AFRICAN WOMEN HIT BY SHIFT FROM LABOUR-INTENSIVE JOBS, RELIANCE ON FAMILY AS LAST-RESORT PROVIDER

Press Release
GA/EF/2883

AFRICAN WOMEN HIT BY SHIFT FROM LABOUR-INTENSIVE JOBS, RELIANCE ON FAMILY AS LAST-RESORT PROVIDER

Winding Up Debate On Women In Development, Second Committee Hears Range Of Views On Progress Since Beijing

The burden placed on women in developing countries, both inside and outside the home, had increased as a result of globalization, the representative of Pakistan told the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) this afternoon as it concluded its consideration of women in development.

She said that much of the job creation resulting from globalization had involved informal, irregular forms of work which were low paying, insecure and with little in the way of training or promotion prospects. Informalization also meant that many of the costs of market volatility and economic recession were borne by the most vulnerable workers –- women, since they were less likely to be covered by labour regulations and laws dealing with social and employment security, especially in developing countries. In times of economic difficulty, the family became the welfare provider of the last resort. Since women had primary responsibility for care of the home and family, the demands placed on them had increased.

Cindy Berman, from the International Labour Organization (ILO), said that women’s participation in the labour market had increased dramatically over the past few decades. Yet, across the board, the quantity of new jobs created had not had the simultaneous effect of improving the quality of life for the majority of women, or the quality of work they were offered in the global market economy. Poor working conditions, low pay and an absence of social protection characterized most of the newly created jobs for women. In the context of ILO’s own work, analysis had shown that gender issues were complex and cross-cutting, and affected all aspects of employment.

Leueen Miller, Officer-in-Charge, Gender in Development Programme, Bureau for Development Policy, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said that specific and regularly encountered problems concerning gender equality in the workplace had been identified. Women

Second Committee - 1a - Press Release GA/EF/2883 27th Meeting (PM) 29 October 1999

continued to experience difficulties in being recognized as professional colleagues and equals, and still faced unacceptably high levels of sexual harassment. One area that presented particular challenges to a gender mainstreaming agenda was that of tracking and measurement, which was closely related to ensuring full accountability.

The Namibian representative said that many African countries were being marginalized in the process of globalization, and it was women who carried a disproportionate burden of the impact of that marginalization. Loss of employment in developing countries, and mainly in Africa, had occurred as a result of trade liberalization. The loss of jobs by women in Africa was a result of the continuing switch from labour-intensive industries to light-technology ones. Education and training of women were imperative if their absorption into the newly created manufacturing jobs was to be achieved.

Commercialization and market liberalization, as they affected agriculture, had also had an impact on the situation of women, she added. It had altered the gender division of labour, with a resultant impact on food security and the welfare of farming households.

Statements were also made by the representatives of Syria, Republic of Korea, Nigeria, Kuwait, Cuba, Japan and Tunisia. The representatives of the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) also addressed the Committee.

The Committee will meet again at 10 a.m. on Monday, 1 November, to begin its consideration of high-level international intergovernmental consideration of financing for development.

Committee Work Programme

The Second Committee (Economic and Financial) met this afternoon to continue its consideration of women in development.

Statements

RANDA RIZK (Syria) said that the various United Nations conferences of the past decade had revealed a consensus to the effect that the role of women in development was a question of special importance. As was well known, most of the poor were women. Syria contemplated dedicating a special day to mark that fact. The role of women in every area of decision-making was important. Women should have every right to accede to all levels in political life. Women should be able to play a role in diplomacy. They should have the right to vote, and to earn equal pay for equal work. Any obstacles to those goals must be eliminated.

In Syria, women took an effective part in politics, in unions and in press associations, at the highest levels. The strategy was to implement the Beijing Programme of Action, ensure work for women and to guarantee equal access. However, the Committee should also consider with regard to that area, the negative impact on women’s lives of foreign occupation. Syrian women in the occupied Golan, and Palestinian women in the occupied territories were victims of the forced break up of their families, and of violations of basic rights such as nutrition and housing.

