WUNRN
Legislation
Not Enough to Secure Women's Rights
IPS Interview with Aruna Rao
ROME, Jul 18 (IPS) - The women's movement over the last decade has revealed
how legislative guarantees and policy reforms do not necessarily result in
opening institutional spaces, and that participation does not necessarily
translate into influence.
To achieve true empowerment for women, "governments need to focus on
supporting gender-sensitive institutional change in the institutions of
governance," says Aruna Rao.
Rao has spent the last 25 years working in support of women's rights, mainly in
Asia, where many women and girls face a number of "traditional family and
social barriers to realise their dreams."
She is director of Gender at Work, a capacity-building network that includes
experts, researchers and policy makers who share the view that women's
empowerment must be 'institutionalised', particularly in the emerging
economies. For this, a deep analysis of the current approach to development is
needed, she explains in an interview with IPS correspondent Sabina Zaccaro.
IPS: Which are the most problematic aspects of the modern development approach,
and how do these impact women?
Aruna Rao (AR): Three critical aspects of current development approaches are
hugely problematic. First, dominant economic models overemphasise growth over
the equitable distribution of the fruits of that growth. This means that while
a number of developing economies are growing rapidly, the wealth generated does
not benefit the poor.
Second, the pattern of decreased social spending, tight fiscal policies, and
privatisation of state-owned enterprises and services have had disproportionate
negative consequences for the poor, especially women. We are in many places in
transition economies where either government infrastructure has completely
broken down, such as in conflict zones, or is increasingly becoming privatised.
This translates into either no services or increased costs of existing
services, taking them out of reach of the poor.
And third, the institutions that are mandated to carry out these economic
growth models and development policies are criminally gender blind, often
corrupt and unaccountable...to their primary stakeholder, the public.
IPS: What do the growing economies of China and India mean for working women in
those countries?
AR: The spectacular rise in the economies of China and India has created new
employment opportunities for women and increased access to new information
technologies. But increased export-led growth has concentrated wealth in the
hands of a few, such as the new class of entrepreneurs in China, while state
protections and livelihood guarantees for poor women have crumbled, and
trafficking of women and girls has soared. In India, our enormous middle
classes have benefited, but in both countries export-led processing zones
provide difficult and non-unionised work conditions for women with weak labour
protections. There is greater informalisation of employment relations, and
increasing exploitation of women and girls.
IPS: Are these countries recording any improvement in basic services, following
the economic growth?
AR: In India and to a less extent China, rising wealth has not led to increased
investment in basic services to poor women in urban and rural areas. Women are
migrating in search of new jobs, but live in burgeoning cities with
increasingly under-resourced and inadequate infrastructure -- water and
sanitation services, housing, electricity, cheap and reliable local
transportation, and subsidised food.
IPS: How can women working in informal economies be supported and how can they
deal with the fact that they have no, or very restricted access, to credit,
natural resources, and land?
AR: In Asia, the share of the informal economy in the non-agriculture workforce
ranges from 45-85 per cent, and women's share in the informal sector is very
high and rising. Both in India and China, the government has taken steps to
address the needs of workers in the informal sector.
In 1999, the National Commission on Labour in India was set up to develop,
implement and enforce labour legislation in the informal economy. In China, the
Shanghai Municipal government instituted "informal labour
organisations" (by 2001, there were almost 15,000 in Shanghai) and adopted
policies -- such as extension of basic social insurance, assistance with
obtaining credit, preferential tax policies -- to promote and assist this
sector.
At an international level, in 1997 representatives of SEWA (Self Employed
Women's Association) and HomeNet (an international solidarity network for home
based workers) joined other experts on the informal economy to form a global
network called Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising
(WIEGO). WIEGO works closely with the International Labour Organisation, the
United Nations Statistics Division and the Statistics Commission.
IPS: But women's access to resources is still tricky...
AR: It remains true that women's access to productive resources is severely
restricted. Innovations are more widespread in access to credit following on
the very successful Grameen Bank model, and that of SEWA in India, through this
has not been widely extended by a national rural bank. But women's right to
land is much more restricted because of big and small obstacles. Even where
there is a will within a poor family to put land in women's name, the
registration costs are almost prohibitive.
Clearly there is an important role for both governments in creating a conducive
regulatory and support framework, and banks and other institutions in mediating
access to resources.
IPS: We are mid-way to 2015. Do you see any key achievement with regard to the
third Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on empowering women and on education?
AR: In 2005, the world missed the first agreed MDG target of achieving equal
numbers of girls as boys in primary school. The third goal has seen the least
progress, especially with respect to women's economic activity and political
representation. The World Bank's Global Monitoring Report 2007 points out that
progress towards gender equality is lagging behind other MDGs and that women's
lack of rights (equality under the law), resources (equality of opportunity)
and voice (political equality) all inhibit achievement of this goal.
Moreover, reducing gender equality primarily to eliminate gender disparities in
primary and secondary education is simply not acceptable. The Millennium
Project (of the United Nations) has provided a much more comprehensive list of
goals we should aim to achieve. These include: strengthening opportunities for
post-primary education for girls while meeting commitments to universal primary
education; to guarantee sexual and reproductive health and rights; investing in
infrastructure to reduce women's and girls' time burdens; to guarantee women's
and girls' property and inheritance rights; to eliminate gender inequality in
employment by decreasing women's reliance on informal employment, closing
gender gaps in earnings, and reducing occupational segregation; increasing women's
share of seats in national parliaments and local government bodies; combating
violence against girls and women.
IPS: What can governments concretely do to drive social and institutional
change?
AR: To achieve progress in gender equality goals, governments need to focus on
good governance, ensure adequate resources for women's rights, and make
institutions deliver to women. Governance systems play a large part in women's
ability to realise their rights and making their voice heard.
A strategic approach to good governance for women needs to go deeper than
normative agreements. It has to address the root causes for the lack of
institutional responsiveness to women: the absence of support for
gender-equality in agenda-setting processes and resource allocations, coupled
with gender biased institutional features (including incentive systems and
performance measures), barriers to women's access to public services, and a
lack of gender-sensitivity in accountability systems.
Equally, efforts are needed to sharpen the demand from women for better
governance. Women must become more effective in navigating institutional
barriers, be skilled in demanding accountability from public actors, be able to
expose corruption and other governance failures and to respond to violations of
their rights. They need to constitute themselves as a political constituency
skilled at demanding and negotiating their rights.
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