Sub-regional Policy Highlights for East, Southern and West Africa

The OECD Development Centre organised a series of policy dialogues throughout 2021 to engage with both grassroots organisations and policy makers on “From Data to Policy Action: Tackling Gender-Based Discrimination in Social Institutions” in East, Southern and West Africa.

The events were organised in collaboration with the African Development Bank (AfDB), the OECD’s Sahel and West Africa Club Secretariat (SWAC) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and led to the creation of three “Roadmaps for Action”.

Discussions during the policy dialogues fed into the SIGI 2021 Regional Report for Africa and three sub-regional Policy Highlights for each sub-region, accessible here below. In addition, three sub-regional Roadmaps for Action were developed with all attendees to the policy dialogues:

• East Africa (see Roadmap for Action)
• Southern Africa (see Roadmap for Action)
• West Africa (see Roadmap for Action)

These materials are also available directly from the OECD iLibrary page here.

The virtual launch aims to:

• Monitor and identify remaining challenges in addressing discriminatory social institutions – formal and informal laws, norms and practices—which continue to hinder women’s empowerment in Southeast Asia
• Share critical insights on the negative consequences of discriminatory social institutions on several areas that are critical for women’s human development in the region
• Flag concrete examples of innovative approaches to challenge gender norms, promote women’s rights, enhance gender equality and accelerate social transformation.

Stay tuned for key messages from the report!

• Make the case that restrictive masculinities hinder women’s economic empowerment while also harming the well-being of men and boys
• Underscore that tackling these restrictive masculinities has the potential to improve both women’s and men’s well-being
• Highlight the importance of collecting data and evidence while emphasising the key role policy makers and grassroots organisations can play in facilitating gender-equitable masculine norms.

Check out the Event Flyer

Stay tuned for key messages from the report!

• Present the findings of the report
• Shed light on the ways masculine norms can either hinder or promote women’s empowerment and gender equality
• Present the indicators that can be used to measure and monitor changing masculinities and discuss the state of data availability
• Highlight the key role policy makers can play in addressing restrictive masculinities to promote women’s empowerment and men’s well-being

Stay tuned for key messages from the report!

CONTEXT

Women play a pivotal role in a wide range of activities supporting food and nutrition security. They are the powerhouses of the Sahel and West African food economy. Two-thirds of all employed women work across the food system, accounting for half of the labour force. They dominate off-farm segments of food value chains including food processing and selling as well as food-away-from-home. They are also important actors in cross-border trade.

Nevertheless, access to affordable and nutritious foods is beyond the reach of many women and girls. Low income and education levels, discriminatory laws, social norms, and practices such as those revealed in the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), drive food insecurity among women by curbing their ownership over assets such as land, water and energy as well as their access to financial services, social capital, information and technology, agricultural inputs and services. The double burden facing women balancing the demands of agricultural production and unpaid care and domestic work compound these inequalities.

In the Sahel and West Africa, more than 40% of women of reproductive age suffer from anaemia across 14 countries, driving maternal and child morbidity and undermining women’s economic empowerment. Obesity, which was practically unheard of in the region in the past, affects more women than men. Stunting, a measure of chronic malnutrition, often has its origins in utero due to, for example, poor maternal nutrition. Similarly, women who are overweight or obese are at a greater risk of giving birth to heavier babies, putting them at a higher risk of being overweight and obese as adults.

The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) recognised gender-mainstreaming as an indispensable strategy for achieving gender equality, including in the area of food security. Yet, 25 years later, many responses still tend to operate in silos and focus narrowly on improving women’s agency or access to information for example, instead of addressing the social, structural, and institutional barriers that hamper food and nutrition security among women and girls. Policies also often fail to include men and boys, yet understanding the drivers behind their motivations and behaviours is key to addressing unspoken societal barriers to gender equality.The major challenge lies in developing inclusive policy responses that address these barriers. This could help pave the way towards a more sustainable and transformative change within the West African food system and fuel progress towards achieving not only the “zero hunger” goal (SDG 2) but also “gender equality” (SDG 5).

