|
Get AfricaFocus Bulletin by e-mail!
Print this page
|
Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action
from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived
document may not work.
|
South Africa: Gender Inequality
South Africa: Gender Inequality
Date distributed (ymd): 990822
Document reposted by APIC
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Southern Africa
Issue Areas: +economy/development+ +gender/women+
Summary Contents:
This posting contains excerpts from a Women's Day speech to
the Professional Women's League of KwaZulu Natal, laying out
the implications of gender inequality for strategies for
economic development. The focus is on South Africa, but the
clear explication of the themes is relevant for other
countries as well
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Note to readers: The Africa Policy Electronic List resumes
with this posting after a three-week vacation break. The last
previous postings were on July 31. A reminder to new and old
readers: This selection of two to three policy-relevant
documents a week does not provide regular "news" coverage on
any of the topics or countries covered. To the extent
possible, each posting refers to original sources which can be
consulted for more extensive and regular information. For
links to a wide variety of country-specific and thematic links
to news and background information, visit:
http://www.africapolicy.org
Gender Inequality and the Economy:
Empowering Women in the new South Africa
Keynote speech at Professional Women's League of
KwaZuluNatal, August 9, 1999
Excerpts only in this posting; the full speech is available on
Womensnet (http://womensnet.org.za/news/speech.htm).
To
subscribe to womensnet_news, seed an email message, with a
blank subject line, to listproc@lists.sn.apc.org.
In the message box type:
subscribe womensnet_news Firstname Lastname
By Zarina Maharaj
This is the last Women's Day of the last decade of this
century and of this millennium. This last decade of the 1990s
in SA is destined to be stamped in history with two
outstanding achievements. One is the birth of a constitutional
state and multiparty democracy based on one-person-one-vote.
The other is the constitutional commitment to eliminating
discrimination in our country, particularly the racial and
gender discrimination responsible for the gross inequalities
that divide and haunt us as a nation.
One such inequality is in income. South Africa has one of the
largest income inequalities in the world. The average income
of the richest 20% of South African households, largely white,
is 45 times more than the average income of the poorest 20% of
households, largely black and mostly African. ...
Where do women fit into this picture of income inequality? The
majority of the nation's poor are women. Of these, rural
African women, whose incomes are mainly from pensions and
remittances from relatives, are the majority of the poorest of
the poor, defined as those belonging to households which fall
in the poorest 20% of South African households with an income
of between R400 and R700 per month. According to Statistics
SA (SSA), which has compared the incomes of households headed
by women with those of households headed by men, over 37% of
women-headed households in non-urban areas fall in the
category of the poorest 20% of households in the country, as
compared with 23% of male-headed households in non-urban
areas. In urban areas, 15% of women-headed households are
among the poorest 20% of households, as compared with 5% of
male-headed households there. ...
Apart from inequalities in income, there are other racial and
gender inequalities. In SA there is glaring unequal access to
social resources like land, healthcare, credit, information,
education and decision-making power between the races and
between the sexes. ...
What unites us as South African women across the diversity of
our race, religion and socio-economic status is that we do not
enjoy the same access as the men in our social groups to our
country's resources. But precisely how male domination and
female subordination in society play out in South Africa and
how it affects our particular experiences and the quality of
our lives, differs sharply according to whether we are white,
African, Coloured or Indian. It is African women who make up
the majority of those suffering the experiences of being poor;
it is rural African women who make up the majority of the
poorest of the poor, those who do not have enough to eat.
Male domination arising from such inequalities is reflected in
the rapes, femicides and other sexual violence affecting
mostly poor women that have today reached such crisis
proportions. One in every three women in SA is in an abusive
relationship, a woman is killed by her partner every six days
and there is a rape every 35 seconds. No wonder we are the
rape capital of the world! This is now being seen as a
national disaster requiring emergency measures. Let us for a
moment remember, with South African women across the country,
the victims of sexual violence, murder and assault.
Such violence, which is putting an enormous strain on health
facilities and costing the economy millions of rands each
year, is being nurtured by gender inequalities which make
women poorer than men. I will discuss some of these here.
Let me start with the inequality in the wages of men and women
in the formal sector of the economy, the sector whose goods
and services are counted in calculations of the GDP. This
discussion is based on a study by Carolyn Winter, the results
of which were shared with women activists by Judith Edstrom
when she was in SA with the World Bank.
The educational attainment of the South African population
varies by race from an average of under six years for Africans
and Coloureds to eight years for Indians and almost ten years
for whites. But surprisingly it is relatively equal for both
men and women, compared with many countries, where men have
more schooling than women
Of those in the labour force, women have an average of 1,2
years more education than men. Globally, years of education is
a predictor of occupation and occupation is a predictor of
wage levels. We would therefore expect that South African
women would do reasonably well on the remuneration front,
especially in professional and technical employment where 21%
of economically active women are represented as compared with
only 12% of economically active men. This strong showing of
women in the professional and technical fields lies partly in
their orientation towards teaching and nursing.
