled,poorly remunerated and low-statusmenial-type occupations.

Generally located in high or semi-skilled,high-paying and high-status occupations.

Women dominate in the ‘care economy’/unpaid domestic work, and in low payingsectors, e.g., food production/agricultur-al activities, textiles and clothing.

Men tend to dominate in the waged em-ployment/paid formal labour market andcash/lucrative production activities such asmoney and banking, professions such asmedicine, law and engineering, inagro-industries such as horticulture.

Outcomes:No social security benefitsNot much opportunity for training

Outcomes:Social security benefitsOpportunities for training, re-skilling andpromotion



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proportion of its workers in the agriculture sector, followed by South Asiawith a share of 50.8%. In SSA, the share of women was 62.2% in 2012, declin-ing by a 9.5% point from 1991. Women in Africa predominantly work in theagricultural sector and are much involved in subsistence farming, where theywork on small pieces of land. Their role in agriculture and food security iscritical. It is estimated that .60% of employed women in SSA work in agri-culture (FAO, 2011). They are responsible for 70–80% of food production inAfrica (APF, 2007). In Kenya, .75% of women live in rural areas (ILO, 2004),where they dominate the agricultural sector and are engaged in floricultureand grow tea, coffee, vegetables, cereals, poultry, mangos and oranges.Women, as farmers, processors and traders, supply local, regional and inter-national markets with a wide range of goods (OECD, 2012).

According to FAO (2011), ‘the gender gap imposes real costs on society interms of lost agricultural output, food security and economic growth’. Theirwork in this sector is invisible largely due to the fact that they work on smallholdings which are considered subsistence in nature as the food production ismostly for household consumption. Women working in the agriculturesector face many challenges that include access to and control of land,access to agricultural inputs and extension services, as well as access to tech-nology inputs. There is evidence that constraints to land ownership and lackof access to inputs by women are key obstacles to increasing agriculture prod-uctivity and economic growth. The persistence of gender inequalities directlyresult in poorer agricultural and human development outcomes.

The share of women working in the micro and small entrepreneurship is�65% in Ethiopia, 45% in Kenya and 43% in Tanzania. In SouthernAfrica, women have a bigger share in micro and small enterprises accountingfor 73% in Lesotho, 84% in Swaziland, 62% in South Africa and 67% inZimbabwe (Dejene, 2007). According to a survey carried out in SouthernAfrica, women have bigger shares in micro and small entrepreneurshipbecause of the males migrating to South Africa in search of jobs (ibid).Women entrepreneurs are concentrated in jobs that are considered asfemale jobs. They engage in a wide range of activities which are related tothe traditional activities, regarded as female domains, such as food process-ing, dress making, textiles and clothing, and mainly trading in goods such ascrops, handicrafts, electronics, minerals and clothes across borders (UNWomen, 2011). As informal business owners, they make vital contributionshelping to reduce poverty by creating wealth and employment (ibid).According to UN Women (2011), women comprise up to 70% of peopleinvolved in informal cross-border trade, providing nearly $18 billion a yearfor the economies in Southern Africa. Despite all this contribution to the



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economy, for the most part, mainstream government economic policies andtrade agreements have neglected these women, so they operate with little orno support.

Some studies argue that informality impedes growth as businesses operat-ing outside the formal system find it difficult to access credit, therefore limit-ing the scale of their operations and exploitation of investment opportunities(Hobson, 2011). Others argue that economic activity undermines the abilityof governments to raise revenue and therefore denies the public sectorresources that would otherwise play a complementary role to private invest-ment through infrastructural development or improvement of the businessenvironment (Loayza, 1996).

Gender differentials in employment are also found in the formal sector.Available data on employment by economic activity show that generallywomen are more likely to be employed in the services and agriculturesectors compared with men who are more likely to be employed in the indus-try sector. In 2010, the proportion of women employed in the servicessector were 83% in South Africa and Namibia compared with males(59 and 53%, respectively), and 70% compared with 58% in Mauritius. InEthiopia, more men (76%) than women (64%) are employed in the servicessector. According to ILO (2011), employment of women in servicessector increased by 8.9% points, almost matching the decrease in formalemployment.

Figure 1 shows that more men than women are more likely to be employedin the industry sector. In South Africa, the share of men employed in industryis 35% compared with women with a share of 13%. In SSA, women are morelikely to be engaged in the agriculture sector, with the share of women in

Figure 1: Employment in the Industry Sector by Sex. Source: World Bank (2012b), WorldDevelopment Indicators.



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agriculture at 62.2% in 2012. In Morocco, 59% of women are employed inagriculture compared with 34 for men (Figure 2). More women than menwork as skilled agricultural and fishery workers in Egypt and Morocco(ILO, 2013). The share of women in agriculture has declined by a 9.5%point between the period 1991 and 2012. During the same period,women’s employment in the services increased by 8.9% points, almostmatching the decrease in employment in agriculture (ILO, 2013). Laboursegregation not only limits choices for women and constitutes an obstaclefor equality in opportunity, but also hampers efficiency in the allocation oflabour and consequently economic growth (ILO, 2013).

The types of occupations differ between women and men. Women in thelabour market continue to be concentrated in lower paying occupations, withworse prospects for advancement and with poorer working conditions(Kabeer, 2012). They tend to be concentrated in the export-oriented indus-tries, such as textiles and garments as well as food processing (APF, 2007). Inthe services sector, women’s participation is concentrated in jobs that areconsidered women’s work such as nursing, teaching and also technical jobssuch as secretarial services. Women are still underrepresented in manyoccupations in scientific and technological fields such as engineering andinformation technology.