OBJECTIVE

The OECD Development Centre is collaborating with the Sahel and West Africa Club Secretariat to host an interactive discussion on the Wikigender platform on the topic “Towards a Gender-Responsive Approach to Food and Nutrition Security in the Sahel and West Africa”. The objective is to contribute to a process of mutual learning and dialogue that can inspire more gender-responsive and sustainable solutions to food and nutrition insecurity.

Drawing on your experience and expertise, we would like to identify some concrete and promising examples of gender-responsive food and nutrition security programming, and explore and discuss the key lessons learned. (See: Concept Note)

KEY QUESTIONS

1. What is at risk when food and nutrition security programming fails to take gender into account?
   1. What does “gender-mainstreaming” in food and nutrition security policies and programmes mean in practice?
   2. How can the availability of sex-disaggregated food and nutrition security data be improved?
   3. How can early-warning systems be more gender-responsive?
2. What are some of the key lessons learned from best practices around gender-responsive programming in the area of food and nutrition security? What are the success factors and how can they be scaled-up?
   1. Can cash transfers alleviate food insecurity and strengthen gender equality? What specific measures need to be taken to ensure that cash transfers achieve gender-equitable outcomes?
   2. Emerging research shows that the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to exacerbate the gendered nature of food and nutrition insecurity globally. What actions can be taken to prevent the most serious damage to the economic empowerment of women in general and particularly rural women?
3. What can be done to bring attention to gender-responsive food and nutrition security programming among the region’s decision-making bodies?
   1. Are there lessons to be learned from other regions?
   2. How can women be empowered to exercise their rights and take active participation in decision-making bodies?

DIG DEEPER

OECD/SWAC (2018), “Gender Inequality in West African Social Institutions”, West African Papers, No. 13, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/fe5ea0ca-en.

OECD/SWAC (2018), “Agriculture, food and jobs in West Africa”, West African Papers, No. 14, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://www.oecd.org/swac/topics/food-system-transformations/handout-agriculture-food-jobs-west-africa.pdf.

OECD/SWAC (2019), “Integrating gender analysis into food & nutrition security early warning systems in West Africa”, West African Papers, No. 24, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/abd5f499-en.

OECD/SWAC (2019), “Women suffering from anaemia – a major challenge”, Maps & Facts No. 78, Paris, http://www.west-africa-brief.org/content/en/women-suffering-anaemia-%E2%80%93-major-challenge.

OECD (2019), “SIGI 2019 Global Report: Transforming Challenges into Opportunities”, Social Institutions and Gender Index, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/bc56d212-en.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Implications for the SDGs with a focus on women and girls
3. Implications for SDG 5 specifically
4. Additional Resources from OECD on COVID-19
5. References

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a severe threat to the achievement of gender-related SDGs and jeopardises some of the improvements observed since 2015 related to gender equality and women’s empowerment. By looking at the state of the SDGs and their interlinkages pre-crisis, it is clearthat the economic and social consequences of the pandemic will exacerbate existing inequalities and discrimination against women and girls, especially against the most marginalised. As was revealed in West Africa during the Ebola crisis (2014-2015) and in Latin America with the Zika outbreak (2015-2016), public health crises can place a hold on gender-transformative policies and reforms, diverting resources away from the past and current needs of women, while the crises themselves actually increase and expand them. With this, it is important to recognize the impact COVID-19 is having, and will continue to have, on the achievement of the SDGs if progressive actions are not taken.