CINDY BERMAN, Adviser, International Labour Organization (ILO), said that women’s participation in the labour market had increased dramatically over the past few decades. Yet, across the board, the quantity of new jobs created had not had the simultaneous effect of improving the quality of life for the majority of women or the quality of work they were offered in the global market economy. Poor working conditions, low pay and an absence of social protection characterized most of the newly created jobs for women. In the context of ILO’s own work, analysis had shown that gender issues were complex and cross-cutting, and affected all aspects of employment. In tackling the challenges of globalization, poverty and gender relations, it had been necessary to take a comprehensive, holistic and multi-disciplinary approach. The Beijing Conference had established gender mainstreaming as the main global strategy for promoting gender equality across the world. While mainstreaming was one of the means to achieve gender equality, the ILO, among others, had also argued that it should go alongside special targeting of interventions to achieve the goal.

The ILO was currently focusing on four strategic areas, with gender as a primary cross-cutting theme in each area, she said. First, promoting core labour standards and fundamental rights at work. Second, employment, with the objective of providing decent work for all, with an emphasis on more and better jobs for women. Third, adequate social protection, particularly for those in part-time and temporary work, which affected mainly women. Fourth, the ILO focused on the need for social dialogue aimed at broad-based participation, and stressed the urgent need to give women a voice in decision-making at all levels of society. The ILO’s Director-General, Juan Somavia, had made gender a priority concern.

PIL-WOO KIM (Republic of Korea) said that the empowerment of women and gender mainstreaming were now at the centre of global efforts to advance sustainable human development. His country welcomed national and global initiatives to ensure equal opportunities for both genders. Much more work was still needed to transform concept into action. The impact of globalization on the economic and social life of women needed serious attention.

He welcomed the insightful reports of the Secretary-General on women in development, and especially the 1999 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development, which contained valid policy guidelines for advancing the role of women. The establishment of a world gender policy was crucial. One of the priorities of that policy should be improving gender equality in the labour market. Continued investment in human capital was another critical way to capitalize on women’s potential in the context of development. Another good step would be to take a gender perspective into account when restructuring economic and social policies. Immediate action to implement gender awareness was urgently needed. The United Nations special session next year on women would provide an opportunity to create more viable ways to advance the role of women in development.

LILIAN ONOH (Nigeria) said that women were disproportionately affected by the adverse results of globalization, including the fall out from the financial crises, reduced job security and stability. The possibilities of flexible employment hours had been both a blessing and a disadvantage. The gender wage gap was one of the indicators of women’s disadvantaged position in the labour market. She noted that Nigeria’s labour code had made it illegal to pay women, who had the same qualifications as men and were performing similar jobs, less than their male counterparts.

Globalization probably could not be stopped, she said. However, that phenomenon would be less understood by Nigeria, as indeed by many other countries, in its extension to the cultural domain, where everything, including the role of women, was reduced to the common denominator of the price mechanism. The contribution of wives and mothers in all societies was beyond any monetary measurement, but not beyond acknowledgement, because the concept of development included more than just the gross domestic product (GDP) of a nation.

TAREQ AL-BANAI (Kuwait) said that gender issues were closely linked to development and peace. Kuwait was particularly concerned with the status of women. Its Constitution stressed the equality of the sexes. The Government was convinced that equality was a key building-block in the construction of a sustainable environment for development. Women were a powerhouse for change in all areas. Investing in women’s development brought positive returns in productivity and sustainable economic growth. Kuwait was supportive of efforts to promote women in all sectors, and to remove all obstacles for women in areas such as education. Women constituted 40 per cent of the Kuwaiti workforce, the highest of any Arab country. In May, women were given electoral rights, with a mark of the Government’s awareness of their important contribution to all sectors of society.

The Kuwaiti people had not forgotten the pioneering role played by its women during the Iraqi occupation, he continued. They were martyrs in the cause alongside their fathers, sons and brothers. There were Kuwaiti women who still bore the scars of that occupation. Among the 605 prisoners captured by Iraq, seven were women. Unfortunately, the issue of those prisoners had been turned into a political question, instead of a humanitarian issue, which is what it was Iraq must be persuaded to show that it had peaceful intentions, and that the prisoner issue was an opportunity to demonstrate those intentions.