A large gender gap in labour force participation still exists in Africa, widen-ing during the past two decades (ILO, 2013). In Africa, female labour forceparticipation rates are lower than for men. In 2012, female labour forceparticipation rate was higher in SSA (70.4%) compared with North Africa(24.4%) (ILO, 2013). Figure 3 presents the labour force participation ratesin 2010 among selected African countries. The highest female labour force

Figure 2: Employment in the Agricultural Sector by Sex. Source: World Bank (2012b), WorldDevelopment Indicators.



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participation rates are found in Tanzania (88%), Rwanda (86%) andMozambique (86%) (World Bank, 2012b) and the lowest are found inAlgeria (15%), Mauritania (28%) and Egypt (24%), all countries fromNorth Africa (World Bank, 2012b) (Figure 3). Generally, female labourforce rates are lower in most countries except for countries like Burundi,Rwanda and Mozambique.

ILO (2013) reported that the gender gap was widening. Despite the widen-ing gap, overall, women’s labour force participation is on the increase on thecontinent. For example, female labour force participation rates increasedbetween 2000 and 2010 in countries such as Zimbabwe (from 69 to 83%),Namibia (49–58%), and Nigeria (from 45 to 58%) (World Bank, 2012b).Only a few countries registered declines such as Lesotho (from 68 to 59%),Mozambique (88–86%), and Kenya (63–61%). There are also a few coun-tries that did not change, such as South Africa (44%), Mali (34%) andLiberia (58%).

A gender gap also exists in earnings in Africa, like the rest of the world, al-though at a greater magnitude. The gap in earnings persists across almost allemployment categories, including formal and informal employment, as wellas self-employment (ILO, 2007). A gender gap in earnings exists because of

Figure 3: Labour Force Participation Rates of Selected Countries in Africa. Source: WorldBank (2012b) World Development Indicators.



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the different spaces where women and men work. The gender gap in earningexists in the formal sector, despite advances in women’s and girls’ educationalattainments. Womenworking in the manufacturing sectorearn less than menbecause they occupy the lower levels of occupations or low paying occupa-tions. The ILO’s first Global Report on discrimination ‘Time for Equalityat Work’, described gender inequalities in pay as being among the most resili-ent feature of labour markets across the world (ILO, 2007). The wage gaps anddiscrimination against women in labour markets have resulted in fewerwomen participating in the formal sector (World Bank, 2012a). The WorldBank Report goes on to state that women’s responsibility in the unpaidcare work and housework is one of the factors that limits and shapes theiraccess to paid work (World Bank, 2012a). Razavi (2011) argues that‘labour markets are gendered institutions which are also operating on thebasis of formal rules and practices that value male and female labour differ-ently, regardless of the levels of educational attainment’.

3.2 Access to resources and services

The gender gaps in economic activity and the resulting gaps in income aredue to gender differences in access to property, resources and extension ser-vices, time use, and treatment by markets and formal institutions, includingthe legal and regulatory framework (Kabeer, 2012; United Nations, 2012).In agriculture and entrepreneurship, there are significant gender disparitiesin asset ownership and access to inputs, including land and credit. These dis-parities tend to be the root causes of gender productivity gap. Differences inaccess to inputs may also be compounded by differences in the ‘market time’,which can make the same investment less productive for women than for men(World Bank, 2012a). As a result, these constraints imply that women farmersand entrepreneurs are restricted to businesses and activities that are lessprofitable and less likely to expand (ibid). All these factors play a role in con-straining women’s opportunities and block the progress toward genderequality. These constraints will be discussed in detail under this section.

3.2.1 Access to land, inputs and extension services

Land is the key determinant of economic empowerment of both men andwomen as it is a crucial asset, not only to agricultural productivity, butalso important as collateral for securing loans. Very few women in Africaown the land. Less than 20% of landowners in Africa are women; 15% ofagricultural landholders in SSA are women while the percentage is even



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lower (,5%) in North Africa (FAO, 2011). In Kenya, women account foronly 5% of registered land holders nationally, whilst in Ghana the meanvalue of men’s landholdings is three times that of women’s holdings(World Bank, 2012a). In Malawi, only 4% of the women own the land theywork on (UNESCO, 2010). The disparity in land ownership is largely dueto the legal and cultural constraints in land inheritance, ownership anduse. In most cultures, women do are not allowed to own or even inheritland. The exclusion from asset ownership and inheritance may isolateindividuals, particularly women, and exacerbate their social and economicvulnerability (Carter and Barrett, 2006, Bird and Shinyekwa, 2005).Women have been identified as particularly vulnerable due to localisedsystems that do not recognise women’s ownership as well as inheritanceand property rights (Hacker, 2010; ICRW, 2005). This situation is exacer-bated by the fact that women are ill equipped in legal information andcoupled with weak implementation, are not able to exercise their rights.However, to address the land ownership gender gap and improve women’seconomic empowerment, there have been innovative initiatives on thecontinent to secure women’s property rights and land tenure, includingrights to inherit.

