Africa and democracy: Club rules still apply

The Club of Madrid is comprised of 68 former heads of state and effectively amounts to an old boys network. When I first heard it was launching the African Women Leaders Project - in support of high-level women politicians in West Africa – I was a little sceptical. However, Mary Robinson, one of the few women members of the club, is leading the project, and it’s a salutary reminder that we need more women leaders not only in Africa - but across the world.

With funding from the European Union, the project will provide opportunities for sharing experiences, networking and looking at feasible policy options for the increase of women’s political participation.

It’s a worthy cause. Because feminists, women lawyers and human rights activists in Africa have already been systematically addressing these issues and wherever I go the message is the same: we’ve heard the rhetoric, let’s see some action.

The key instrument for gender equality is the African Protocol for the Rights of Women (based on CEDAW) - which, after much lobbying, was ratified by the African Union in 2004. Women are still actively campaigning for individual governments to ratify and implement the protocol at national level.

In November 2006, The Gambia hosted an ECOWAS conference for women’s rights representatives to develop a common approach. The difficulty they all have is explaining to male-dominated governments that, under the protocol, affirmative action to achieve equal representation of women is not an option but a regionally (and internationally) endorsed principle.

Once this right is recognised and enforced, there are examples of electoral systems which facilitate equitable election of women candidates. The most impressive example – not only for Africa but for the world – is the quota system in Rwanda, underpinned by civil society involvement, which has resulted in fifty-fifty government. Rwanda also led the way by holding the first international women parliamentarians conference (February 2007). According to organiser Judith Kanakuze, this aimed to develop participating countries’ “insights and commitment to gender equality as a tool for nation building”.

Where this principle remains in question, women’s efforts continue to be frustrated. The Women’s Manifesto for Ghana was developed collaboratively by Abantu for the 2004 elections to provide a common platform for both voters and candidates. Their hope was: “women would be empowered to use their vote as a bargaining tool; candidates have an agenda once elected; and political parties held accountable as to where they stand in relation to women’s issues.” Ghana, widely recognised as a stable progressive democracy, recently celebrated her 50th year of independence. But, with only 9% of elected officials at national or local level, women still feel left out of the celebrations.

Meanwhile, the Fifty-Fifty Group in Sierra Leone - a country still recovering from civil war - is campaigning hard to get at least 30% representation for women in the July 2007 national elections.

It all comes down to money

Even where (male) political support is not forthcoming, women clearly have the capacity to move forward their own agenda. While cultural and educational restraints are often quoted, my discussions with women activists in Mali reveal a consensus on what is really holding them back from success. “Basically, it all comes down to money,” says Nina Walet, former Vice-President, Haut Conseil des Collectivités, the independent state watch-dog for local government.

Women’s lack of economic empowerment hinders their political participation from the very first step. In order to register as a voter, to join a political party or to stand as a candidate, you need to have a birth certificate and that costs money. So does running an election campaign. In countries with limited infrastructure, travelling round the constituency can be difficult and expensive. The same applies for getting to the voting station, as Nina Walet, who stood for mayor in the desert region of Kidal, describes: “Voters have to travel long distances of up to 60 kms, so you need to give them food and lodging overnight, provide water for their animals. I sent my people out one week beforehand to find two or three tents each and persuade the touaregs to come in and vote.”

And even then… Nina, whose electorate consists of 70% women, was elected mayor in 1999 but her appointment was never endorsed by the state because of pressure from the men of the (wealthy) ruling family of Kidal.

Women’s organisations all emphasise the need for finance to support their lobbying and campaigning work - to mobilise members from different parts of the country, run meetings, produce leaflets, discuss and publish manifestos or get media coverage. “Awareness raising is an essential activity - for both men and women, not only at the grassroots but also among intellectuals and professionals”.

Article 26 of the women’s protocol obliges member states to provide a budget for effective implementation of gender equality. Oumou Traoré, director of the coalition of women’s associations (CAFO) in Mali, is indignant about the lack of state support. “Women are just treated as election fodder. We need leadership training and citizenship education. Women should understand their rights, put up resistance to party politics, learn to vote for the policies not the person, check the party lists to see if women candidates are included. But the government’s afraid of this kind of thinking, maybe that’s why we don’t get any funding from them.”