However, South African women's wages average only 87% of men's
in the formal labour force. The breakdown by race presents a
further surprise: African women's wages are actually identical
to African men's. But African women average two more years of
education than African men. On this basis their salaries
should be 20% more. Moreover, white women's salaries average
67% of white men's despite having equal educational
attainment. Coloured women's educational advantage over men
also fails to translate into a wage advantage. Indian women do
not have an educational advantage over Indian men so their
lower salaries in relation to their menfolk does not irk as
much.
... Women's wages do not reflect their human capital.
And simply because of their sex.
As is to be expected, the average hourly earnings of all women
employees across both the formal and informal sectors (and
this includes domestic workers) is also less than that of men
employees. According to gender statistics produced by
Statistics South Africa (SSA), African women's earnings
average 89% of African men's; white women's average 60% of
white men's; Indian women's average 74% of Indian men's; and
Coloured women 's earnings average 82% of Coloured men's.
There are also statistics revealing inequalities in levels of
employment, levels of education, decision-making positions,
access to health facilities and so on. But I will not go into
these here. Instead, I want to turn to a very useful single
measure of the overall extent of gender inequality in a
country. It is a measure used by the UNDP, which devised it,
for comparing the levels of gender inequality both in
different countries and at different stages in the development
of one country.
This measure is based on the UNDP's so-called Human
Development Index, HDI for short. The HDI allows countries to
be ranked in order of their human or social development. In
extracting the indicators needed to calculate the HDI, the UN
asked: what are the basic capabilities that people must have
to participate in and contribute to the devlopment of their
society? The answer was: an ability to lead a long and healthy
life, to be knowledgeable and to have access to the resources
needed for a decent standard of living. These factors
translate into a society's life expectancy at birth; its level
of educational attainment; and the income regarded as adequate
for a decent standard of living. The HDI measures a country's
achievement in providing these basic capabilities to its
population as a whole.
Now when such achievement in basic capabilities is measured
for only the women of a population, it is called the Gender
Development Index or GDI. The difference between the HDI and
the GDI thus amounts to a measure of the gender inequality in
these basic capabilities - capabilities which impact on a
person's access to the rest of society's resources. As such,
the difference between the HDI and the GDI is an indicator of
the overall gender difference in access to society's
resources, an indicator of the overall gender inequality in a
nation.
I have used this measure in previous writings about women's
situation in society and have introduced a name for it because
it is so useful. I have called it GIM, the Gender Inequality
Measure, not previously named (GIM is not to be confused with
GEM, which is an indicator of the decision-making power of
women).
If you look at the HDI and GDI of South Africa for 1996, 1997
and 1998, you will find GIM has steadily been increasing. This
means growing gender inequalities in SA, in spite of some
women's empowerment efforts already having taken off. The
increase in GIM can be explained by gender inequalities in
life expectancy implied by the higher rate at which women are
becoming HIV-infected relative to men. More than 90% of South
Africans with Aids are Africans, mainly aged between 15 and
40. Over two thirds of these are women, whose infection rate
is escalating faster than men's.
The rate of infection is greatest among people between 15 and
25, the majority of them African, with girls and young women
especially at risk: for every one male that is infected, two
females are. In fact, while a third more South Africans have
contacted the virus since 1997, there is a shocking 65%
increase in the rate of infection of women of all races aged
between 15 and 19. And a 40% increase since 1997 amongst women
as a whole.
The huge costs to the economy, direct and hidden, is a topic
in itself, which time does not allow me to discuss.
The increase in GIM is also explained by the trend of women's
incomes falling more rapidly than men's to below the poverty
line. Globally, it has been established that 50% more women as
compared with 30% more men have become income-impoverished
over the last few years. This is the so-called 'feminisation
of poverty'. ...
Let us look at this growing inequality in South Africa picked
up by GIM from the point of view of its effect on the economy.
I will show that such inequality is bad for the economy
because it stifles the contribution women make to social
development and economic growth.
In an article in a 1997 issue of Agenda, a South African
women's journal, the economist Dori Posel discusses her
research on the expenditure patterns of households in SA. She
has found that households headed by women spend more income on
the nutritional needs of children than male-headed households.
And that if consumption patterns in male-headed households
were to mirror those in female-headed households, the
incidence of malnutrition in SA would fall by at least 12%.