Women who own land are more likely to own small pieces of land thanthose owned by their male counterparts. For example, the average size ofwomen’s landholdings in Benin is 1 ha compared with 2 ha for men, whilstin Burkina Faso, male-controlled plots are on average eight times largerthan female-controlled plots (Manuh, 1998). In other African countries,the average area cultivated by women ranges from one-third to two-thirdsof the average area cultivated by men (ibid). Given the fact that land is themost important household asset to support production and provide food,nutrition and income security, land and property rights for women arefar less well established than those for men. Lack of security results inlower productivity as it reduces the incentives to invest in improving the land.

Besides the gender disparities in agricultural land ownership, women havelimited access to agricultural assets, inputs and extension services (FAO,2011). Evidence shows that more rural female-headed households havelimited access than male-headed households to a whole range of criticalproductive assets and services required for rural livelihoods, including fertil-iser, livestock, mechanical equipment, improved seed varieties, extensionservices and agricultural education (Word Bank, 2012a; FAO, 2011). Giventhe fact that most women do not own land means that they have limitedaccess to extension services. The 1988–89 FAO survey of extension organisa-tions covering 97 countries shows that only 5% of all extension resources were



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directed towards women and only 15% of the extension personnel werefemale (OECD, 2012).

Women’s access to technology again is a majorchallenge for the attainmentof women’s economic empowerment. Gender gaps exist for a wide range ofagricultural technologies, including machines and tools, improved plant var-ieties and animal breeds, fertilisers, pest control measures and managementtechniques (FAO, 2011). Often, technologies and tools have been adapted tomen’s tasks or to equipment used by men, whilst women struggle with culti-vation and harvesting using handheld tools (FAO, 2011). By men having moreaccess to agricultural equipment, they are more likely to have higher yields thanwomen. Hence, improving women’s access to innovations and technology towomen will enhance women’s productivity, economic decision-making andtheir entrepreneurial opportunities (FAO, 2011; OECD, 2012).

The OCED (2012) reiterates that ‘the enduring perception of farmers asmale, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is an important obstacle tothe improvement of agricultural production or productivity’. Evidence indi-cates that women could increase yields on their farms by 20–30% if they hadthe same access to agricultural inputs as men (DFID, 2010; UNDP, 2011;OECD, 2012). This is also supported by a study in four African countrieswhich showed that providing women farmers with the same quantity andquality of inputs that men typically receive, and improving their access toagricultural education, could increase national agricultural output andincomes by an estimated 10–20% (World Bank, 2005). Therefore, improvingwomen’s access to innovations and extension services would also increaseagricultural productivity (FAO, 2011). Thus, promoting gender equality isnot just good for women alone but also good for agricultural development.

3.2.2 Access to markets, credit and micro-finance

Access to markets is an important part of the ability to spread risks. Manywomen in Africa work as entrepreneurs and usually face obstacles in estab-lishing markets for their produce, as well as competition on access tomarkets from men. Barriers faced by women include some trade policiesand regulations, lack of economic infrastructure and limited access toexport markets. Women are not able to access markets through their linksto a wider network of markets since they are mostly involved in subsistencefarming and at a small scale. The World Bank Action Plan (2006) GenderEquality as Smart Economics argues that economic empowerment is aboutmaking market work for women and empowering women to compete inmarkets.



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Women in the informal sector, especially the non-agricultural informalsector, experience financial problems as they are not supported by the nation-al policies. The majority of women are mainly engaged in trading and home-based processing and manufacturing, where they have little access to officialsources of credit and information (FAO, 2011). In seven out of the nine coun-tries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, female-headed households wereless likely to use credit than male-headed households (FAO, 2011). Mostwomen do not have access to loans as they do not own immobile propertythey can declare as collateral, a condition that is needed to obtain a loan.Banks demand collateral in the form of ownership of property, such asland and houses, a necessity condition for security collateral. As entrepre-neurs they tend to operate on a small scale.

3.3 Time use

A gender exists in time use between men and women. Women tend to dom-inate the care economy and in work that is not recognised as productive. Theybear the responsibility for housework and care, while men are responsible formarket work. Women carry a heavy burden of care work because of their re-productive roles and household chores. Rural women, besides contributingto food security, spend more time in reproductive and household chorescompared with urban women and men. They carry a great burden of provid-ing water and fuel for their households (in the rural areas), processing food,looking after children and caring for the sick, the latter which has been exa-cerbated by the HIV and AIDS pandemic. In this era of HIV and AIDS,women have taken up the burden of looking after the terminally ill.Grandmothers have also carried the burden of looking after sick childrenand orphaned grandchildren. Unfortunately, the care work done bywomen is unpaid.

Caring and nurturing are considered women’s roles, alongside the domes-tic work. As a result, women work more hours than men, with consequencesfor their leisure time and well-being. They spend more time each day in careand housework than their male counterparts, differences ranging from one tothree hours more for housework, two to ten times the work for care of chil-dren and the sick, and to 4 h less for market activities (Kabeer, 2012). Forexample, in Guinea, rural women spend more than twice as much time fetch-ing wood and water per week than men. The situation is even worse inMalawi, where women spend over eight times more than their male counter-parts on the same tasks (UNDP, 2011) (see Table 2).



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The 2003 Poverty Assessment Survey Study Report reported that women inZimbabwe spent more time (4.1 h) on reproductive work than males (0.6 h),and were spending three times more time than males on household chores in-cluding washing clothes, cooking, sweeping and fetching water and firewood.Even if women take a bigger share of the market work, they still are responsiblefor the care and housework. What is of major concern is that most of the workwomen get involved in is not economically but socially valued. The heavyburden of care and housework is largely due to lack of and/or poor rural infra-structure and services, as well as culturally assigned roles that severely limitwomen’s participation in employment opportunities (UNDP, 2011).