The right conditions

National women’s organisations often look in vain to the international community to support their cause. In fact the situation has got worse with the introduction of the poverty reduction strategy (PRSP) model. “In 1997-8 we had a lot of encouragement from donors for women candidates and direct support. But now all donor money goes through the government, the donors shrug and say sorry, they can no longer help out,” says Nina Walet.

Rwanda, with her critical mass of women in government, has moved towards institutionalising gender through all areas of planning, legislation and development. This requires a process of gender budgeting– not an increase in funds but an equitable redistribution.

For women in Mali the answer is clear. “Donors should impose conditions on the government for quotas - and proper resources to support women’s political participation.” I’m not generally a proponent of conditionality for aid, but this is one case where G8 countries could, in one simple move, change the face of development, reduce corruption, increase efficiency, promote peace – by themselves endorsing international law on women’s rights rather than enforcing privatisation of basic services which result in the economic disempowerment of women.

At the France-Afrique summit in Bamako in December 2005, the participants celebrated the presence of Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf, first democratically elected woman head of state in Africa – an inspiration for Liberians, Africans and women everywhere. She also addressed the US Congress in March 2006, an honour bestowed sparingly on international dignitaries. She faces the daunting task of bringing peace and prosperity to a society afflicted by years of conflict. However, as soon as she took up position, the European Union laid down conditions for continued funding. She has been back to the US a second time to lobby for debt cancellation - which, along with control of trans-national companies and additional aid for health and education, may have been a more effective way of strengthening female leadership and public confidence in women political leaders, as the Club of Madrid project aims to do.

Why doesn’t the international community turn rhetoric into action? After all, fifty-fifty is a simple concept and it’s been shown to work. “The real problem is that men won’t give up power,” says Nina. “ In fact, they just get greedier.”

A surprising end to the story is that there has been a female candidate for the first time in Mali’s presidential elections: Mme Aminata Sidibé, lecturer at the University of Bamako and well-known environmental activist. She was inspired by the International Women’s Day celebrations in Bamako - which focussed on women’s political emergence as a force for change. She entered the race late and her only support was a group of Malian women employed by various international development agencies who were able to help with networking. While Aminata didn’t really have a chance in the primaries against the incumbent, President Amadou Toumani Touré, her name and face were in the polls and in the newspapers – underlining the fact that there are competent African women willing to come forward, dedicated to building social capital and changing the face of development.

They are held back by north-north, south-south and north-south male economic networking. After all, it’s nice to have the ladies providing a little colour. But, apart from in Rwanda and other notable exceptions, the boys club still rules OK.


Nice quotes

“Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is not an anomaly. The African political landscape is being reshaped by women, generating hope for the future of the continent and raising the bar for democracy worldwide.” Pambazuka News

“Female illiteracy is a social mechanism designed to ensure female acquiescence and mute the voice of women.” Roselynn Musa

Further links

Women’s Manifesto for Ghana

Gender Budgeting

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance

iKNOWPolitics

My New Berlin Blog

When I got back from covering the World Social Forum from a women’s perspective in Nairobi, I was asked to write a monthly column for www.openDemocracy.net and you can check out some of my recent pieces here

Now we are working on a new project to provide a women’s perspective on the G8 summit - which is happening in Germany 6th to 8th June 2007. So I’m here in Berlin partly because of that and partly because, well, everyone’s got to be somewhere.

Wherever I go, there’s a different kind of stimulation – although the issues may still be the same. The first two pieces below are the beginning of my personal Berlin blog. The other two are earlier pieces, related to women in Africa. I try to put a different spin on everything I write. But none of these topics are going to be resolved so easily.

Berlin Checkpoints

Best European youth campaign (but worst postcard)


Everyone different, everyone equal

When I first arrived here, I stayed in a hostel in Friedrichshain, a borough once part of what was East Berlin - thinking it would be interesting to see the area. For a short time it was. The buildings have now been enlivened with pastel colours and the new youth scene is much in evidence. As Sabine Reichel describes in the Berliner Zeitung (14/15 April 2007) 96% of the population is under thirty and down every street you can meet twenty-five young mothers with pierced eyebrows.

