ILO joins UN Women, UNDP and UNFPA in the country’s first Joint Programme for Gender Equality

The areas of focus in the three-year Joint Programme are:

1. Combating all forms of gender-based violence; ( not funded through the Sida funds)
2. Women’s political participation and influence;
3. Women’s economic empowerment and working conditions; and
4. National accountability on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

The participating UN agencies in the programme are the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Women – who are also the Managing Agency of the Joint Programme.

The Joint Programme was launched by the Ambassador of Sweden to Zimbabwe, His Excellency Lars Ronnäs, the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Gender, and Community Development, the Honourable Oppah Muchinguri, and the United Nations Resident Coordinator, Alain Noudehou; and in attendance for the other agencies were Alphonse Tabi-Abodo, the Country Office Director for the ILO, Kemal Mustafa, (Officer-in-Charge, UN Women), Verity Nyagah (Country Director, UNDP) and Basile Tambashe (Country Representative, UNFPA)

Background

Zimbabwe has demonstrated its commitment to the advancement of gender equality and women’s rights through a strong legal and policy framework. The country has signed and ratified international and regional instruments such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Southern Africa Development Community Gender and Development Protocol (SADC Gender Protocol), among others.

The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3 on Gender Equality is one of the government’s chosen MDG national priorities. The country adopted in 2013 a new Constitution that has strong gender equality and women’s rights provisions.

The government, through the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development, also developed a gender-responsive economic strategy (Zimbabwe Broad Based Women’s Economic Empowerment Framework - BBWEE) and adopted other modalities, such as gender-responsive budgeting.

Women in Zimbabwe, however, continue to face social, political and economic inequalities, compounded by the gender-specific consequences of the HIV epidemic. Poverty among urban and rural households remains a serious challenge and economic migration affecting women, children and youth has been on the rise in recent years. Gender equality and women’s empowerment commitments are underfunded, which further hampers national programming and coordination on the government’s commitments.

The three-year Joint Programme will respond to the support needed at the national and local levels. It will also contribute to the Zimbabwe United Nations Development Framework (ZUNDAF) 2012-2015, which is aligned to government priorities on women’s empowerment and gender equality in the country’s economic blue-print Zim-Asset (Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation) through ZUNDAF Outcome 7.1.

Pillar 3: Women’s Economic Empowerment and Working Conditions

From the initial funding of US $5.3 million by SIDA, ILO has been allocated USD1million to put into effect the Pillar on Women’s Economic Empowerment and Working Conditions within the JPGE. The Pillar has three specific approaches; (i) capacity strengthening, (ii) advocacy and (iii) skills development for women’s economic empowerment which the ILO is co-leading with UNWOMEN.

• Women’s Economic Empowerment The project will be advanced by identifying and recognizing the value of human and productive talents of women, by enhancing women’ access to the labour market and income generating opportunities through skills development and promoting partnership between public and private sector, by adapting and applying the ILO Training for Rural Economic Empowerment (TREE ) methodology. The methodology will be the main strategy tool for community mobilization to create an enabling environment for women’s economic empowerment, whether through ownership of jobs or creation of employment opportunities in the new businesses.

• TREE is a community-driven methodology on planning and delivering skills and enterprise development training, preparing and implementing practical transition enterprise plans through forecasting techniques, small group organizing, creating community enterprise systems, and linking with the corporate and formal economic sector. Other areas of focus will be around access and use of financial services; and developing skills for enterprise set-up and growth through linkages to markets and financial services. The ILO TREE methodology will largely support the implementation of the BBWEE Framework which complements other on-going efforts to strengthen economic growth in Zimbabwe, such as the Zim-Asset and the National Employment Policy Framework.
  
• Women Workers’ Rights (WWRs): The Constitution of Zimbabwe is the supreme law of the land. It provides for fundamental rights which every Zimbabwean is entitled to in all spheres of social, political and economic life in law and in practice. With regards to women workers’ rights, therefore, the key constitutional provisions need to be translated into tangible benefits in non-discrimination on the basis of sex, gender, marital status, race, ethnic group and disability ensuring removal of barriers to their labour market participation. The interventions will also include an emphasis on empowerment of working women through awareness raising and advocacy for ratification and domestication of the remaining key gender equality conventions (ILO Conventions No. 156 on Workers with Family Responsibilities, NO. 183 on Maternity Protection and No. 189 on Domestic Workers); building a knowledge base on women specific working conditions including maternity protection, work organisation as well as gender based violence at the workplace.