SELMA ASHIPALA-MUSAVYI (Namibia) said that some sections of the World Survey on the Role of Women gave short shrift to the situation of women in Africa. The report was a clear illustration of the fact that in the process of globalization many African countries were being marginalized -- and it was women who carried a disproportionate burden of the impact of that marginalization. Loss of employment in developing countries, and mainly in Africa, had occurred as a result of trade liberalization. The loss of jobs by women in Africa was a result of the continuing switch from labour-intensive industries to light-technology ones. Education and training of women were imperative if their absorption into the newly created manufacturing jobs was to be achieved.

Commercialization and market liberalization, as they affected agriculture, had also had an impact on the situation of women, she said. It had altered the gender division of labour, with a resultant impact on food security and the welfare of farming households. The Government of Namibia, having realized the importance of household subsistence production by women for food security, had taken measures to support such production by adopting a new national agricultural policy. That policy targeted small and medium-scale farmers, particularly in female-headed households.

DIANE ELSON, Special Adviser to the Executive Director, United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), said that UNIFEM was focused on the operational challenge of turning global commitments on gender equality into concrete actions and programmes at the national level. To that end, it had developed a strategic and results-based programme, geared towards three key objectives: strengthening women’s economic capacities and rights; engendering governance and leadership; and promoting women’s human rights and eliminating violence against women. Throughout all of its programmes, three key strategies were used: building synergetic partnerships; increasing capacity to undertake women’s empowerment and gender mainstreaming initiatives; and improving and increasing the knowledge-base on lessons learned and effective strategies.

She said that with regard to gender mainstreaming, UNIFEM focused on synthesizing, disseminating and improving access to the kind of technical information that made it possible for many partners to learn from each others’ successes and mistakes. Regional offices would disseminate a number of key assessments on the “how-to” of gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment, including effective strategies to build the capacities of national machineries for the advancement of women, lessons learned in working with the media to support women’s empowerment, and successful strategies to support women’s economic empowerment.

Strengthening the mechanisms that allowed monitoring progress and enhanced accountability was a main challenge. What happened in the General Assembly was important, because of its potential impact at the country level and in the daily lives of millions of women worldwide. Access to multiple new communications channels and technologies was now available to bring the grounded realities of women into direct contact with the policy-making process. That access had been demonstrated earlier this year in the global videoconference to end gender-based violence, which UNIFEM organized on International Women’s Day.

LEUEEN MILLER, Officer-in-Charge, Gender in Development Programme, Bureau for Development Policy, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said that the interacting processes of globalization had brought many benefits and exciting new opportunities to women. However, they also offered major challenges for human development, and in several cases had introduced conditions deleterious to women. The UNDP’s programme on gender and macroeconomics, in which the organization was researching innovative responses and sharing the outcomes with governments and operational units, was one way to help women seize opportunities and work with governments and other partners to minimize negative effects.

The UNDP had completed a planned series of extensive consultations with all country offices on the individual and organizational capacity needed to mainstream gender equality concerns. It had collaborated with UNIFEM throughout that process. Those consultations had resulted directly in strengthened organizational capacity for effective gender mainstreaming. Comprehensive terms of reference for the gender focal point function in country offices, including its management dimensions, had been prepared and distributed.

Specific and regularly encountered problems concerning gender equality in the workplace had been identified. Women continued to experience difficulties in being recognized as professional colleagues and equals, and still faced unacceptably high levels of sexual harassment, she said. One area that presented particular challenges to a gender mainstreaming agenda was that of tracking and measurement, which was closely related to ensuring full accountability. Accountability for the implementation of gender equality policy was emerging as a major concern of the Inter-agency Committee on Women and Gender Equality, and the UNDP Sub-group on Gender Equality. There was a wide discrepancy in the extent to which managers and other staff members took up gender equality commitments, and very few were held accountable for the attainment of those goals.

ILEANA BARBARA NUNEZ MORDOCHE (Cuba) said that her country wholeheartedly supported the work done by the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) and advocated that it be firmly maintained. The Institute was one of the few institutions of the United Nations that was located in a developing country. It must be maintained, strengthened and enabled to carry on its role. Cuba warmly appreciated the contribution of donor countries in the enhancement of the Institute. INSTRAW must be financed by resources coming from the regular budget of the United Nations. Voluntary contributions were inadequate, and could not maintain the Institute’s role in advancing women’s development. She reiterated Cuba’s support for the Institute and for the work that it did.