My friend came from the borough of Kreuzberg by car to find me, not having been able to identify which metro line I should take to get to her house. “I just don’t know the area,’ she explained, ‘I never come here. Eighteen years since the wall came down and in my head the border’s still there.” See the map here

On my first weekend I visited AlexanderPlatz, the centre of former East Berlin. Alongside the town hall is a leafy park where you can wander, sit and admire the statue of the female worker or the monument to Marx and Engels. But searching for postcards to send home, I browsed the kiosks (not only in AlexanderPlatz but all over Berlin) to find that, indeed, eighteen years later, it’s difficult to find any images of quality which do not in some way commemorate the wall.

In fact a blown-up Checkpoint Charlie notice is on the outside wall of the youth hostel in Friedrichshain: “You are leaving the American sector”(threat or promise?). Postcards show the Brandenburg Gate in all her guises between 1961 and 1989: from the east, from the west; with Russian tanks or US armoured cars; people leaning over the fence, climbing on top of the wall or slipping through a hole. Even the modern shot of the Brandenburg Gate by night, illuminated in her restored glory, only serves to invoke the shadows of the past. And they’re still selling cards with a tiny piece of the graffiti-ed wall enclosed in a plastic bubble (or am I just naive?)




It’s all over now

Another reason my friend doesn’t visit former East Berlin is that she has two adopted children from Mali and racism is still alive in the east – as I’ve seen it myself - across all the former soviet states.

But not just there… In the current affairs journal Der Spiegel (No. 16, 16 April 2007) I read an item on the upcoming Islam Conference at the beginning of May, which is being co-organised with the German Minister of Internal Affairs. Leader of the newly formed Islamic Coordination (KRM) an umbrella for Muslim organisations, Aiman Mazyek is demanding a “clear roadmap for achieving equality between Islam and other religions in Germany,” including the same rights and status as church groups - and Islamic teaching as part of the school curriculum.

I worked in former West Germany thirty years ago as an English teacher, so I know that the 3.3 million Turkish population of “guest-workers” - as they are so quaintly called - are now into their third generation and questions of citizenship are still problematic (see a very comprehensive post on this by Aaron Erlich). They have no rights to develop their mother tongue within the state school system - although you can find Germans (because that’s who they are) of Turkish origin (excellent English students all) as successful entrepreneurs, academics, artists across the country.

In the meantime, Recep Tayyip Erdogan the Turkish Prime Minister is running out of patience waiting for Germany, currently holding the EU Presidency, to make a firm commitment to support Turkey’s application for European membership.


Best poster

Inside each one of us lurks a pacifist. I’d like to live in a society where no one, whether Muslim or Christian, needs to be afraid.

Then there was the story of the CDU leader in Bad-Wuertenburg, Günther Oettingen, who caused Angela Merkel a headache with his eulogy at the funeral of Hans Filbinger. In this he claimed that, although Filbinger was a high-profile member of the German military during the second world war, “he wasn’t really a nazi at all,” which understandable incensed the families of victims, academic researchers and other politicians. At Merkel’s insistence Oettingen publicly distanced himself from his remarks – although CDU federal parliamentarians from the south-west say “every word was correct.”

Indeed Merkel, while juggling “the grand coalition” with much more skill than anyone would give her credit for being able to do when she was first elected, is more often held back from achievement by the ultra-conservative members of her own party than any ideological differences with the SDP. The Family Affairs Minister Ursula von der Leyen has been attempting to bring in legislation to increase the provision of quality affordable pre-school care (kindergartens) to enable women to pursue their careers. In opposition to this, CDU representatives in the Laender (different regions) are basically invoking the nazi “Kinder Kirche Kueche” role for women – despite the fact they have elected a divorced childless woman scientist as federal leader.

Still in that very same issue of Spiegel is the poignant tale of two sisters who were separated in 1945 after five years in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. One came back to Hamburg to live and the other was brought up by a foster family in Czechoslovakia - too young to remember where she was from. Through the Red Cross tracing service they were recently reunited. Sixty years too late the Czech woman travelled to Hamburg with her background papers, all the while thinking, “Oh my god, my sister’s a gypsy!” (Zigeunerin, German for Roma, still the subject of acute discrimination in the transitional states). They don’t have much to say to each other and watch a lot of television.

And by the way, the Jewish synagogue in the centre of Berlin - along with the Jewish café in front of it - is cordoned off from pedestrians and protected by a police patrol (although Esther Slevogt says that’s not the only thing that keeps people out).