Implications for the SDGs with a focus on women and girls

Given the widespread and multiple implications of the COVID-19 crisis, all SDGs, and particularly those gender-related targets and indicators, are likely to be affected. Recognizing this impact and its gendered nature is a critical first step to designing socio-economic recoveries that will help, not hinder, the achievement of the SDGs and gender equality. Though not an exhaustive list, by looking with a gendered lens, it is clear that at least the following SDGs will be stalled by the current crisis:

• SDG 8 – “Decent Work”: “Women constitute an estimated two-thirds of the health workforce worldwide, and…make up around 85% of nurses and midwives in the 104 countries for which data are available” (OECD, 2020). This sectoral concentration, as well as women’s over-representation in retail and hospitality, means that women are disproportionately exposed to COVID-19 at work.
• SDG 3 – “Good Health and Well-Being”: Resources for reproductive and sexual health are diverted to the emergency response – as we saw during the Ebola crisis in West Africa in 2014-2015, this contributed to an increase in maternal mortality in regions with weak healthcare capacities (Wenham, Smith and Morgan, 2020). For example, in Sierra Leone, post-crisis impact studies uncovered that during the crisis, there was a drop in the use of health services which translated to 3,600 additional maternal, neonatal and stillbirth deaths, under the most conservative estimates, in the year 2014-15 (Sochas, Channon and Nam, 2017).
• SDG 4 – “Quality Education”: The Ebola crisis also revealed a significant increase in adolescent pregnancies following the closure of schools during the outbreak, which in turn translated to higher rates of school dropouts especially for adolescent mothers during the post-crisis period (Bandiera et al., 2019). At the same time, the increased workload of unpaid and domestic care work falling on women’s and girls’ shoulders – in particular caring for the sick—will affect girls’ educational prospects.
• SDG 2 – “Zero Hunger”: In countries where social norms imply a preference for boys over girls, the pandemic might magnify these preferences across a wide array of domains. For instance, restricted food resources might lead households where discriminatory social norms are widespread to favour boys over girls, directly affecting SDG 2. Similarly, in a context of limited resources, preference might be given to boys over girls in terms of education and health (SDGs 3 and 4).
• SDG 1 – “No Poverty” and SDG 10 – “Reduced Inequality”: As the economic consequences of the outbreak – e.g. layoffs, income loss, job insecurity—might disproportionately affect women, an increase in women’s poverty levels around the globe is highly likely.

Implications for SDG 5 specifically 

The pandemic will yield severe consequences on the achievement of SDG 5, “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”, specifically. Before the crisis, it was estimated that 2.1 billion girls and women were living in countries that will not achieve gender equality targets by 2030 (Equal Measures 2030, 2020). As the pace of progress slows down, both developed and developing countries require more time and aggressive action to reach gender equality targets. The following SDG 5 targets will be severely affected:

• SDG 5.1 on eliminating all forms of discrimination against women and girls: According to the OECD’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), new legislation to enhance gender equality and abolish discriminatory laws have benefited from increasing political commitments before the crisis (OECD, 2019). However, the health crisis has crippled the legislative system hindering many government’s abilities to pass and implement new legislation.
• SDG 5.2 on eliminating all violence against women and girls: While recent data show that 18% of women have experienced physical and/or sexual partner violence in the previous 12 months, new evidence shows that domestic violence has increased, especially under lockdowns. For example, the UK’s National Domestic Abuse Helpline say a 25% increase in the number of phone calls in the first week of lockdown and a 150% increase in visits to its website (UN Women, 2020).
• SDG 5.3 on eliminating all harmful practices: Before the crisis, evidence showed a decline in the practice of child marriage in both South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (OECD Development Centre, 2019). As poverty increases in the wake of the pandemic child, early and forced marriage, which often stem from economic considerations under extreme poverty, might also increase in developing countries. Meanwhile, in low-income countries, the health crisis will severely cripple the financial capacities and resources of governments, yielding profound effects on the legislative and enforcement capabilities of these countries. Prosecution of perpetrators of female genital mutilation, for instance, might become even more uneven, and there have been reports that the practice has become more common since the pandemic began.
• SDG 5.4 on recognising unpaid care and domestic work: Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, women were already performing 75% of household and care work globally (OECD Development Centre, 2019). The present crisis has highlighted the importance of carers who take care of the older members of society as well as those with existing health issues. Moreover, in many places schools have closed, meaning that children are staying home. These dynamics and all that comes with them, increase the time-burden of unpaid care work. It will likely be very challenging to return to the pre-crisis distribution and nearly impossible to achieve an equitable distribution of unpaid care and domestic work between men and women by 2030.
• SDG 5.6 on ensuring access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights: Provision of sexual and reproductive health commodities, including menstrual health items may be impacted as supply chains undergo strain from the pandemic response (UNFPA, 2020). Evidence from the Zika crisis in Latin America showed that gang violence in El Salvador and Brazil directly affected women’s access to sexual and reproductive health services, with informal networks controlling who had access to supplies and who did not.