MARIAM AFTAB (Pakistan) said that the trend towards the so-called flexibilization of labour had been responsible for expanding the ranks of women in paid employment. But much of the job creation had involved informal, irregular forms of work which were low paying, insecure and with little in the way of training or promotion prospects. Flexibilization and informalization also meant that many of the costs of market volatility and economic recession were borne by the most vulnerable workers –- women, as they were less likely to be covered by labour regulations and laws dealing with social and employment security, especially in developing countries. The corollary was that in times of economic difficulty, the family became the welfare provider of the last resort. Since women had primary responsibility for care of the home and family, the demands placed on them appeared to have increased, due to reductions in social-sector expenditure. In short, the burden placed on women in developing countries, both inside the home and outside, had increased as a result of globalization. That was a disturbing state of affairs on the threshold of the new millennium.

Pakistan believed that the recommendations contained in the Secretary- General’s report did not of themselves go far enough in addressing the fundamental problems and issues the globalization process had created for women in development. That would require a more rigorous and in depth analysis of the phenomenon, its dynamics and the forces that continued to shape it both as a theoretical construct and as a process. Such an analysis could form the basis of a real discussion on policy choices, which would go beyond superficial tinkering with existing systems and battling self-created dichotomies.

HIDEAKI MARUYAMA (Japan) said that poverty was more than a lack of income. It was a life filled with uncertainty. It was vulnerability, powerlessness, physical isolation, social exclusion and social, cultural and economic discrimination against women. The feminization of poverty was universal. Women’s economic opportunities were constrained by their lack of control over the crucial decisions that were made regarding the use of resources. Enhancement of women’s rights and their control over resources was consequently central to progress towards gender equality. It was imperative that women were increasingly involved in local decision-making on the utilization of resources.

The advancement of women -- along with governance, sustainable livelihoods, sustainable management of environmental resources, and sustainable human development -- was a high priority for Japan as it worked toward the overarching goal of poverty eradication, he said. For that reason, the Government had launched its Initiative on Women in Development. Within that programme, special importance was attached to the improvement of women’s educational standards and health, and the promotion of economic and social participation. The Government intended to promote the Initiative in a comprehensive manner, bearing in mind the interconnections between those areas. It was essential that women participated in economic and social development on equal terms with men and share equally in the benefits provided, thereby ensuring that development would be balanced and sustained.

FADHEL AYARI (Tunisia) said that since its independence, his country had made the rights of women the cornerstone of its policies. In order to establish true equality between women and men, Tunisia had amended its legal codes. One of those amendments ensured that spouses lived in mutual respect and had equal responsibility in running the household. In Tunisia’s labour law, equality between men and women was guaranteed. Efforts undertaken in the educational sector had also enjoyed an exemplary success. The enrolment of girls in elementary education for example, was 99 per cent.

Institutional mechanisms had been put in place to improve the status of women, he said, with the following priority concerns: improving the potential and qualifications of women; improving women’s living conditions, especially in urban surroundings; changing people’s perceptions; protecting Tunisian girls; bettering the lot of migrant women; and promoting partnerships with NGOs and other organizations. Tunisia wholeheartedly supported the Beijing Programme of Action.

FELIX BAMEXON, Deputy Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), recalled that the WFP had set ambitious objectives in Beijing in the area of women in development. Since then it had established mechanisms to overcome obstacles to the achievement of those objectives. It had taken aggressive steps to mainstream a gender perspective in all its programmes. It had incorporated a gender perspective in its recent policy papers. In moving from a women-in-development approach, however, to a gender mainstreamed approach, he cautioned against too much gender mainstreaming. Globalization could bring many gains for women, but it also brought risks of marginalization and growing inequalities. Globalization by itself would not reverse gender inequalities. Women were often invisible in national statistics, since they tended to function only in the informal sector. The WFP invested in enhancing women’s capacity, which could contribute to civil society development. It made its voice heard on behalf of the voiceless. Around the world, women were usually the poorest, especially when they headed households. The WFP was committed to educating girls and women, especially in countries where the gender gap was the greatest. It currently had two successful programmes in Pakistan and Benin. Women needed training and skills to be able to benefit from economic activity.

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