Road blocks of the mind

Before travelling out to Berlin I met up with my Palestinian friend who had just come back from visiting family. After many years living and working around the globe she’s decided to return to Palestine in a professional capacity as a humanitarian aid / development project manager.

It’s not much of a leap from Berlin to Jerusalem, which is still divided into quarters - Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian - where Israeli Arabs have a hard time moving around because of the curfew and where Palestinians need to go through checkpoints to enter the city from the West Bank. Not forgetting the controversial security wall that Israel has erected…

I carried out an education mission in Palestine late 1999 at the time when both sides were preparing to sign a territorial agreement – just before Ariel Sharon provoked the current intifada in his visit to Nazareth. So I know a little about how it feels, even armed with a British Council letter of invitation, to be held up at a road block or searched twice in the middle of the night when crossing Israel from Bethlehem to Tel Aviv airport. “It’s not just the frustration or the time-wasting, it’s diminishing as a person - to be constantly reminded you have no rights, no status, no statehood,” says Yara. She noticed that people’s expectations have also diminished: “they’re just glad with the new regulations, that it only takes four not eight hours to cross.”

On 5th June, the fortieth year of the Israel-Palestine conflict will be commemorated (an opportunity Avaaz.org sees for civil society to stop the clash which is politically rather than culturally based). Germany has played a role in The Quartet and Condoleeza Rice has been diplomatically active in the region. The discourse has changed from ‘roadmap’ to ‘destination’. The Arab League’s offer to renew the 2002 peace initiative makes the future look slightly more hopeful for a Middle East settlement.

But clearly that’s not the end of the story.

However many years of division, whoever we are and whatever kind of map we draw up, we’re not going to get anywhere - unless we can somehow find a way to dismantle the roadblocks of the mind.


Best quote so far

Esther Pfeiffer, a young black woman from South Africa, was one of the panellists at a meeting in Hamburg on the topic “Women bringing about change: gender and development” organised by VENRO’s Africa Project.

When asked if women from different (racial) backgrounds in South Africa now work collaboratively to promote their rights, she answered (in perfect German):

“Unfortunately apartheid lives on inside us. But then, in Germany, you know all about that.”

Patricia Daniel
April 2007

A matter of national importance

What I appreciate most about newspapers in Germany and France is that they cover Europe-wide and international issues much more thoroughly than we tend to find in mainstream British media.

But front-page news in Germany at the moment is a matter of national importance: there’s going to be a record asparagus harvest. From end of April is asparagus season in restaurants. Usually served up with hollandaise sauce, maybe roast potatoes and ham on the side, asparagus (in German: Spargeln) are delicious.

But taking a look at this bizarre photograph in the Berliner Morgenpost of Agricultural Minister Woidke and Asparagus Queen Nadine opening the season, I’m not sure I’ll ever eat Spargeln again!






20/04/07

Sudan: The chips are down

Carmen Moreno, director of the United Nation’s international institute for training and research for the advancement of women (Instraw) describes the appalling levels of insecurity and violence which shape women’s lives as a ‘Russian roulette’.

Reports of sexual violence on all sides of the Darfur conflict continue. Women may be victims in this game but not always passive. “Women go out of the camps to get firewood. They say that if their men went, they’d be killed and that’s why the women choose to expose themselves to being raped instead.’ Subsequently, many of the victims then bear and bring up the nameless children of this aggression. (Louise Arbour on international women’s day)

Systematic use of rape was highlighted in the controversial report prepared for the current session of the Human Rights Council. The team of investigators led by Jodi Williams claim the Sudanese government has failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes and has itself orchestrated and participated in these. In fact, it is estimated that women comprise 90% of the of the victims of the conflict.

A hard-hitting report specifically on sexual violence in Darfur was published by AllianceDarc in December 2006. To coincide with publication on the global day for Darfur a letter signed by an international group of stateswomen was circulated calling for a robust and effective peacekeeping force.

Instraw, a tiny member of the UN family, has carried out research on integrating a gender dimension into the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework. Endorsed by the UN Reform Summit in 2005, the R2P doctrine requires the international community to prevent conflict, react to humanitarian crises and help rebuild societies - in situations where national government fails to do so.

The fourth session of the Human Rights Council met 12th to 30th March 2007

Responsibility to protect?

While Angela Merkel, guest of honour at the 24th France-Afrique summit in Cannes spoke on the theme of ‘joint responsibility for peace and security’ with specific reference to Sudan, we haven’t seen too much R2P from G8 countries.