4. Legal framework

Although women play an important role in contributing to the country’seconomy, their efforts are not maximised because of legal systems in whichthey operate. They dominate in sectors that are neglected by the governmentinstruments, which include fiscal policy, monetary policy, incomes policyand regulations and these are not gender sensitive. As indicated earlier, thelack of supportive policies hinder women’s economic empowerment.Achieving women’s economic empowerment is not a ‘quick fix’ but requiressound public policies, combined with a holistic approach to increasing accessto and control of resources, land ownership, employment and educational op-portunities (OECD, 2012). Policy interventions can help close the gender gap.

4.1 Global and regional conventions and declarations

Initiatives have been taken at global and regional level to promote and createan enabling environment for the attainment of gender equality and women’s

Table 2: Average Hours per Week Spent Fetching Water and Wood in Rural Areas ofSelected SSA countries

Country Women Men Girls Boys

Guinea (2002–03) 5.7 2.3 4.1 4.0Madagascar (2001) 4.7 4.1 5.1 4.7Malawi (2004) 9.1 1.1 4.3 1.4Sierra Leone (2003–04) 7.3 4.5 7.7 7.1

Source: UNDP (2011) (Edited by United Nations Development Programme, HumanDevelopment Report 2011, published 2011, reproduced with permission of PalgraveMacmillan.).



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empowerment. The CEDAW of 1991 represents a milestone on the road togender equality and empowerment of women. One of the provisions ofthis convention is for the countries to incorporate the principle of equalityof men and women in their legal system. Countries that have ratified theConvention are legally bound to put its provisions into practice.

At the 1994 African Women’s Preparatory Meeting in Dakar, Senegal forthe Fourth Women’s World Conference in Beijing, China, African womengathered to articulate their position in what eventually resulted in theAfrican Platform for Action, which identified priorities for combating theincreasing poverty of African women. The Dakar conference also noted theemergence of numerous women’s groups and NGOs in Africa and theincreasingly concrete expression of their organisational potential. This con-ference was followed by the UN 1995 Beijing Conference that saw the activeparticipation of NGOs and committed countries in international awarenessof women’s issues by both men and women (Fonjong, 2001). The BeijingConference came up with recommendations aimed at accelerating theadvancement, empowerment and integration of WID. Both conferencesstressed the economic empowerment of women as a central developmentgoal for the 21st century (Julia, 1999). The 1994 ICPD held in Cairo endedwith a call for women’s empowerment as well. The centrality of genderequality as one of the prerequisites for poverty reduction was further recog-nised as the world leaders agreed to a set of time-bound and measurable goalsand targets, now called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for amongothers achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment under Goal3. As a result, the UN General Assembly on the MDGs then identified thepromotion and protection of women’s rights as a priority action foraccelerating progress towards the MDG of gender equality and women’sempowerment (Cooper and Bird, 2012).

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness also gives the opportunity toaddress gender equality issues in country-led national development pro-cesses, taking advantage of the home-grown national gender policies andstrategies. The Ministers of developing and donor countries responsiblefor promoting development and heads of multilateral and bilateral institu-tions endorsed the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) in 2008 to accelerateand deepen the implementation of the Paris Declaration on AidEffectiveness. The AAA demonstrates the continued interest by developmentcommunity to addressing gender equality and women’s empowerment,among others. Most of the African governments have ratified these inter-national conventions and declarations in an effort to attain gender equalityand women’s empowerment.



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The UNECA in 1998 proposed to reduce gender disparities on the Africancontinent. It calls for (i) women’s equal access to employment and equal payfor jobs of equal value; (ii) the right to inherit property and the right to equalshare of matrimonial property at the time of divorce; (iii) ensure women’saccess and control of productive resources and guarantee their propertyrights; (iv) promote and support the occupations and economic activitiesof women, in particular, within informal sector; and (v) establish systemof protection and social insurance for women working in the informalsector and take necessary measures to recognise the economic value ofwomen’s work’ (Dejene, 2007).

Progress has been made in formulating domestic policies and revisionof legal reforms and institutional arrangements at both regional andcountry level to facilitate their gender equality in order to attain genderequality. The African Union protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, asupplementary protocol to the African Union Charter on Human andPeople’s Rights, was entered into force in 2005. By 2006, the protocol wasratified by Benin, Cape Verde, The Comoros, Djibouti, The Gambia,Lesotho, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia,Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Togo (Dejene, 2007). The proto-col protects women’s economic and social rights. African governments havealso ratified the CEDAW.

In an effort to try to address the gender inequality, most countries haveresponded by creating a ministry specifically for women to address thegender imbalance and enhance women’s empowerment. For example, theestablishment of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Cameroon resulted inefforts that encourage women’s movements and attempts to consider somedegree of gender balance in appointments and employment (Fonjong,2001). The Zimbabwean government created the Ministry of WomenAffairs and Community Development to oversee co-ordination of allgender programmes and to facilitate gender mainstreaming in all sectorsof the economy. Malawi set up the Ministry of Gender, Children andCommunity Development for the same reasons. Besides creatingMinistries of Women’s Affairs, many countries have developed nationalgender policies. For example, Zimbabwe developed its National GenderPolicy in 2002 which provides guidelines and the institutional frameworkto engender all sectoral policies, programmes, projects and activities atall levels of the society and economy. In addition, gender focal personshave been established in all ministries and parastatals to spearhead gendermainstreaming.



