AFRICA: Efforts To Boost Women's Status Show Results

The empowerment of Africa's women is critical to the achievement of all MDGs, not just the goal of gender equality. Fortunately, awareness of the link between women's empowerment and development continues to grow.

Although gender-disaggregated data remain patchy, the results of increased efforts are beginning to show.

In October 2010, the AU launched African Women's Decade, and there are encouraging signs of progress to come. Last year showed a continuing upward trend in the political participation of African women, who now hold 18.5 per cent of parliamentary positions (from 15 per cent in the previous year). Women's representation in parliaments in Sub-Saharan Africa is now higher than in South Asia, the Arab states or Eastern Europe. Most countries are also on track to achieve gender parity in primary education by 2015. A growing number, including Senegal, Benin and Burkina Faso, have integrated gender concerns into their national development plans and poverty-reduction strategies, also because international partners like the Millennium Challenge Corporation have made gender reform a prerequisite for grant disbursement. Lesotho has even achieved the greatest overall improvement of any nation in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index over the last five years.

Despite these encouraging signs, Africa remains plagued by substantial and debilitating gender gaps in health, employment, and wages. For every headline success, thousands of women continue to find their talents and aspirations blocked by formal and informal barriers. If adjusted for gender equality, human development ratings drop substantially across the entire continent.

For reasons ranging from labour-market conditions to access to education to social barriers, cultural values and attitudes in the household, the vast majority of women in Sub-Saharan Africa continue to face income and job insecurities. The economic crisis has further increased both the informalization of jobs held by women and their share of vulnerable employment. Even though women make up the majority of the agricultural workforce, producing as much as 80 percent of the continent's food, they still own less than one percent of Africa's land. They are still the first, along with their children, to suffer under economic contraction, food insecurity and violent conflict.

This is not only a personal tragedy for millions of women and their families, but a major brake on Africa's development. Failing to use women's energy and skills slows progress towards achievement of the MDGs, weakens governance and accountability, and hampers the implementation of much-needed reforms. Empowering women, on the other hand, is proven to increase household incomes, nutrition and education levels, and agricultural productivity, and to decrease fertility, population growth and carbon emissions. Africa still has a long way to go in realizing the enormous potential of its women.