Current and recent political activity revolves around the call for economic sanctions against the Sudanese government. To be fair, the US government took a lead last decade on banning US business involvement, although according to Drumbeat for Darfur US financial institutions are still investing in third country foreign companies operating in Sudan. And as always, there are questions over the effectiveness of the sanctions approach.

There has been condemnation of China’s role in Sudan from both western governments and African civil society : the displacement of people in order to develop the oil-fields has contributed to, if not created, the current crisis, while government revenues from the partnership with China are said to finance the janjawid militias. China has been called on to exert influence on the Sudanese government and France’s latest ploy is to suggest boycotting the next Olympic games in Beijing if China doesn’t help out. However, it is important to note that not only the US but Britain, the Netherlands and Germany, have all had petroleum interests in Sudan; African commentators see western business interests as the root cause of the conflict - and Khartoum is a new boom town.

The Darfur Consortium an African / international civil society action group has consistently lobbied African governments for continued commitment to AMIS (the African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan). They have also petitioned the Arab governments of north Africa in particular to take a more pro-active role vis-à-vis the Sudanese government.

I spoke last year in Mali to Commandante Nema Sagará– one of the few trained African women peace-keepers –about the development of the AU peace-keeping force. She told me then that it doesn’t have sufficient capacity (including funding) to mount, execute and maintain missions effectively – although a range of military training for African peacekeepers and observer missions has been provided by western governments (US, Canada, France, Germany) clearly with the intention that Africa will be left to sort out her own problems.

While the potential of AMIS (and more generally, the AU as a continental peacekeeper) is recognised and promoted, there is no budget support from the international community. And, since the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, G8 and other bilateral donors continue to lay down conditions for debt repayments, cuts in public expenditure, financial sector reform, privatisation of basic services and unfavourable trade agreements, African governments are a little strapped for cash.

Despite this, tiny landlocked Rwanda has sent 2,000 soldiers to AMIS. However President Paul Kagamé has expressed frustration that “our presence there hasn’t brought about any change on the ground” and Foreign Affairs Minister Charles Murgandé goes further: “We ask ourselves if we should maintain our soldiers for a mission which is not supported by the international community.”

In response to Jacques Chirac’s recent call for sanctions, the leader of one of Darfur’s rebel movements Abdul Wahid Al-Nour challenges France and the EU to make a choice: “Either you send an international force or you give us weapons to defend ourselves.”

One financial solution reported in Jeune Afrique (19-25 November 2006) comes from the US company Blackwater offering mercenaries to fight under the UN flag. This would work out cheaper than the going price of $1000 per solider per month paid to governments. Apparently Kofi Annan had even thought about using South Africa’s Executive Outcome in Rwanda during the genocide there (for similar reasons) but concluded “the world’s not yet ready to privatise peace”. Then again, everything else in Africa is being privatised.

Prevention is better

Not everyone is convinced a military solution is appropriate. Humanitarian workers on the ground in Darfur highlight the complexity of the situation, suggesting that the EU and China focus on support for reopening negotiations. Only one of the three main rebel movements signed the Darfur Peace Agreement in December. It’s not certain that a political solution can be found for Sudan either, given the fragmentation of opposing groups and the fact that just a handful of (male) leaders are involved in such discussions.


As Roselynn Musa reports on the ‘comprehensive’ peace agreement for southern Sudan signed in 2005, this excludes consideration of women’s specific contributions and concerns in peace negotiations and rehabilitation processes.

Surely, for the future, we have to do better. Above all, this requires sound investment in conflict prevention. Instraw has a new guide to policy and planning for women peace and security (UN SCR 1325). Bring together the whole range of stakeholders - including women and women’s organisations – to develop a joint strategy which represents and addresses the different needs and interests of all. However, there’s the usual caveat: ‘a dedicated budget is essential to ensuring the concrete and sustainable implementation of even the most modest action plan.’

In her speech at Cannes, Merkel claimed that Germany was “monitoring the situation in Zimbabwe with great concern.” Meanwhile Condaleeza Rice inaugurated awards for international women of courage. One of the recipients was Jennifer Williams founder of Woza (Women of Zimbabwe Arise)who accepted the award on behalf of the movement’s 45,000 members and took the opportunity to emphasise that “it’s important for the diplomatic community to play a role in helping us to achieve our struggle.”

