By Tanu Jalloh
Across the world the UN population fund, UNFPA, and a host of other groups, some of them inspired by the plethora of conventions, conferences and declarations on women in particular and gender matters generally, are up and running. The situation in Sierra Leone is no different. However, this piece has been cut out to represent a general condition of women in the rural economy with particular respect to the rural woman in Sierra Leone, still in need.
There have been the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (2004), signed by Heads of State and Government, to reaffirm their commitment to the principle of gender equality as enshrined in Article 4 (l) of the Constitutive Act of the African Union, as well as other existing commitments, principles, goals and actions set out in the various regional, continental and international instruments on human and women’s rights.
In Sierra Leone, probably, the most popular of such documents could be said to be the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW - 1979), the basis for Parliament to pass the multiple gender Acts on June 14, 2007. They cover domestic violence, registration of customary marriage and divorce, and devolution of estates. While they are all either inadvertently ambiguous or are deliberately silent on women’s economic empowerment, they could be adequately referenced in all arguments calling for gender equality today.
Perhaps intermittent attributions to such documents as the Dakar Platform for Action (1994), the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), the African Plan of Action to Accelerate the Implementation of the Dakar and Beijing Platforms for Action for the Advancement of Women (1999) et al, could broaden the domestic debate in favour of women. The gender laws, I have come to believe, would create the starting that was needed, in the first place, for women advancement generally.
Against that backdrop, Sierra Leone, like many other countries have allocated both financial and human resources to implementing national plans of action, as was scheduled in The African Plan of Action, formulated within the framework of the mid-decade review of the implementation of the Dakar and Beijing Platforms for Action. Since 2004 the country has registered successes in such areas as increased school enrolment for girls, wider areas of coverage of health services (The Free Health Care), creation of women’s groups for solidarity and collaboration – women politicians (APPWA) and the 50/50 Group to enhance wider coverage of awareness-raising campaigns and programmes with regard to women’s human rights.
But what is being done for the rural woman? So far her capability has been deliberately limited to micro-credit schemes and the uncoordinated arrangement of adult literacy programmes, just enough to help her manage whatever money she gets from the scheme. It is on record that the combined impact of past macro-economic policies and globalisation has resulted in a number of adverse consequences.
What is happening to efforts at formulating comprehensive national gender policies to guide other sectors, away from politics; away from the 30% quota vogue? The fight for women by women in Freetown falls short of dealing with the life of the rural woman. Going forward, it is almost likely that incorporating gender concerns into policies, plans, and programmes of national outlook would remiss in its call for a better life of the rural woman. All urban women want to be politicians in Freetown.
According to records, in nearly every country, including Sierra Leone, women, especially in the rural setting, work longer hours than men, but are usually paid less and are more likely to live in poverty. In Sierra Leone the preoccupation of the rural woman is agriculture and petty trade, both of which are out-of-the-option measures to sustain routine sustenance of family welfare to which she is only a part. And in a subsistence economy, that usually characterises rural settings especially in the north, she spends most of the day maintaining the home. She fetches water, keeps a small garden of vegetables (condiments for plasas, a Sierra Leonean recipe), carries fuel wood and above all provides supervision (parenting). In some cases she is responsible for agricultural production and selling to buy those things she could not grow.
According to a 1999 ‘Assessment Report on: Women and Poverty, and the Economic empowerment of women,’ “much of women's burden of work and poverty remains ‘hidden’ to official policies, resources and strategies for reducing poverty. Official policies and programmes continue to ignore the non-market activities which women…are engaged in. Because women predominate in non-market, household activities, they tend to be more adversely affected by this lack of policy, programme and resource support from Governments and international organizations.”
This arises from the fact that a significant amount of the work which women perform (especially in subsistence production, informal employment, domestic and reproductive work) tends to be “invisible”. Although progress has been in general women affairs to include some subsistence production in the system of national accounts, much of women's unpaid domestic work is not counted. The World Bank reports that 66 percent of female activities in developing countries [including Sierra Leone] are not counted. The result of this “invisibility” is that their work tends not to be considered in a regular and systematic manner in public policy, nor budgetary allocations.
UNFPA’s gender equality portfolio on ‘Women’s Work and Economic Empowerment’ specifically found out that unpaid domestic work – from food preparation to caregiving – directly affects the health and overall wellbeing and quality of life of children and other household members (in rural settlements – my emphasis). The need for women’s unpaid labour often increases with economic shocks, such as those associated with economic restructuring. Yet women's voices and lived experiences – whether as workers (paid and unpaid), citizens, or consumers – are still largely missing from debates on finance and development. Poor women do more unpaid work, work longer hours and may accept degrading working conditions during times of crisis, just to ensure that their families survive.
The above paragraph is a testament to the fact that the issue was worth treating under this column. Business and economy have become so close to societal development in contemporary Sierra Leone that we at Politico have decided to use it as a barometer in our social approach to evaluating the extent of government policies on women and livelihood.
Adieu!