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Despite the significant progress made in the area of policy and legislationform and the ratification of conventions, gender inequality continues to be amajor challenge in Africa. The legal, socio-economic and political status ofwomen remains relatively low. Many of the countries can be labelled as‘highly unequal societies’ due to the low status of women in terms ofaccess, control and ownership of economic resources and positions in thedecision-making processes (Dejene, 2007). Many women do not exercisethe rights that laws specifically guarantee them, among other factors, dueto ignorance of the law, its administration, cumbersome procedures, custom-ary laws and fear of breaking valued relations with family kin. More so, theseefforts have not impacted on poor women, uneducated rural or the low-income urban women (ibid). Evidence suggests that progress in meetingthe MDGs by the targeted date is highly questionable, especially the goalsrelated to health, education and food security, which are critical towomen’s economic empowerment. Therefore, the chances of achievinggender equality and women’s empowerment in Africa become far reached.Without meaningful commitment in the form of policy changes and the pro-vision of resources to deal with the root cause, Africa will not achieve mean-ingful development.

Besides establishing ministries and policies to address women’s issues,governments need to address the gender-related constraints that hamperefforts to empower women economically. Governments have developed orworked on reforming policies to promote women’s economic empowerment.Successful reform often requires partnerships, usually the international de-velopment community with the academia and think tanks (Kabeer, 2012).International institutions should focus on complementing governments’efforts in improving access to economic opportunities for women. The fos-tering of partnership can be achieved by the international organisations pro-viding financial support to governments to fund efforts or initiatives toreduce the gender gaps. Local and international NGOs have moved beyondthe mere design of ‘top-down’ policies to ‘grassroots’ approaches inhelping women participate fully in national development and are fightinggender inequality and poverty, which are household curses in Africa.Governments have forged partnerships with NGOs and international insti-tutions, with the latter provide funding. Domestic policies should becentral to reducing gender inequalities. Reforming/formulating of domesticpolicies at country level, countries have formulated policies and legislationsthat seek to close the gender gap. These policies are related to women’s eco-nomic participation, especially in the labour force market; access to propertyand resource and releasing women’s time use.



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4.2 Addressing gender gaps in labour markets

Women’s labour force participation has been reported in the previous sectionto be low. Some of the African governments are working on strategies to in-crease women’s participation in the labour force by enforcing on laws that donot discriminate against women. It has been noted earlier that women’s par-ticipation in the labour market in hindered by the ‘gender-specific con-straints that are rooted in the inherently relations of family and kinship’(Kabeer, 2012, p. 39). Governments should put in place policies will offsetthese informal constraints. ‘New possibilities open up when states or govern-ments decide to take measures to offset, rather than reinforce, these con-straintsr’ (Kabeer, 2012, p. 39). An example given Kabeer is that ofEthiopia, where the Revised Family Code gives women the opportunity toadminister common marital property and to work outside the homewithout seeking permission from their spouse. It also ‘increases the age ofmarriage and gives a large role to courts rather than traditional arbiters insuch family matters as divorce’ (Kabeer, 2012, p. 39). This type of regulationwas found to be effective by increasing women’s share in paid work, in gettingjobs that are outside the home. This measure had greater impact on theyounger unmarried women as the delay in marriage gave them the opportun-ity to engage in paid employment.

The regulatory environment can also constrain or enable women’s eco-nomic agency in other ways (Kabeer, 2012). A regulatory environment canconstrain women’s participation in the labour market. An example given isthat of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where women need theirhusband’s consent to start a business. According to the World Bank/FAO/IFAD (2009), women run only 18% of small businesses in DRC. This isquite low when compared with Rwanda where no such regulations exist,and 41% of women running small businesses.

Some of the labour laws which are aimed at protecting women may resultin the opposite of what they wanted to achieve. For example, some countrieshave adopted the regulations of maternity leave to protect women in paid em-ployment so that they are paid whilst on maternity leave. Although this mightbe a noble initiative to protect women, some employers may be reluctant toemploy women of child bearing age. It is reported that employers in Ghanadiscriminate against women because of the requirements to pay all maternityleave benefits (Kabeer, 2012).

There are regulations that discriminate against women thereby reinforcingthe gender inequality in women’s employment in the formal sector. Theincome regulation can discriminate against women, where women are



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charged a different tax to that of men. For example, in Morocco, the tax allow-ance for children is allocated to men, which means that they are less taxed andthus face a lower tax burden. Women will only receive this allowance if theyprove that they are the ones financially supporting the husband and children.This will no doubt discourage women working in formal employment.

There are also regulations that are gender neutral which can also inhibitwomen’s empowerment. An example is that of Ghana, where women com-plained of the registration procedures, which was seen as a major hindranceto formalising their businesses (Kabeer, 2012). Another example is inEntebbe,Ugandawhere a pilot project to simplify business start-up procedures,resulted in a rapid increase in business registrations as well as increase in firsttime business owners, which had a greater impact on women than men (ibid).

