Transcript Transforming gendered relationships: Rural women in Africa

The struggle for jobs, rights
and democracy in a
globalized world: Focus on
rural women in Africa
Vishanthie Sewpaul (PhD)
Senior Professor: UKZN
President: NASW, SA
Chair: ASASWEI
ILO 2008 Global employment trends
Globalization and technological changes are
impacting labour markets around the world
 Economic integration and progress – not
translated into decent work
5 of 10 people in the world - in vulnerable
employment; 4 of 10 cannot lift their families out
of poverty despite working
* Full and productive employment and decent work
added to MDG 1 in 2006 – only route out of
poverty
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Key ILO findings
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Decline in employment to population ratio between 1997
and 2007
49.1% of women employed compared with 74.3% men
Minority in poor countries have well paid decent jobs
Service sector provides 42.7% of jobs – agriculture
accounts for only 34.9%
Sub- Saharan Africa – high rates of vulnerable
employment – over 70%; for women it is 81.7%
64% live in rural areas; 229 million extremely poor
live in rural areas
In 2007 – 85.4% of those employed still lived on less
than $ 2 per day
Today the attention of the world’s policy
makers is foused on sub-prime woes,
and financial crises. But the real crisis
is that of hunger and malnutrition …75%
of the world’s poor people are rural and
most of them depend on agriculture for
their livelihoods. Agriculture is … a
fundamental instrument for fighting
hunger, malnutrition, and for supporting
sustainable development and poverty
reduction (Okonjo-Iweala, 2008).
Axiomatic analysis
2008 – Year of hunger [food & fuel protests]
Failure to consider the gendered dimensions
of poverty and malnutrition
Significant roles women play in agriculture
Rural women – bottom of social strata
Personal and political worlds of women
Transforming relationships between men and
women and challenging patriarchy central to
women’s financial and political liberation
Charters, conventions & declarations
Geneva Declaration for Rural Women
Gender matters!!!
One chromosome makes a world of
difference
Confuse sex difference with gender
stereotypes
The power of patriarchal thinking
Having obtained many rights, they are
dissatisfied with not having more … indeed
there are definite advantages to their
present status. They have not been trained
for equal status and responsibility. They
seem naturally adapted to their less free,
less responsible, more serving role. They
are in danger of losing what makes them
unique and lovable if they gain equal status
Rural Black African women – triple
jeopardy
Geneva declaration:
…in many developing countries women constitute
more than 50% of the rural population and up to
50-70% of the agricultural labour force. Without
their effective participation neither democracy nor
development can be sustained. It is therefore
necessary that rural women’s multiple
contributions to the family, to democracy and to
development be acknowledged and properly
valued.
Rural – urban differences
• South Africa
• 15% rural women have school leaving
certificate compared with 50% for urban
women
• 16% rural women – no schooling relative to
3% of urban women
• 36% of urban women employed – 20% rural
women
• Register women in farm households as
“housewives”
• Casual, informal and unregulated labour –
globalisation of capital
Rural women in subSaharan Africa
• Do 80% of food storage & transportation
work;
• 80% of food processing work;
• 60% of work to bring food to the market
• Care of children, the sick & elderly
• Domestic chores
• Rural women who are HIV+
• Fetching water and firewood
• Female headed households – 31%
17% Latin America & Caribbean
14% in Asia
Rural women: access to water
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Fundamental human right
Lack – precursor to and consequence of
poverty
Denial of other rights – life, health, safety,
food & education
Commodified within neoliberal framework
Different roles of men and women in
securing water
Precludes women’s participation in
educational, cultural & political activities
School drop out among girls; sexual abuse
In Africa 40 billion work hours lost annually to
the need to obtain drinking water
1.1 billion people lack access to potable water
2.2 million die each year from diseases linked to
lack of water and poor hygiene
More than 1.3 billion live on less than $1 per day
3 billion live on less than $2 per day
Women’s Human Rights Network
6 kilometers to fetch water
 Carries 20 kgs on her head
 When one flushes a toilet – one uses
same amount of water used by a person
in the Third World all day to cook, wash,
clean and drink
 People in Nairobi pay 5 times more per
litre than North Americans
 1.5 billion people suffer from preventable
parasitic infections
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Haws (Water for People Project)
The
sheer
backbreaking
routine
of
finding
and
collecting water is only one
aspect of the debilitating link
between women and water in
the developing world
Skewed development – linked to globalisation
Globalization – widening inequalities within and across nations
While a colleague of mine in Sweden mobilises his local
community for access to broadband – their most pressing
perceived need being easier and faster internet connection – a
woman in Ethiopia ages rapidly as she carries the burden of
survival on her back – heavy loads of eucalyptus branches –
over several miles down a mountain in order to earn a mere US
$ 1 or to light fire for the day.