Conclusions

As the COVID-19 crisis continues, there is growing recognition of the impact it will have on the goals set forth in the 2030 Agenda. While the past months have shown that adaptation is indeed possible, there is a need to look forward at the impact responses to COVID-19 will have on human development worldwide. In looking forward, it is possible to understand that action taken now will fundamentally shape the future. With this recognition comes the possibility to craft policies that are sensitive to gender inequalities and will allow for equitable recoveries.

Additional Resources from OECD on COVID-19 

• Women at the core of the fight against COVID-19 crisis (OECD Publication)
• Tackling coronavirus (COVID‑19) Contributing to a global effort (OECD’s COVID-19 platform)

References: 

Bandiera, O. et al. (2019). “The Economic Lives of Young Women in the Time of Ebola: Lessons from an Empowerment Program”. Impact Evaluation series, No. WPS 8760. World Bank Group, Washington D.C. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/452451551361923106/The-Economic-Lives-of-Young-Women-in-the-Time-of-Ebola-Lessons-from-an-Empowerment-Program.

Equal Measures 2030 (2020). Bending the Curve Towards Gender Equality by 2030. https://www.equalmeasures2030.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/EM2030BendingTheCurveReportMarch2020.pdf.

OECD (2020). Women at the Core of the Fight Against COVID-19 Crisis. OECD Publishing, Paris. https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=127_127000-awfnqj80me&title=Women-at-the-core-of-the-fight-against-COVID-19-crisis.

OECD (2019). SIGI 2019 Global Report: Transforming Challenges into Opportunities, Social Institutions and Gender Index. OECD Publishing, Paris. https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/bc56d212-en.

OECD Development Centre (2019). Gender, Institutions and Development Database (GID-DB) 2019. https://oe.cd/ds/GIDDB2019.

Sochas, L., A. Channon and S. Nam (2017). “Counting indirect crisis-related deaths in the context of a low-resilience health system: the case of maternal and neonatal health during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone”. Vol. 32, pp. 32-39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czx108.

UNFPA (2020). COVID-19: A Gender Lens – Protecting sexual and reproductive health and rights, and promoting gender equality. UNFPA. https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdf/COVID-19_A_Gender_Lens_Guidance_Note.pdf.

Wenham, C., J. Smith and R. Morgan (2020). COVID-19: the gendered impacts of the outbreak, Lancet Publishing Group. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30526-2.

United Nations (n.d.). Sustainable Development Goal 5. Retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg5.

United Nations (n.d.). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda.

UN Women (2020). COVID-19 and Violence Against Women and Girls: Addressing the Shadow Pandemic.  https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2020/policy-brief-covid-19-and-violence-against-women-and-girls-en.pdf?la=en&vs=5842

Contents:

1. Introduction: educational and political gender inequalities in Sub-Saharan Africa
2. Evidence of the effects of female representation on women’s education
   1. Studies of political gender quotas in India and Africa
   2. Tentative evidence from Uganda
3. Pitfalls of political gender quotas
4. Conclusion
5. References

Introduction: educational and political gender inequalities in sub-Saharan Africa

On average, women have a Human Development Index (HDI) that is 5.9% lower than that of men. In less developed countries, the disparity grows to 13.8% [1]. The UNPD’s Gender Inequality Index (GII), which encompasses health, education, political representation and labour market outcomes, estimates the global loss in achievements due to gender inequalities to be 0.441 [1]. Yet, this figure is even higher in less developed regions, with Sub-Saharan Africa scoring 0.569 on the GII while OECD countries stand, on average, at 0.186 [1]. This article examines two gender gaps in particular–political and educational and the relationship between them.