“Women of courage are standing up for freedom and human dignity and the United States stands with them,” announced Rice .
Events in Zimbabwe have now moved on. The breath-taking gap between what western politicians say and what they do (or not) - to prevent conflict or protect civilians - remains. Are they really cynical and self-serving or do they speak in good faith? Is it a compulsive habit? Close your eyes when placing the chips and then cross your fingers. That’s how to gamble away other people’s security - when those with a real stake in peace are never called to the table.


Patricia Daniel
March 2007


Read more

Sexual violence in Darfur

Save Darfur petition

Incompatible objectives: Gender and the World Bank

The film Bamako puts international finance institutions on trial for crimes against humanity. Set in a family courtyard in Mali, it provides a forum for African voices to be heard. They bear testimony against the World Bank’s simplistic understanding of the causes of poverty – and the disastrous effects of its programmes on African society.

But is the World Bank truly evil or merely incompetent?

Let’s explore this through the bank’s new action plan entitled ‘gender equality as smart economics’ which was presented at the Commission for the Status of Women (CSW) at the beginning of March.

Prior to this, as part of the same initiative, the German Ministry for Development Co-operation hosted a World Bank seminar on women’s economic empowerment in Berlin (22nd-23rd February) at the same time as Bamako was being premiered in London. The event, one of Germany’s
programme of meetings in the run-up to the G8 summit, profiled female politicians, public servants and private entrepreneurs from north and south.

On the surface this looks like a promising development. However, for over two decades, feminist economists like Diane Elson have criticised the bank’s approach to economic development, in particular the specific adverse impacts on women. ‘Capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy are interlinked. Markets are not abstract cash nexuses - they are inevitably social institutions in which buying and selling is structured assymetrically to the advantage of some participants rather than others.’ (Male bias in the development process, 1990)

'An estimated 70% of the one billion people living in extreme poverty are women’ Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany’s Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development)

And women’s organisations are not impressed with the new plan. Christa Wichterich of WIDE (Network Women in Development Europe)
suggests that the WB plan is not concerned with gender equality at all but with continuing to exploit female human resources to avoid market failure and distortion of competition. ‘What impresses most about the action plan is the one-dimensional thinking which places markets at the centre and not human beings - or the economic rights and potentials of women.’ Things, she says, haven’t changed in the last thirty years.


A historical perspective

To go back to basics, the WB is the largest and most powerful agency in the UN family, disposing of a programme of $20 billion a year. G8 countries are the largest contributors and size of contribution is related to voting power on the board. The bank gives loans not assistance, and the shareholders naturally expect to get their money back.

In comparison, other UN agencies such as UNDP have an annual budget of $4 billion or less and are increasingly chasing corporations for ‘public-private partnerships’ to support their work.

The World Bank’s gender action plan has a budget of US$25 million. To the ordinary woman on the street in Bamako, or even Birmingham, it may sound initially like a generous amount. But you don’t need to be a development specialist to see that on a global scale – over four years – this barely amounts to pocket money

Budgets: World Bank $20 billion; United Nations Development Programme $4.4. billion; UNICEF $2 billion; UNESCO $600 million; UNIFEM $50 million

The bank is not in fact a development agency but - because it ties the purse strings - it has a stranglehold on development policy.

From the 1980s, in an attempt to stimulate economic growth and enable developing countries to repay outstanding debts from the 60s, the WB introduced the so-called ‘hard loans’. These loans were dependent on countries in the south adopting structural adjustment programmes (SAPs): notably cutting public expenditure in education and health and privatisation of essential services. These particularly impact on women because of their primary responsibility for the entire household.

‘The concept of structural adjustment is based on women’s capacity to cope, to continue in increasingly adverse conditions and to deny their own needs and interests for the survival of their families and communities. In other words, structural adjustment relies on women providing those service previously provided by the State.’ (NAWO, Women’s strategies to deal with SAPs, 1990)

Opening up foreign investment opportunities and establishing free trade zones to attract external companies provided employment for women in the form of low-paid, insecure jobs with poor working conditions and without labour rights. (Angela Hale, Trade myths and gender reality, 1994)

In particular the slashing of education budgets impacted on succeeding generations of women, since girls’ schooling always takes second place in times of hardship. As Benedicta Egbo points out, women’s economic activity is closely linked with literacy (and numeracy) since, as well as increasing confidence, this facilitates access to information, financial credit, training and opportunities for further support.