Women face more severe legal, regulatory and administrative barriers tostarting and running businesses than do their male counterparts. In compli-ance with Beijing Platform of Action (1995), NGOs are playing a critical rolein trying to enhance women’s economic empowerment. To address the plightof women entrepreneurs and those working as traders, the UN Women andother international institutions are supporting regional economic commu-nities and individual countries based on priorities identified by women.Women in Liberia, through the support of UN Women, formed theAssociation of Women in Cross-Border Trade which organises traders andadvocates for their issues. A business programme was established to cultivatemarketing and other skills, while the central Bank provides loans so thatthousands of women can increase their access to credit (UN Women,2011). Also women have complained about the difficulties in filling thecustoms forms. In order to help women in the paperwork from Customs offi-cials, work with the Bureau of Customs produced a simplified chart ofcustoms rates for women traders, as well as a hotline for reporting problemsat border crossings. Two new warehouses provide an income for the associ-ation and essential storage facilities for tradable goods during the rainyseason.

Studies have noted that education has a positive impact on education, par-ticularly post education (Kabeer, 2012). However, ‘women have fewer train-ing opportunities than men and the training they do require a genderstereotyped distribution of skills’ (Kabeer, 2012, p. 43). Some governmentshave acted in adopting active labour market policies that cater for training,placement and other support to enable women to enter or re-enter the work-force (World Bank, 2012a). Evidence from countries in South America indi-cates that such labour market policies can improve women’s employmentand earnings in the formal sector.



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Information problems may arise in wage employment as a result of under-representation of women in certain sectors or occupations which can feeddiscriminatory beliefs among employers that women are suitable workersfor employment. Also, the gendered networks in job search can also reinforcewomen’s exclusion from certain jobs, positions, sectors or occupations(World Bank, 2012a). Therefore, it is important to adopt policies that mayassist in eliminating the information problems and networks. The WorldBank (2012a) proposes three main policies, which are active labour marketpolicies; affirmative action programmes; and group formation and mentor-ing interventions.

Programmes often fail because they are ‘top-down’ approaches instead ofthe opposite. Some countries have adopted the ‘down-top’ approaches intheir efforts to enhance women’s empowerment. In Zambia, the AgricultureSupport Programme of the Ministry of Agriculture referred to as the ‘house-hold approach’, has demonstrated that participatory approaches are moreeffective. The project which aims at improving livelihoods of small-scalefarmer households through improved food and nutrition security andincreased income through the sale of agricultural-related products and services(OECD, 2012). The new and participatory extension approaches have beendeveloped in Zambia in an effort to move away from a top-down model tomore farmer-driven services (OECD, 2012). The project has proved that agri-cultural production can only be improved by working with the whole house-hold instead of individuals. According to OECD (2012), the success of theprogramme lay in its ‘household approach’, the name coming from the em-phasis on household as opposed to individuals. By working at grass rootslevel, the programme resulted in changing gender relations at the householdlevel and strengthening women’s economic empowerment. Not only did theproject empower women by improving their farming and entrepreneurialskills, but also increased their control over household income, thereby improv-ing relationships between men and women. This also led to increase inwomen’s self-esteem and confidence and the women were now more involvedin decision making, both at home and in the community (OECD, 2012). Byinsisting that the husband and wife, as well as the children, participate in theProgramme’s activities, the households become more efficient.

4.3 Accessing assets and resources

The differentials in access to land and immobile property are embedded inthe deep-rooted cultural norms and beliefs in the societies. Female farmershave limited access to land and assets than their male counterparts, yet



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land is crucial as collateral when one wants to access loans. Women are notallowed to inherit land upon the death of parents or husbands. Studieshave noted that a supportive legal environment on women’s land rights hasa positive impact on improving women’s access to land. Policies need tofocus on the determinants of the differential access to land betweenwomen and men, for example, ‘levelling the playing field by strengtheningwomen’s ownership rights and improving the functioning of creditmarkets’ (World Bank, 2012a).

The link between inheritance and poverty dynamics, in particular theconcern about women’s exclusion from inheritance property, has generatedinterest as a policy issue. The 2005 UN Millennium Project Report arguedthat ‘ensuring female property and inheritance rights would help empowerwomen both economically and socially and would rectify a fundamentalinjustice’. Many countries in SSA are now focusing on inheritance as a prior-ity for legislative reform, particularly to protect women’s and children’ssocio-economic security (ibid). Some countries that have reformed inherit-ance laws in favour of gender equality and have reported a positive impact inimproving women’s ownership of land. For example, the DFID has sup-ported policy, legal and procedural preparations for land tenure reform inRwanda since 2002 to ‘ensure that Rwandan men and women have securetitle for their land’ (OECD, 2012). Malawi passed the Inheritance Law in1999 that provides women’s equal inheritance rights with men. Thisprocess seeks to ensure gender equality through secure title of their landand has helped in the implementation of the Inheritance Law. Evidenceshows that girls are now able to inherit land from their parents, which is abig milestone in the continent (OECD, 2012). In addition, OECD (2012)reports that land titles for couples now include the names of both husbandsand wives. This kind of support has managed to secure the woman as the mancannot sell the land without the consent of his wife. A few Governments havebeen reported to have put in place mandatory joint ownership on land tosecure married women’s rights. In two regions in Ethiopia, issuance ofjoint titles to both spouses resulted in increased titles land certificationfour times (80%) than in the region where the certificate of the householdhead (20%) (Kabeer, 2012).

