Cross-cutting issue: Gender

Gender and the African Region

Equality refers to the fundamental principle of equality of opportunity and treatment between men and women in the world of work.

Gender is a socio-economic variable to analyse roles, responsibilities, constraints, opportunities and needs of men and women in context.

Gender mainstreaming is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. Its ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.

Gender Equality and Decent Work
Almost everyone works, or wants to. Not everyone who works is employed, of course, and a lot of work goes unrecognized and unrewarded. Some work belongs to the money economy, some meets social goals outside of the economic sphere. Much work is drudgery, but much also brings satisfaction. Some work occurs as employment in formal workplaces and in large enterprises. Some occurs informally on the street or in the fields, some in the home. Much work is necessary, the source of sustenance and income, but is also voluntary.*

* Gender: A Partnership of Equals, Bureau for Gender Equality, ILO, 2000

The ILO has articulated its commitment to, and strategy for attainment of gender equality. In this regard: the Director-General of the ILO issued a policy statement that highlighted a strong and visible political commitment at the highest level of the Organization. The statement tackles issues of representation, substance and structure of the ILO. The ILO Director-General also significantly promoted the Office of the Special Advisor on Women Workers Question into the Bureau of Gender Equality in 1999. The Bureau has since elaborated an action plan on Gender Equality and mainstreaming in the ILO.

Although African societies are diverse in terms of social organization, they do share certain characteristics. One of these characteristics is the complexity of gender that confers different opportunities on men and women. The African continent as a whole still lags behind in terms of economic development, but it is African women who have been hardest hit because of long standing inequalities in socio-economic and educational opportunities.

The major challenges facing African women are:

• Insufficient formal sector employment;
• High levels of participation in subsistence agriculture and the informal economy with low returns;
• Negative effects of global economic transformation;
• Widespread armed conflict;
• The legal status of women;
• Growing feminization of poverty;
• HIV/AIDS, and
• Inadequate institutional capacity to implement programmes.

In view of the above, the ILO has designed programmes that will:

• Develop capacity within the ILO as well as that of its constituents to effectively mainstream gender perspectives;
• Facilitate effective monitoring and evaluation;
• Enable streamlining to regional and sub-regional specificities, and
• Enable more direct contact with decision-makers in the field.

The programme brings to the fore the many problems faced by women all over the world and also gives special focus to sexual harassment, maternity protection and how family responsibilities impact on a woman’s quest to break through the glass ceiling into higher management levels. Through Convention Nos. 111, 100, 156 and 183 the ILO facilitates solutions to the injustices. A Gender Mainstreaming Strategy for Africa (GMSA) has been elaborated to guide the implementation.

SRO-Harare has taken on-the-ground gender-related initiatives in Southern Africa, including:

• Closer work with SADC-ELS, the SADC Gender Unit in particular;
• The Feminization of Poverty Project in Mozambique;
• Adapting and disseminating the Gender Poverty and Employment Capacity-Building Programme in different countries in East and Southern Africa;
• The Gender Equality Projects in Tanzania and Zimbabwe;
• Gender in Declaration seminars and workshops;
• Enhancing the capacity of tripartite constituents to mainstream gender perspectives into their policies, programmes and activities in Tanzania and Uganda;
• Close collaboration with other ILO major projects such as ILO/SWISS in Southern Africa, ILO/SLAREA in East Africa and the Nigeria Declaration project to systematically mainstream gender dimensions in their operations;
• Support to all the ARLAC programmes;
• Support to SATUCC and OATUU in articulating and designing programmes for mainstreaming gender issues into their work;
• Active participation in the UNDAF process in Zimbabwe, particularly in leading the process for their Zimbabwe – UN system gender audit, and
• Participation in UNDAF processes in other countries (e.g. Zambia 2002)