In other words, it can be argued that the current lack of economic empowerment for so many women in the south is a direct result of previous World Bank programmes.

Nevertheless, SAPs had the opposite effect to that intended: countries were still not able to repay debts (by now incrementally higher). Therefore, at the World Summit on Social Development at Copenhagen in 1995, the World Bank economists pushed for a new approach – ‘soft loans’ related to multi-year national development plans – and so the current era of poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) began.

Each PRSP is developed ‘in agreement’ between government and donors, who ‘align’ themselves and ‘harmonise’ with each other behind the national plan, following the Monterrey conference in 2002 (OECD) ). In fact, PRSPs tend to be donor-driven - even though individual donor representatives on the ground in different countries around the world have privately expressed serious reservations about the one-size-fits-all solution.

In order to qualify for PRSP related loans or any other grants and financing, the IMF must approve a country’s economic programme – and may also apply ‘conditionalities’ (unsurprisingly, more cutting of public expenditure…). As a result of the current system, 40% of the national budget of African countries like Mali is still being used to repay old debts - compared with 6% for social services.

As the authors demonstrate in the recent Gender Action report on the IFIs, this ‘new’ model not only continues in the same direction as the ‘old’ one but imposes even more conditions than before.

Their report, based on analysis of PRSPs in eleven countries, identifies the following conditions as having the greatest impact on women’s livelihoods:

Privatisation
Cuts in government spending
Trade and labour reforms
Financial sector reforms

In summary:
‘Standard World Bank and IMF policy-based loans that require public health expenditure cutbacks increase women’s home care for sick family members and reduce their time available for paid work; public sector and enterprise restructuring eliminates many jobs and benefits—women are often the first to lose jobs and last to be rehired because they are assumed to be secondary breadwinners; developing country tariff reductions threaten the livelihood of manufacturing and agricultural workers, the majority of whom are women in the poorest countries; financial sector reforms decrease women’s access to financial services while increasing their risk of financial crisis.’


Some concrete examples

One of the aspects under discussion by the WB and its partners in Berlin was the need to facilitate women’s access to infrastructure (transport) water and electricity.

Clearly no-one is going to argue with access to basic services for either women or men. The provision of piped water and electric power immeasurably lightens the load of women’s daily chores, freeing up their time and energy for other activities. So why isn’t that already a reality?

Could it have something to do with the fact that the privatisation of water, electricity, transport, is a normal requirement in the poverty reduction strategies papers? Privatisation benefits the north rather than the south since it is multinational companies that pick up the contracts, the most infamous being the British-German-Tanzanian company City Water that was eventually kicked out of Tanzania. But there are many more…

In the meantime, the poorest citizens of the south, most of them women, find it difficult to pay for basic services even when they are available. This is one of the key issues around which the social movements rallied at the World Social Forum in Nairobi. They see that their own governments, in collaboration with multinationals, continue to deprive them of a basic human right.

In the film one woman witness claims: ‘ A country which does not control its own basic services can barely be said to be a sovereign state.’

Enterprise

Another aspect on the WB’s gender agenda is supporting women’s economic activity through finance and private sector development, in particular increasing women’s agricultural productivity and their contribution to rural development.

But fluctuating prices on the world market have an adverse effect on the prices women can get for their own produce and what they can afford to buy. Women and men both work in the cotton industry in Mali, which has been developed as the foremost in West Africa. Cotton farmers and their families are currently living in penury because cotton prices have been pushed right down by US subsidies to their own farmers - subsidies which amount to $4 billion a year. Meanwhile, China is flooding African countries with cheap cotton products. And, while the WB is still promoting the micro-credit model for women, banking sector reforms have decreased access to loans especially for small-scale women farmers in rural areas.

In Mali, Kané Nana Sanou, president of the coalition for women’s human rights organisations (Groupe Pivot Droit et Citoyenneté des Femmes) has expressed concern to me about the number of women victims of a vicious cycle of debt due to similar schemes, with many having recourse to loan sharks to get more money to repay original loans: an unfortunately neat microcosm of the WB scenario at macro level.

And in the field, I have spoken to women’s associations who have gone through the process of constitutionalisation - in order to become eligible for funding - only to find that there is no financial support available.