Regarding education, though great headway has been made in the past two decades in achieving gender parity, girls remain disadvantaged in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa, where according to UNICEF in 2018, 94 girls for every 100 boys, attended primary school, and only 85 attended secondary school [2]. Furthermore, UNESCO shows that in 2016, 9 million girls, as compared with 6 million boys, are expected to remain completely excluded from education [3].

On the other hand, Sub-Saharan Africa has proven itself a frontrunner in gender equality in the political sphere. The 1990s and early 2000s saw many countries in the region adopt affirmative action policies, introducing women into local and national government bodies [4]. These policies have paved the way to achieving female representation figures that far surpass many Western countries. Rwanda most prominently tops global rankings at 61% female seats in parliament – its 30% quota in all decision-making bodies having been implemented in 2003. The likes of South Africa, Mozambique, Burundi, Uganda and more, all stand above 35% compared to the US at 24% for instance [5].

Sub-Saharan Africa’s leadership in women’s political representation and concurrent trailing in educational gender equality, begs the question of how these two domains of gender equality are related. In particular, can female political representation put more girls in school?

Evidence of the effects of female representation on women’s education

On the one hand, women in politics are likely to steer policy agendas towards improving the lives of fellow women [6][7][8]. On the other hand, their mere presence on the political stage may also generate a role model effect, lifting the educational aspirations of other women and girls [9]. Quantitative evidence on the effect of female representation on women’s outcomes in the developing world has largely come from India, due to the country’s policy of randomly assigning one-third of all villages to female-only leadership elections. Random assignment means that all other factors which could also determine women’s outcomes, should, on average, be equally distributed between the group of villages that was assigned to female leadership and the group that was not. Hence, on average, the only difference between these two groups should be whether they were subjected to the female leadership rule or not, and it thus becomes possible to credibly attribute subsequent changes in girls’ education to the presence of a female leader. Beaman et al. (2012) collected data several years after this policy was implemented which reveal that in villages reserved for female leadership, the gender gap in parental as well as girls’ own aspirations for their future (as compared to those for boys), narrowed by 25% and 32% respectively [9]. They also found that the educational gender gap itself entirely vanishes and attribute this to improved aspirations fostered by female role modelling. This is strong evidence that when women enter the political stage, society’s estimation of female value rises, and parents as well as girls themselves invest more in their future.

In Africa, research on the effect of female representation on women’s education is scarce. Dimitrova-Grajzl and Obasanjo (2019) analyze data on GII components for African countries and find no correlation between the presence of a gender quota and women’s education [4]. When they differentiate between types of quotas, they do find that legislative candidate quotas (whereby parties must nominate a certain percentage of women as parliamentary candidates) as opposed to reserved seats (where a certain percentage of seats are reserved for women-only elections), are associated with higher secondary enrollment for girls. They argue that different quota designs lend different degrees of legitimacy to women MPs, which impacts their effectiveness as MPs.

Tentative evidence from Uganda

My research focuses on Uganda, given the lack of quantitative studies of the country’s quota system and its effects – especially on women’s education. The Ugandan gender gap in primary school has decreased markedly thanks largely to the 1997 policy of universal primary education [10]. However, the gap persists from late primary school onwards, with secondary and tertiary gender ratios at 0.89 and 0.27 respectively [11].