Women’s ability to take advantage of the labour market opportunities maybe enhanced to a greater extent than that of men by expansion of public in-frastructure, particularly in rural areas (Kabeer, 2012). Use of informationtechnology, such as mobile phones, has been found to be effective in accessingmarkets, although it is still in its pilot phase. In a presentation to the jointworkshop of the OECD Network on Gender and the UN Interagency



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Network on Women and Gender Equality in Vienna 2010, it was reportedthat the Trade at Hand, a partnership between the Governments ofLiberia and Finland and the International Trade Centre (ITC), wasworking on a programme aimed at expanding trade options for Liberianmarket women by use of cell-phones. This is an integrated approach totrade development, poverty reduction and women’s economic empower-ment in a post war Liberia. Market women sellers have access to themarket by posting their offers of sale for buyers to view the offer of sale ontheir cell phones. This project links thousands of market women tofarmers in rural areas, and potentially to export markets outside Liberia(OECD, 2012). The Trade at Hand is cost effective as its costs are low, asfor just 2–3 cents, one can be able to view and post offers. The use of technol-ogy to access markets is quite innovative and less costly. With the use of cellphones, women farmers have managed to increase their markets in ruralareas as well as export their produce and at a competitive price. In Kenya,mobile banking programmes, such as M-PESA, are allowing women toprocess small financial and banking transactions more effectively and pro-moting savings, which is more beneficial to small women entrepreneurs(World Bank, 2012a).

In this era of information, communication and technology (ICT),innovative solutions could be worked out to solve some of problems facedby women such as access to markets as in is this case. There is need to identifygood practices in farming which can be replicated elsewhere in the continent.Many people now do own mobile phones across the continent. Suchprogrammes that use simple technology can also be replicated elsewhereacross the continent as no major costs are involved. There is need for public-private partnership to support women’s empowerment by assisting womenin sending information on related their activities via the cell phonesthrough messages.

Women face problems of access to credit and finance because of lack ofcollateral. Lack of access to credit can be overcome through financial innov-ation by setting up micro-credit schemes that address the needs of smallbusinesses. Examples of such a scheme include the Access Bank in Nigeria,DFCU in Uganda, and Sero Lease and Finance in Tanzania (World Bank,2012a). The scheme involves large commercial bank partnering with theInternational Finance Corporation to develop new instruments to supportand extend credit services to female-owned businesses and female entrepre-neurs (World Bank, 2012a). This has seen increase in shares of female clientsusing financial services and borrowing larger loans with better repaymentterms.



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A similar scheme is being run in Ethiopia. Women entrepreneurs inEthiopia re-identified lack of access to finance as their main impedimentto growth of their businesses. In response, the USAID/Ethiopia availed atotal of US$4.28 million to enable women entrepreneurs to grow their busi-nesses beyond the bounds of microfinance (OECD, 2012). The beneficiariesof the commercial bank guarantee are small and medium enterprises (SMEs)that are owned and managed by women. As mentioned earlier, women faceproblems of access to credit and finance because of lack of collateral. Thiscredit scheme will no doubt improve women’s access to credit, thereby eco-nomically empowering them.

In Kenya, the USAID obligated US$12.9 million as guarantee to stimulatelending in the SME sectors by providing additional collateral risk mitigationto encourage expansion and the extension of financial services to under-served clientele (OECD, 2012). Areas that are covered under thisscheme include agriculture production and processing, tourism and manu-facturing. This again is for SMEs owned and managed by women. The com-mercial bank involved is the Kenya Commercial Bank Group which hadextended a total of 479 loans to female owned businesses, amounting to atotal of US3.686 million (OECD, 2012). With such initiatives, women entre-preneurs would be able to engage in their businesses with fewer barriers.Advocates have argued that women’s access to credit strengthens their bar-gaining power within the household, improves their perception of self-worthand can lead to a long-term decrease in domestic violence. On the other hand,critics have claimed that women’s loans are often controlled and invested bymale relatives, while women borrowers bear the liability for repayment(Goetz and Gupta, 1996).

It has been noted earlier that women have fewer training opportunities.Skills training can enhance women’s economic empowerment. TheZimbabwe Women Finance Trust (ZWFT), which was established in 1985in Harare, Zimbabwe as a micro-credit programme, provides financial assist-ance and incentives in the form of loans to women entrepreneurs who aredenied access to credit by the formal banking sector (Julia, 1999). TheFund encourages the development of informal sector micro-enterprises forimproving economic opportunity and activity among women. Women arenot just given the funds but are also trained on how to manage their busi-nesses. It is argued that although micro-finance provides start-up fundsfor productive investment, it can also lead to indebtedness and increased ex-clusion unless programmes are well designed, thus the need to train womenin business management before they receive the loans.



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Development partners and NGOs are also working with governments tosupport female farmers in accessing extension services. In Malawi, theWomen and Land Rights Project (WOLAR) partners, with support fromthe Netherlands’ MDG 3 Fund, are training extension workers in order toimprove extension support offered to women farmers (OECD, 2012). Thewomen are trained, given advice and are supervised on their farming activ-ities. They have been included in the greenbelt Government initiative on ir-rigation, where they are now growing and marketing crops which used to bethe men’s domain. Women farmers who benefited spoke highly of thestrengthened link. Evidence from Malawi demonstrates that improvementin extension services can increase production, as well as empower them.

4.4 Releasing women’s time

Gender differentials in access to economic opportunities are due to differ-ences in time use between women and men which are a result of the culturalnorms that exist with regards to care and housework. Some of these normsstill impede on women’s economic empowerment. Women spend moretime than men in domestic and care work. So, addressing these norms andreleasing women’s time can be realised by paying more attention to childcare and parental leave policies, improvements in infrastructure servicesand policies that reduce transaction costs associated with accessingmarkets (World Bank, 2012a).