What is happening in Ethiopia must be a concern for the
developed west
Impact of globalisation and SAPS in Africa – women
& children most vulnerable to its effects
The market does not and will not provide access to
education, health care for all or a safety net
Agribusiness multinationals are having
a devastating effect on small farmers
Africa reels under pressures of free
market ideology and SAPS
40% of African children do not attend primary school
30 million Africans have HIV/AIDS
40% of Africa’s wealth is held overseas
Africa’s debt crisis worsened as globalisation
intensified
Debt servicing – increased ill-health, malnutrition
and death
Developing countries paid US$ 1.662 trillion in debt
servicing between 1980 – 1992 (three times the
original amount owed in 1980) yet the debt still
stands at over US$ 2 trillion
Third world has paid almost a trillion dollars of
principle over and above US$ 771 in interest
Skewed development between the
North and the South: Average GDP
Developed countries
- $30 000
Latin America & Caribbean
- $ 6 000
North Africa
- $ 4 000
Sub-Saharan Africa
- $ 2 000
Ethiopia
- $ 700
Six other African countries
- $ 600 or less
The poor are defined as incompetent, under the
assumption that one becomes primarily what one
is capable of accomplishing
Social & economic exclusions fostered by process of
“othering”
Compromised workers rights
• Marx: “Fetishism of commodities”
• “Price is the form in which that chain of human
activity & human relationships appears to us … We
know nothing about the lives of all those people who
have produced the things we purchase … social
ignorance is what permits us to be divided, turned
against each other, and exploited by the owners of
commodities”
(Lebowitz,
2005)
Naomi Klein: “No Logo” – greatest impact on women &
children
Media – disguises the uneven impacts of globalization
So why does neoliberal capitalism endure?:
Taken-for-granted assumption: convergence
between democracy & the market
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DEMOCRACY
Human rights & social
justice
People participation
Respect: human
dignity & environment
- Access to information
Expanded freedom of
choice
MARKET
Profit & corporate
greed
* Centralized power
Indifference to
suffering, inequality &
to the environment
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Ideas commodified
Constricted choice to
illness, starvation &
death
Marcuse
• This hegemonic ruling process is so
successful that most people cannot even
conceive of any alternative to capitalism
…the ruling class alliance has managed to
secure through the state such a total social
authority over the subordinate classes that
it shapes the whole direction of social life
in its interests
• Power
of
ideological
hegemony
–
internalization of societal oppression
Dynamics of internalised oppression of women
Access to education and access to credit without collateral for women
should be enshrined in a Bill of Rights
Decent work – a basic human right?
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Inequalities engendered by neoliberal
capitalism
Advocacy, lobbying , social activism
All levels – link “communities of
resistance” – solidarity of workers
The peaceful non-violent activism of
Gandhi, the civil rights movement of
Martin Luther King, and the revolts against
the slave trade were all successful not
because they made economic sense but
because they had moral and ethical appeal
(Sacks, 2005).
Not only moral imperative – pragmatic &
in the interests of everybody
Single community based efforts are not large
enough to challenge the enormous power of
corporate capital or centralized government.
Because community problems, almost always
originate beyond local borders, the ability to
effect change depends to a great extent upon
building coalitions, alliances, networks and
progressive political parties. The success of
such efforts, however, ultimately will be
based upon whether specific ways can be
found to break down racial and cultural
barriers
that
are
so
prevalent
and
threatening […] throughout the world
(Fischer & and Kling in Leonard, 1997).
Education!!!
• OURSELVES & communities
• Deconstruct the massive legitimating power
of capitalism & patriarchy – freedom from
self-imposed constraints
• Develop critical consciousness
• Intersection of race, class & gender
• Examination of oppression & of privilege
• Put radical theory in moral terms
• Envision alternative world orders
Sam Gindin: Canadian radical
labourer
The real issue about “alternatives” isn’t about
alternative
policies
or
about
alternative
governments, but about an alternative politics.
Neither well meaning policies nor sympathetic
governments can fundamentally alter our lives
unless they are a part of a fundamental challenge to
capital … making alternatives possible requires a
movement that is changing political culture …
bringing more people into everyday struggles and
deepening the understanding and organisational
skills of activists along with their commitment to
radical change
No alternative politics without women and without
workers!!!