To investigate the potential role of female political representation in lifting these ratios, I study Uganda’s 1989 implementation of a parliamentary gender quota. The policy, whereby each district has to elect a female representative, caused a large spike in representation from virtually zero to 34 female MPs (or 12% of seats). I look at cohorts born between 1959 and 1987, calculating the average difference in education of women who completed their education before the quota’s implementation and women who completed it after implementation – those who actually witnessed the rise in female representation while in school. I then compare this difference to the same difference amongst men. Comparing women’s education alone, before and after the quota risks capturing the impact of countless other factors affecting education over time. However, by subtracting the female difference from the male difference, the factors experienced by both men and women can be differenced out. This adds some credibility to the claim of isolating the effect of the quota on women’s education.

Results show that girls who were in school during the spike in female representation saw nearly one more year of education, a 4% higher probability of having finished primary school and 18% higher probability of having entered school at all. These are large, statistically significant, effects, considering that for women who completed their education before the quota, average years of education stood at 3.34 and primary-completion and school-entry rates were 20% and 57% respectively.

Nonetheless, these conclusions should be drawn cautiously, given the difficulty of definitively isolating the effect of the parliamentary quota. Although the double-differencing method eliminates some confounding factors, a definite causal interpretation of the above effects relies on there being no factors affecting education which varied over time (from before to after the quota) while also varying between women and men. In truth, one such factor, which is difficult to control for, is the growing women’s movement and the fact that regardless of the quota, since as early as the 1940s, it is likely that women’s education was increasing at a faster rate than men’s as a result of gradually improving societal attitudes.

Pitfalls of political gender quotas

Quotas are undoubtedly an effective means of increasing female representation, however, there is ongoing debate on whether they are detrimental to meritocracy and whether women elected within a quota system suffer from less legitimacy. In Uganda in particular, the quota’s design has been accused of being a patronage-spreading tool [12]. Since it is a reserved seat quota whereby every district in the country must proffer a female MP, the incumbent party’s frequent district-creation has led critics to claim it opens its doors to women MPs only to illicit loyalty and geographically advance their influence, illegitimating female MPs in the eyes of the electorate. Policy recommendations regarding gender quotas should thus take into account the diversity of quota systems and their relative advantages and disadvantages.

Conclusion

Though much more research is necessary to be able to draw generalizable conclusions, women’s political presence might be a promising tool to promote women’s education in the developing world. Indeed, female schooling can be most effectively promoted through direct supply or demand-side policies; however, synergies between gender equality in different domains should certainly be welcomed and further explored.

About the author:

Maike Kusserow has recently graduated from the University of Warwick with a BSc in Economics & Politics with study abroad at Sciences Po Paris. She is German-Colombian and grew up between East Africa, Germany, Austria and Colombia. She is passionate about issues of gender inequality and has a great interest in development economics. Her research, “Can political gender equality promote educational gender equality? Impacts of a parliamentary gender quota on women’s education in Uganda”, is available upon request.

References

The SIGI shows that women undertake 75% of the unpaid care and domestic work worldwide, and more must be done to recognise, redistribute and reduce this time burden on women.

The #HowICare Campaign

Promundo and Oxfam’s #HowICare Campaign is an opportunity for a wide variety of voices to demand, together, a transformation of the gendered dynamics of unpaid care work. In particular, the campaign aims to “aims to shed a light on the realities, difficulties, and disparities of providing care – specifically in caring for children, in order to advocate for additional support for caregivers – including the parents and care workers who are most impacted – during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.”

The #HowICare campaign is part of a global call for:

1. Universal access to paid sick and family and medical leave.
2. 100% paid leave. 
3. Equal, fully paid, non-transferable parental leave for parents.
4. Action to ensure childcare infrastructures survive the COVID-19 pandemic.
5. A challenge to harmful norms and sexist beliefs.
6. Flexible working hours and conditions.
7. Social protection programs to support caregivers and recognize care as work.

How to Participate?

When? 18 June – 21 June 2020

Where? On Twitter using the hashtag ‘#HowICare’ and tagging @MenCareGlobal as well as @Promundo_US, @Oxfam, and @OxfamAmerica

How? Messaging guidance available here.