Balancing maternity and family responsibilities is a great challenge.Parental leave policies, which take on the form of maternity leave, havebeen tried in developed countries (World Bank, 2012a). Although these pol-icies may have worked in the developed countries, this may not be true forAfrica. The proportion of women working in the formal sector is quite neg-ligible, as shown in the previous section. The policies may also make it lessattractive for employers to hire women of childbearing age unless the mater-nity leave is publicly financed. To support such a policy, governments can alsodesign and finance social transfers, such as cash transfers, which address theinequitable gender relations of care. There is need to intensify these safetynets in countries where they exist (World Bank, 2012a). Besides cash trans-fers, child welfare can indirectly have a positive impact on women. The ben-efits of child welfare, which are intended for the children, may have anindirect impact on women. One such example is that of South Africa,where female recipients of Old Age Pension not only used the money toinvest in their grandchildren, particularly grandchildren, but also to thecosts of searching for jobs for their daughters (Kabeer, 2012).



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Women may have less time to work in informal employment because ofchild care responsibilities. In such a case, the World Bank (2012a) proposesthat there should be policies such as subsidised or publicly provided childcareby the government, including local governments. This, it argues, will assist incompensation for costs they incur within the home from engaging in marketwork. An example cited is that of Mexico and Colombia where it was proventhat the publicly provided or subsidised day care can increase the number ofhours worked by women, and consequently realising more time in informalemployment (World Bank, 2012a).

Women work more hours than men on domestic work, thereby limitingtheir opportunities of working in formal employment where they are paid.In the rural areas, they spend more time collecting firewood and fetchingwater. There must be increased recognition and valuing of the unpaid carework as it supports thriving economies. Reducing and redistributingwomen’s unpaid work can, to some extent, be achieved by improvingaccess infrastructure and technology. OECD (2012) proposes that govern-ments should invest in infrastructure and labour-saving technologies, espe-cially in rural areas, to reduce the time-consuming aspects of women’s andgirls’ unpaid domestic work, enabling girls to attend school and women toparticipate in the labour market or take up self-employment opportunities.The public and private sector and the donor community need to supportinvestments in infrastructure such as water and sanitation, as well as domestictechnologies that reduce time consuming elements of care work. Evidencecan be drawn from South Africa where rural electrification has increasedwomen’s labour force participation (World Bank, 2012a).

Information and technology (IT) can also reduce time and mobility con-straints that women face in accessing markets and participating in labourwork. Various forms of technology have contributed to improvingwomen’s links to the markets and services (Kabeer, 2012). It has beennoted that rural labour markets South Africa are characterised by lowwages and high rate of under-employment and high job costs, just like therest of the continent (Klonner and Nolen, 2008 cited in Kabeer, 2012). Bycontrolling for the endogenous placement of mobile phone towers, ruralcoverage in rural areas was associated with a 15% increase in employment,with more women benefiting than men. This was also associated with ashift from agriculture to self-employment and employment in the formalsector. Such a policy option can also increase women’s leisure time, as hasbeen experienced in Bangladesh (ibid). Better and more effective transportoptions can reduce the time associated with working outside the home,



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making it easier for women to manage the multiple burdens of house, careand market work (World Bank, 2012a).

5. Conclusion

The paper has identified gender gaps in economic opportunities and theunderlying determinants of these gaps in each area. It has been stated thatwomen tend to occupy very different parts of economic space from menand are concentrated in lower productivity activities, self-employment andin the informal sector. Even for those in the formal economy, women are con-centrated in occupations at lower levels which are low paying. It has also beennoted that gender gaps exist in earnings and productivity. These differentialsoccur at individual, household and institutional levels. This situation islargely determined by the following: (i) the different responsibilities forcare and housework between women and men, which consequently lead todifferent time use, thus affecting choices of employment and economic activ-ity; (ii) the inequity between women and men to access to productive inputsand agricultural extension services, and the differential treatment bymarkets; and (iii) the support of these constraints which can generate‘female productivity trap’ (World Bank, 2012a). Therefore, there is a needto have policies that target these underlying factors. Such policies shouldtarget the market and institutional constraints that are responsible for theexisting gender gaps, rather than the outcomes. Some of the policies and reg-ulations have been presented that have helped improve women’s economicempowerment. This was achieved by fostering partnerships with develop-ment partners and NGOs. There is need for policy-makers to prioritisethe constraints and address them simultaneously or sequentially (WorldBank, 2012a).

Policy options to remove the gender inequalities have been recommended.Policy reforms were recommended to level the playing field for women andchildren, especially where laws and regulations treat them differently andwhere systems enforce laws and regulations differentially. These include reg-ulations such as the inheritance laws, regulations pertaining to taxes for menand women and parental leave. Other policy options include setting up ofmicro-credit schemes that address the needs of small businesses andfarmers, use of technology such as mobile phones to access markets, trainingof extension workers to improve extension support offered to womenfarmers, as well as extension services to increase production. In releasingwomen’s time, policy options include provision of cash transfers, subsidised



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or publicly provided childcare by government, improving infrastructure ser-vices such as water and electricity to reduce women’s time on domesticworkers and technology. However, it should be noted that there is no onesize fits all as the nature, structure, functioning of markets, as well asnorms and culture vary across countries.

Funding

I would like to express my profound gratitude to the African EconomicResearch Consortium (AERC), Nairobi, Kenya for the financial supportrendered to the success of the research project.

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