She found also that women, even in households that they share
with men, tend to spend more on children on items other than
food. Unlike men, who even in poor households withhold income
for personal consumption of things like beer and cigarettes,
women's income is more tied up with the collective needs of
the family. A woman would be more likely than a man to spend
her overtime pay or bonus on something like a winter coat or
school fees for her child.
Such evidence is telling. An income in the hands of a woman
has a bigger multiplier effect in terms of greater benefits to
child health and family welfare and education than the same
income in the hands of a man. Put differently, women's incomes
go further towards household survival and human capital
investment than men's. This finding is backed by research in
other countries. ...
Because women spend a greater proportion of their income on
family nutrition and welfare than men, raising their incomes
amounts to accelerating poverty alleviation and the quality of
life of their families more rapidly than doing the same for
men. This means quicker improvements in productivity and
economic output.
But spinoffs via the family to the economy have been found to
come not just from improving the income generating prospects
of women. Improving women's health and education has been
found to be another cost-effective route to growing the
economy.
A World Bank report entitled 'Enhancing Women's Participation
in Economic Development' starts from the premise that economic
development is best served when scarce public resources are
invested where they yield the highest social and economic
returns. It shows, on the basis of worldwide studies that it
has carried out, that such returns are, on the whole, greater
for women than for men.
For example, in countries where modern agricultural
technologies have been introduced, returns on an additional
year of women's education range from 2% to 15%, more than the
returns for the same educational investment in men. Policy
experiments in Kenya suggest that primary schooling for women
agricultural workers raises their agricultural yields by as
much as 24%.
Improving women's educational levels also lowers fertility and
slows population growth, which is a return central to
sustainable development. Better educated women also means a
reduction in infant mortality. It was found that even with an
extremely poor country with a GDP per person of $300, a
doubling of female secondary school enrolments reduced the
infant mortality rate from 105 deaths to 78 deaths per 1000
live births.
Such a drop is greater than that achieved by direct health
interventions that cost the same as doubling the secondary
school attendance for girls. In developing nations like ours,
children of educated mothers perform better on pre-school
tests and daughters of educated mothers hold fewer
stereotypical sex attitudes than do daughters of non-literate
mothers. Moreover, the school participation rates of rural
girls increase far more when their mothers' education changes
from none to primary level than when their father's education
changes in this way.
There are also significant payoffs to development when scarce
resources are invested in the health of women. Take one
example. It has been found that public spending to improve the
healthcare for adult women aged between 15 and 44 - women of
reproductive age - offers a bigger return on healthcare
spending than for any other population group of adults. The
major causes of disability and death of women of this age
worldwide include illnesses associated with pregnancy and
childbirth, respiratory infections and anaemia, TB, STD's and
AIDS. All six of these illnesses can either be prevented or
treated for less than a $100 per woman for a year of healthy
life gained. For men on the other hand, only 3 out of the 10
illnesses afflicting them can be prevented or treated for less
than a $100.
Similar analyses are still to be made in SA, but the
statistics disaggregated by gender required for such studies
are already coming together. Statistics on Aids together with
others such as those in the SSA booklet 'Women and Men in
South Africa' constitute a baseline for such analyses as well
as for measuring and monitoring progress in women's access to
various resources from year to year. As such gender statistics
are a tool for monitoring progress in the empowerment of
women.
Such findings by the World Bank provide overwhelming evidence
for what is becoming received wisdom in economists' circles:
that investing in women's education, health and
income-generating opportunities strongly contribute to an
improved quality of life of a nation and to poverty
alleviation, thus providing a more cost-efficient route to
economic growth and human capital development than if this
growth were left to men alone.
This is why empowerment and economic growth need and feed each
other. This is why empowerment aimed at the equality of women
is a catalyst for economic growth. This is why women's issues
are issues of social justice as well as of economics.
Perhaps those reluctant to support the cause of gender
equality in SA will change their minds when they realise that
their pockets are affected by this issue: the bigger the
national cake, the bigger all our slices, men's and women's.
If nothing else will persuade them, men have an economic stake
in women's well-being. Gender discrimination stunts our
economic growth and everyone's development. ...
To conclude: As SA sheds the legacy of its iniquitous past
into a future founded on social justice and equality, there
are 1001 issues clawing for attention. But there are real
resource and capacity constraints which limit giving each one
of them the attention they deserve. It is therefore critical
that from this multitude of issues a set of priorities be
extracted that will deliver efficiently on the goal of the
upliftment of our society. I have tried to show why the
empowerment of women is one such priority issue - advancing
social justice through gender equality has an economic
spinoff: it accelerates social and economic development.
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC's primary
objective is to widen the policy debate in the United States
around African issues and the U.S. role in Africa, by
concentrating on providing accessible policy-relevant
information and analysis usable by a wide range of groups and
individuals.
|