Remarks by Angel Gurría,

Secretary-General, OECD

New York, 21 September 2016

(As prepared for delivery)

Your Excellency Dalia Grybauskaite, Excellencies, Ministers, dear colleagues,

It is a great privilege to be here alongside world leaders who are working to end violence against women and girls. Violence that is an affront to our basic human rights, and that affects not only individuals, but also our families, our societies, and our economies.

Those of us who were here in New York last year for the launch of the SDGs will recall the excitement, the ambition, the genuine consensus. The inclusion of a target for the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls is, I believe, a particularly strong achievement of the SDGs. Now we need to get on and do it!

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, no country is immune from this pandemic, and no country can afford to ignore it. Each of us must be part of the solution.

At the OECD, we’re deploying all the tools we have to support these efforts. This includes better evidence, improved public policies, and enforceable standards. Allow me to say a few words about each of these.

More data, better quantification of the costs of violence against women

First, we’re increasing our focus on evidence. Data on the prevalence and incidence of gender-based violence remain scarce, yet it’s crucial if we’re serious about meeting SDG Target 5.2.

Our new research will enable cross-country comparison across all OECD countries. And as we work with the OECD countries to track what they’re doing to tackle violence against women and girls, we will also track what they do to support partner countries. Just last year we upgraded our statistical system to allow us to track – for the first time ever – aid in support of ending violence against women.

Evidence of effort also needs to be matched with evidence of impact. And here I am talking about impact on people – on individual women and girls. We will expand our work on well-being to shine a spotlight on the links between women’s well-being and violence. We will look at quantifying the true costs of violence by including the impact on subjective well-being. Initial research suggests that being assaulted may be equivalent, in life satisfaction terms, to losing between 50,000 and 90,000 US dollars in annual income. It might sound crude – and sometimes these estimates are – but very often, putting a number to an issue is an effective way of drawing attention to it.

Better policies to help stamp out discrimination

Second, we will focus on policies that respond to the discriminatory social norms that drive violence. Our Social Institutions and Gender Index, or SIGI, looks at laws, attitudes, social norms and practices around violence against women. Across the 160 countries included in SIGI, one in three women agrees that domestic violence is justified; in some countries, these acceptance rates climb close to 90%. How can we even begin to tackle violence if women believe it can be justified?

Our estimates suggest that discriminatory social institutions – including violence against women – cost the global economy approximately 12 trillion US dollars a year. So while it is critical to put in place laws, budgets and plans to transform discriminatory social norms, we also need to empower women and girls, men and boys, to challenge – and change – these norms.

Better standards, safer economies

Finally, we will continue our work on global standards to empower women as economic actors and prevent violence against them in global supply chains. We are particularly proud of our co-operation with the UN Security Council to prevent conflict financing and violence against women in the production and trade of minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Côte d’Ivoire, for example. This work has helped to improve market access for more than 100,000 artisanal miners, many of them women. It’s also helped to eradicate the economic opportunities that fuel the armed groups that prey on women and girls.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I have shared just a few examples of how we, at the OECD, are acting on violence against women. Better data, better policies, better standards. The human rights imperative is crystal clear. The economic case has been made. Now let’s get on and deliver better gender policies and better policies on violence against women and girls.

Thank you.

Resources

• OECD work on gender equality
• Mr. Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the OECD, in New York from 18 to 23 September 2016

Un article publié dans Slate.fr mentionne le site de l’OCDE pour préparer aux mieux la Journée Internationale de la Femme du 8 mars.

Le site de l’OCDE contient une rubrique de statistiques se concentrant sur les inégalités entre les hommes et les femmes dans les domaines de l’éducation, du travail et de l’entrepreneuriat dans les 36 pays membres (principalement en Europe et en Amérique du Nord).

Il y a en particulier un indicateur très intéressant, celui du temps que les hommes passent à effectuer des tâches domestiques non-rémunérées (qui incluent la cuisine, le ménage ou encore la garde des enfants). L’article a rassemblé les données dans la carte ci-dessous.

Pour en savoir plus,

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