The women’s collective at Bandiagara told me they had spent several seasons growing and selling green beans together so they could afford the legal expenses involved in the drawing up of the constitution (in a language they don’t read well). Now they are ready to start up in business, I asked them why they don’t arrange a bank loan. Their answer was simply ‘we are reluctant to start off already in debt.’ For women and families who do not have a reliable regular income, this seems to be a responsible viewpoint.

Even the WB’s own research has indicated that the poorest of the poor prefer to rely on informal credit and social capital rather than formal loans. There’s no lack of enterprise among women, it’s real money that’s missing! Why not give each association $200 and let them show what they are capable of?

Market women in Ghana are grateful for World Bank loans, despite the fact they are paying an unbelievable 36% interest rate.

Such examples are an attempt to engage with the WB on its own terms. But one of the worst impacts as described by Aminata Traoré in Bamako (there are real Malians giving testimony) is the effect of the WB top-down approach on the self-image of Africans. ‘The WB holds up a mirror showing us as poverty-stricken, conflict-ridden, lacking in capacity and needing direction.’

In contrast, the reality is that, like other countries in Africa, Mali has untold wealth – her traditional social capital now being eroded; her music; her gold mines (controlled by Anglo Gold); her beautiful women of all ages who always find some work to get by, her eloquence whatever language is used, her traditional skills such as hand-dyeing of cotton cloth with the richest colours and patterns under the sun… the film reflects these better than I can.

Incompatible objectives

As regards the effectiveness of gender equality policies, independent evaluations of the very same institutions involved in the Berlin conference (Norad, OECD, DFID, SIDA, the EC and the World Bank itself) raise serious questions. A survey of these evaluations emphasises one of the main causes for lack of progress: ‘insufficient resources have been provided to implement strategies at operational (field) level’.

But the problem is clearly more fundamental than that. The World Bank drives the development agenda and the promotion of gender equality is in direct contradiction to the bank’s approach.

The bank in fact works in opposition to other UN agencies. In South Africa UNDP and UNIFEM concerns have led them to develop a checklist for carrying out detailed gender analysis of PRSPs. In addition, UNDP’s latest human development report highlights the fact that inequality in general is increasing within and between countries because of IFI conditions. And UNRISD is now developing research on the additional impact on policy and social development of the new relationships between governments and trans-national companies.

As well as now driving forward MDG3 ‘gender equality’, the WB has also been given the lead for MDG2 ‘universal primary education’ which is of utmost importance for the future generation of women’s empowerment. My research on this in 2005 highlighted similar contradictions.

For example in the case of Burkina Faso the WB economists calculated that if all children were in school, there wouldn’t be enough money to pay the teaching force required. The solution was to reduce teachers’ salaries, bring in temporary staff (who could be laid off at short notice) and recruit volunteers. This didn’t go down well with the teaching union and education plans were put on hold until this could be resolved.

This scenario was explained to me by a couple of very charming and completely straight-faced World Bank economists as an example of ‘incompatible objectives.’ I understand this to mean setting an international target for developing countries while at the same time requiring them to operate in a way which makes it impossible to actually achieve the target. I think that about sums up their approach.

When one woman testifying in Bamako claims she can read a balance sheet, the WB’s defence counsel calls her an ‘upstart’. Women across the world are experienced in managing the household budget and, whether using a computer or counting out cups of rice, we all know when things don’t add up

In summary, the WB is clearly guilty. But the witnesses in Bamako plead only for the bank to respect its original mandate, which should be to support national development ‘in a spirit of humanity’. Instead of which it has simply become the worst kind of debt collector on behalf of the G8 - whose hypocrisy and cynicism in promoting women’s economic empowerment within the current system cannot adequately be described.

The solution, according to feminist economists and activists in both south and north is for the WB and other donors to put an end to policy-based lending and provide space for governments to address gender equality and social justice in more appropriate, locally-driven ways.

So, World Bank, $25 million for gender equality is not smart economics – when no-one seems to be benefiting from the rest of the $20 billion budget except multinational companies, corrupt officials and, of course, G8 countries.

Readers who wish to raise their own voice against World Bank iniquity and incompetence can sign the online petition organised by Christian Aid, to put pressure on the UK government’s position in the upcoming WB and IMF spring meetings.

Patricia Daniel
March 2007